“AS IT TURNED out, Rylann wasn’t quite as good as she’d thought she was.Over the last five years she’d prosecuted cases, she’d become quite skilled at reading defendants and their lawyers at the initial courtappearance. Given Quinn’s obvious nervousness, she’d originally predicted that his lawyer would be calling her within two weeks to negotiate aplea agreement.Instead, it took him two weeks and three days to make that call.”

“I’m a bit of a novice myself.” She smiled. Then she turned back to Jasper. “And please, call me Payton.”Like one of my favorite quarterbacks,” Jasper grinned.Only with an a instead of an e. And slightly fewer yards in passing,” Payton said. Damn—now she’d already blown one of the three measly sports references she knew in the first two minutes.Jasper laughed. “Slightly fewer yards in passing—I like that.” He turned to J.D., gesturing to Payton. “Where have you been hidin’ this girl, J.D.?”

“She’d make for a jazzy week-end, but she’d be wearing for a steady diet.”

“The little office, scarcely large enough to contain Dr. Irene’s desk at one end and the couch at the other, held a world of memories for Lily. Here, fifty minutes at a time, two or three times a week, she’d spilled out her hopes and fears, her childhood nightmares and adolescent insecurities – in a sense, she’d grown up in this room.”

“Then his gaze shifted to the wild bush sprouting from her head. “Wow. Did I do that to your hair?” He looked oddly pleased at the thought.Rylann made a mental note to throw a flat iron in her purse the next time she had sex in the shower with a billionaire ex-con. Not that there wasgoing to be a next time. “Not all of us are lucky enough to have freakishly perfect, shampoo-commercial hair. This is what happens when I get wet.”His expression turned wicked. “I know exactly what happens when you get wet, counselor.”Yep, she’d walked right into that one.”

“Old lady Patterson is a real tightwad.” Raising his voice so it would carry, the man continued, “If she stuck a lump of coal up her ass, within a week she’d shit out a diamond.”

“She thought that heartbreak might just give his character the shadows and corners and angles it needed to make it truly interesting. To deepen and shape it. She was sorry she would be the one to help make him truly interesting. But she’d never apologize for falling in love with a man who already was.”