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Dani Welford looked around the prisoner holding room nervously and set her briefcase on the metal table in front of its steel handcuff bar, which was used for the more violent prisoners who came through this courthouse.

She caught sight of herself in the two-way glass and blew a stray strand of red hair off her forehead. It was stuck, though, in the sweat of August in New York City, and she pushed at it impatiently. The net effect was to stand up her red curls in twenty different directions. Crap. Now she had to find a comb and fix it all.

She rummaged in her briefcase, or at least she started to. But the door opened with a bang just then, and her gaze jerked up guiltily.

The man standing in the doorway like a conquering general was a full head taller than she was. He wore sneakers, athletic shorts that revealed a set of muscular legs and a sleeveless, wet T-shirt plastered to his bulging pecs and washboard abs. His arms…after mentally fanning herself…made her think of a Roman gladiator. He looked like the kind of man women would fawn all over and whom he, in turn, would bed like the powerful warrior he was.

Perspiration glistened on his deeply tanned forehead and chiseled cheekbones and his short hair was darkened from what she guessed to be honeyed blond to a color more akin to bronze. He freaking exuded vitality.

It dawned on her rather more belatedly than it should have that sweaty sports gear was not the accepted garb for attorneys meeting to discuss a client’s case. It showed a lack of respect for the client and a definite lack of respect for her.

Her gaze narrowed as he advanced toward her, dwarfing her. How was it this man could act totally confident and not the least bit self-conscious parading around half naked and soaking wet—to an official meeting in a courthouse, no less—when she was a wreck because a strand of hair was out of place?

Although, in reality, her discomfort was less about him and more about her own hang-ups about not being a misfit in the legal field.

I knew it. I should’ve worn heels like Zoey told me to.

Except negotiating subway stairs and walking a half-dozen city blocks in stilettos was a risky proposition for her. At the best of times, her balance in three-inch heels sucked. When she was nervous and running late, she was a menace to herself and anyone standing close to her.

Even if she’d had a few extra inches of height, though, Mr. Roman Gladiator would still tower over her when she stepped forward to shake hands with him. She sighed, resigned to giving him the first tiny win in the battle into which they were about to enter.

“Dan Welford?” he asked, looking over her shoulder into the corners of the tiny room. He frowned, not spying the male attorney he expected.

His rich, resonant voice caressed her like soft porn, invading her senses with a promise of delicious sexual excess. Holy cow.

“Sorry. Wrong room.” Good grief. His voice alone was enough to make her breathing go all fast and pant-y.

He started to back out of the doorway and she blurted, “No! Right room! I’m Dan. Uhh, Dani. I mean Danielle.” Dammit. She sounded like a breathless sorority girl meeting the captain of the football team. Worse, she’d just given him a second win by letting him throw her off balance like that.

If her criminal law professor had said it once, he’d said it a hundred times, three strikes and you’re out. She’d already served up this sexy attorney two strikes against her on a silver platter. Determination to even the score set her jaw in a tight line.

She thrust her hand out awkwardly. “Danielle Wellford. Whitney, Marcos & Pinter.”

The golden gladiator stepped into the room once more and shut the door behind him. “Cameron Townsend, Assistant District Attorney.”

His gaze traveled down her body and back up slowly, taking in every detail of her appearance. She felt stripped naked by that stare, mentally undressed and judged.

She froze, forcing her face not to reveal even a hint of how uncomfortable he was making her feel. No third strike for you, buster. Lawyers weren’t supposed to check each other out as if they were considering having carnal knowledge of opposing counsel right here, right now, on the metal table behind her, or maybe up against the wall, out of sight of the two-way mirror?—

At least his gaze didn’t convey distaste or disgust as he checked her out. She couldn’t help being short or a curvy girl. This athletic dude undoubtedly went for lean, stringy marathon runner-style women, or heaven forbid, six-foot tall, anorexic model types.

Not one to take an insult lying down, she returned the assessing look, letting her own gaze travel down his sculpted torso, past the gulp-worthy bulge of his crotch, down miles of muscled legs and all the way back up, past that narrow waist, broad shoulders, and perfect jaw to his eyes.

There was nothing whatsoever she could find fault with, no discernable flaw for her to feel even slightly superior or smug over. She was forced to revise her opinion of him from Roman gladiator to Roman god.

His gaze lifted to hers and she jolted, both mentally and physically. Heat snapped and sparked in them as if he was definitely considering suggesting a quickie with her.

Startled, she looked away, abashed. Please God, let him not see that she might seriously consider going for the quickie with him if he offered. She was no prude, but she also wasn’t into meaningless bangs with strangers.

Work. This is work. I’m a fully licensed, no kidding lawyer, now. And my client’s counting on me to get him acquitted and give him his life back.

She risked glancing back at Townsend and was arrested again by how mesmerizing his eyes were. They went from cobalt blue in the center to the midnight blue of an ocean whose depths went on forever around the edges. But what really captivated her was the intelligence glinting in them?—

Or was that amusement? At her?

His lips twitched. Definitely amusement, then.

Asshole .

He reached out and took her hand, which she realized with a start she’d been standing there holding out, like some kind of moron, the whole time they’d been sizing up each other’s physical assets, contemplating screwing each other, and discarding the notion.

Dang it. Had she already stacked up a third strike by standing here forever with her hand out?

No. Definitely not. It was a power move to be the first person to offer one’s hand for a shake and an even bigger power move to wait out one’s opponent, silently insisting he shake hands in return.

Unlike the rest of him, his hand wasn’t sweaty at all. But it was warm. Powerful. And holding her much more slender hand with surprising gentleness.

Huh. She’d fully expected him to wring her hand so hard she winced in pain.

“So,” he murmured…holy crap, without releasing her hand, “you got stuck with the pro bono gig for Wimpy. Who did you piss off?”

Her first reaction was to choke back laughter at the nickname for her new employer. She hadn’t heard that one, yet. It was doubly humorous because WMP was arguably the biggest legal bully in the state of New York. Its senior partners prided themselves on throwing their weight around for the Big Apple’s richest assholes.

She tugged her hand free nervously.

Well, crap. He smirked as he let her hand go, making it clear he could’ve prevented her from withdrawing her hand from his if he’d chosen to.

That didn’t count as strike three against her! It was a sidebar, a personal interaction, and not part of their professional combat.

As for his question about how she got stuck with this case, in truth, she’d volunteered for it when the pro bono case had been assigned to the firm by the court. Since promotions at WMP were heavily weighted toward associates who won the most cases, none of her fellow new hires were eager to take on a wild card case that could be a big fat loser.

She might have come from a mediocre law school and taken her classes at night while she worked days to pay for them, but she was willing to do the dirty jobs and work harder than anyone else to prove she belonged at a fancy firm like WMP. She figured that had to count for something with the senior partners, right?

The fact that she’d offered to take the case had also earned her the heartfelt gratitude, unspoken pity, and faint hint of contempt from her fellow junior associates. But she wasn’t about to tell this ADA that.

“Thanks for meeting me here,” he said conversationally. “I was in the building playing squash with Judge Smythe. Did you know there’s a gym in the basement?”

“I do, now.”

He continued, “Just as we finished, I got an emergency phone call—had to race upstairs to help a new ADA with a deposition going sideways. That ate up my time to shower and change. It was a choice between showing up like this or keeping you waiting.”

“You mean waiting even longer,” she retorted. “You’re nearly a half-hour late.”

“Sorry about that. I blame Judge Smythe. The old geezer’s so competitive he insisted we play a tie breaker to determine a winner. The deposition was merely the cherry on my sundae of tardiness.”

“Uncooperative witness?” she asked in reluctant commiseration.

“Incompetent stenographer.”

“Ahh. That sucks.”

He rolled his eyes. “The D.A.’s office films every deposition, and our sound guy’s great. He’ll have caught everything the witness said. My junior colleague wasn’t aware of that and panicked.” He shook his head. “Defense lawyer’s screwed, though. Didn’t bring a camera, and the printed transcript is gonna be a mess.”

Note to self: ask her boss to pony up for a videographer if this guy ever interviewed her client.

She followed Townsend to the ugly metal table and caught his faint grimace as he stared at it, his gaze abruptly distant as if he was remembering some other table like it. What was that about?

She was distracted, though, when Townsend pulled out one of the heavy metal chairs and gestured for her to have a seat. The polite gesture threw her mentally off balance a lot harder than she cared to admit.

Most men these days didn’t bother with such old-fashioned niceties, and in her experience, most women today felt perfectly capable of opening their own doors and pulling out their own chairs.

“Uhh, thanks,” she mumbled as she sank onto the cold, uncomfortable aluminum.

“Met your client yet?” he asked, moving around to the other side of the table.

Interesting. Townsend had taken the prisoner’s seat. The one facing the two-way mirror and placing his back to the door. Was that another gentlemanly gesture, or was it a subtle statement that he was so confident he didn’t care if he gave her the attorney’s seat?

“Yes, I’ve met him,” she replied evenly, praying she wasn’t giving away any of her frustration and confusion over him or his case.

Strange bird, her client. Named Alexei Koronov. Age twenty-two. Recently graduated from medical school after starting college at the age of fourteen. He was obviously brilliant, although it hadn’t been evident from her meeting with him.

He’d been deeply taciturn, unwilling or uninterested in giving her any information about himself or his crime. He’d answered her in monosyllabic grunts when he’d bothered to answer at all.

At one point in their wholly unproductive meeting, she’d suggested he grunt once for yes and twice for no. That had elicited the only hint of a smile out of him in the whole hour she’d spent with him.

When he’d particularly disliked her questions, he’d merely stared silently at her, his gaze oddly…tortured.

It was that strange impression of her client being in some sort of intense emotional pain, perhaps the result of some terrible trauma, that kept her from walking out on him and wishing him good luck with whatever overworked, underpaid public defender the court stuck him with.

It wasn’t that public defenders weren’t good defense attorneys. Most of them were fine lawyers. But they often carried as much as five times the case load that any one person could reasonably keep on top of. Which meant they were frequently exhausted and came into court not fully prepared to represent their clients.

It was the main reason she’d chosen to practice defense law at a private firm and hadn’t gone the public route like the man across the table from her.

Townsend pulled a brown file folder out of his briefcase and opened it on the table between them. “Let’s see. Your boy’s cooling his jets in county lock-up for a spectacular DWI arrest involving blood alcohol three times over the limit when breathalyzed. That was after a high-speed chase involving a half-dozen police cruisers. He was originally clocked on the New York Thruway doing one-hundred-seventy miles per hour in a Porsche 911 S/T—” Townsend whistled. “Expensive toy. Those suckers start around three-hundred-thousand bucks.”

Really? She’d had no idea. She knew Porsche’s were Italian sports cars and 911s looked rather like Volkswagen Bugs on steroids, but that was it. Three-hundred grand? Then why ? —

“Why did this kid get assigned pro bono counsel?” Townsend asked, plucking the question right out of her head. “Why isn’t daddy paying your firm a gigantic retainer to get junior off scot-free, and why aren’t a half-dozen of WMP’s finest in here, making my life a living hell?”

She scowled across the table at him. “I assure you, Mr. Townsend. I’m fully capable of making your life a living hell all by myself.”

His eyebrows sailed up and he leaned back in his seat, tilting it onto its back legs, studying her with renewed interest. Eventually, he rocked the chair back down to the floor, commenting, “So. The kitten has claws after all.”

Kitten? He saw her as a kitten ? Mortally offended, she glared at him, making no effort to conceal how irritated she was by his comment. She might be a baby lawyer, and this might be her first pro bono case—her first solo case, truth be told—but she’d graduated at the top of her admittedly unimpressive law school class and had killed her bar exams. WMP didn’t hire ambulance chaser hacks, thank you very much.

She would show him her claws, all right. And shred him into tiny little pieces, starting with those gorgeous blue eyes of his and moving on to that annoying smirk?—

He interrupted her internal grocery list of terrible things she was going to do to him with, “Do I have the facts of the arrest straight?”

She nodded stiffly.

“Great. Then we can plea this bad boy out and be done here in two minutes. I have a business event to go to tonight and I still need to grab a shower.”

She inhaled sharply. Which was a mistake. This room smelled strongly of bleach but was unable to hide the reek of urine with an undertone of vomit and a finishing top note of nervous sweat to round out the grossness.

A bailiff told her she and Townsend had been relegated to this piece of shit room because there was some sort of employee sexual harassment training going on in all the building’s conference rooms. She was fuzzy on the details of the scandal that had provoked the training, but apparently, it was badly needed around here.

As for negotiating a plea deal, it had been her strong recommendation to Alex to do exactly that. But he’d shaken his head sharply in the negative at her suggestion and actually spoken two whole words in response. No deal .

She’d asked his permission to at least find out what kind of deal the district attorney’s office was willing to offer before he turned it down out of hand. He’d shrugged and commenced staring at the ceiling as if it was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen.

Annoyed at her client’s obstinance, and even more annoyed at the man across the table now, she girded herself to play hard ball.

Tough. Be tough .

Her criminal law professor’s advice rolled through her mind. Demand a lot more than the D.A. is willing to give, settle for more than the D.A. wants to give.

She squared her shoulders, channeled her inner badass, and met her opponent’s gaze head on.

The way he studied her back, obviously measuring her up, was a little unsettling. Okay, a lot unsettling.

You belong here. The law is the law, and all law schools teach the same thing, whether they’re expensive Ivy League schools or cheap night schools. You passed the same bar exam this guy did.

The pep talk helped until she met his piercing blue stare again. Honestly, his eyes reminded her of an ad that was plastered on practically every park bench, billboard, and bus in the city at the moment. She thought maybe it was an advertisement for whiskey. Or maybe a strip club.

Speaking of which, Townsend would be hell on wheels pole dancing in a jock strap and combat boots.

An urge to giggle nearly overcame her but she managed to choke it off before it escaped and became a solid strike three against her. Women litigators did not giggle. Ever. Not in this testosterone-laden field dominated by barracudas in designer suits.

Planting the absurd image of Townsend in a jock strap and cowboy boots firmly in her mind, she said boldly, “What’s your offer?”

He flipped a few pages deeper into the file and picked up a piece of paper with a few lines of handwriting scrawled across it.

He read out rapidly, “Five thousand dollar fine, two years probation, a thousand hours of community service. He can serve those in a hospital if he wants. God knows, the emergency rooms around here could use the help.”

A pretty reasonable deal, truth be told.

But when she’d pressed Alex, insisting he give her a verbal yes or no answer to her request to negotiate a plea deal even if he planned to turn it down, his stare had dropped from the ceiling and landed on her. For an instant, the shutters in his eyes had lifted, and she’d seen a flash of the highly intelligent young man hiding behind them.

His expression had been intense, and furious if she wasn’t mistaken, as he leaned forward across a table much like this one and bit out, “I will take no deal, regardless of what’s offered. Is that clear?”

“Well?” Townsend demanded impatiently. “I don’t have all day, here.”

“Fine. Then I’ll make this quick,” she snapped. “No deal.”

Townsend’s head jerked up.

Surprise—and real interest—glinted in his stare. They both knew she had no leverage whatsoever in this case. Breathalyzer and blood alcohol tests confirmed her client had been drunk off his ass. No less than four radar guns had clocked him going a hundred miles per hour over the speed limit before he’d finally been cornered and forced to stop his joy ride from hell, whereupon he’d fought being handcuffed and broke a cop’s nose.

It was a foregone conclusion that any rational lawyer would accept whatever crumbs the D.A.’s office chose to toss his or her way on this case.

Townsend blurted in minor disbelief, “You’re not even going to counter? For real?”

The arrogance underlying his question irritated the living shit out of her. “No, Mr. Townsend, I’m not going to make a counter offer. My client would prefer to take this to trial.”

He smiled winningly. “Okay. You got me.” He added in his most charming voice, “Seriously. What deal are you asking for? I’m sure we can meet in the middle?—”

“I told you,” she interrupted. “We’re not negotiating a plea.”

He stared at her in open dismay before his stare shifted to anger. “You’re shitting me. No judge will let you bring this into his court. Jury trials are expensive and, in this case, a waste of everyone’s time. Not to mention even the worst jury on the planet would convict your guy in two seconds flat.”

He was not wrong. But she had her marching orders from her client. He’d been crystal clear in what he wanted her to do. She’d argued with him over it for most of the hour their meeting had lasted, but Alex hadn’t budged an inch.

Townsend was speaking again. “…be forced to throw the book at him. I’ll charge him with felony speeding, aggravated DWI, evading arrest, failure to follow police instructions, resisting arrest, aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, and anything else I can think up. I’ll get a multiple-count felony conviction and he’ll go to jail for years. We’re talking hard time, here. Your pretty boy will get ass-fucked by every gang banger in upstate New York.”

He was right, of course. They both knew Alexei Koronov was guilty. Hell, Alex knew he was guilty. But the guy was entitled to fight the charges and force the system to let a trial run its course.

She shrugged. “Last year the city of Manhattan alone had over a hundred DWI cases dismissed, almost half of all its DWI arrests. The state of New York had close to 4,000 cases dismissed for speedy trial violations alone.” She added lightly, “That, and my client’s innocent until correctly proven guilty.”

“You’re going to risk years in jail for your client in hopes that I’ll screw up?” Townsend demanded in disbelief. “I happen to be damned good at what I do, Miss…” he looked down at the yellow sticky note on the file in front of him. “…Wellford.”

“So am I,” she ground out.

“Let me guess. You’ve been out of law school, what? Two—three—whopping months? Is this your first criminal case? Honey, I’ve prosecuted well over a thousand cases. I’m going to chew you up and spit you out.”

She stood up, snapping her briefcase shut with a loud snick in the charged silence. “I welcome you to try, counselor. And I’m not your honey.”

He surged to his feet and she stifled a gasp as his angry, overwhelmingly masculine, presence towered over her and filled the tiny room.

She was not turned on by this misogynistic bastard! But damned if something hot and turbulent didn’t fire off deep in her gut at the anger blazing in his eyes. Maybe this was the thrill of the fight thing her law professors described. Yeah. That was it. She was just anticipating the fight to come between them.

She said sweetly, “I hear they’re having anti-sexual harassment training in this building, today. Perhaps you’d like to join a session in progress?”

His mouth fell open as she turned around and marched out of the room. What she wouldn’t give to be clicking out of here in a pair of Louboutin stilettos, four-and-a-half inches of red-lacquered fuck you to one Cameron Townsend, Esquire. As soon as she could afford a pair, she was buying some. Just for him.