Excerpt

This is an excerpt from the first in Louise Gaylord's Allie Armington mystery series, Anacacho:

CHAPTER 1 - Section 2

I scan it, suppressing a thundering roll of envy. I am an Assistant District Attorney in the Grand Jury Division. Duncan works in Major Fraud. This file covers a big-time white-collar theft of more than a million dollars and a glaring paper trail.

“Lucky you.” I hand his plum back and turn to the stack of fifty-plus cases my panel of grand jurors will hear on Wednesday. Most deal with possession or delivery of a controlled substance or the never-ending auto thefts.

Duncan can read me like a book. “Tired of your gig?”

I sigh. “Somebody has to do it. Too bad the bastards are out on the streets before they ever serve a day. But this is just the small stuff—the end of the pipeline. I’d give a million bucks to get my hands on the really big boys.”

“Better up that ante since the government has already spent billions.” Duncan takes a few steps toward the door, then turns. “How about dinner? I have some great homemade ravioli and salad fixings ready to go.”

This is too good to pass up. Not only is Duncan a master chef and a great kisser, he lives three floors above me.

“You’re on,” I say to his retreating back. “I’ll bring the wine."

The evening starts well enough. A glass of Chianti Classico, then a few very nice long kisses followed by a crisp romaine with crumbled Blue Cheese. Finally, the piéce de résistance, morel ravioli with a subtle cream sauce that melts the minute it passes my lips.

In between cool spoons of spumoni, I bring up the disparities between my caseload status and his.

Duncan is a reasonable man, but he can home in on a problem with the precision of a military strike. “If you don’t like your job, quit.”

“Did I say that?”

He takes the dish of spumoni from my hands, sets it on the coffee table beside his, and turns to face me. “No, you didn’t exactly come right out and say it, but every chance you get, you complain about how hard you work and never get a decent case.”

I stiffen and pull away. “Gee, thanks.”

He gives me his attorney’s once-over. “Tell me why the only woman in her class to serve on Law Review, is hiding in the Grand Jury Division of the Harris County DA?”

Damn, Duncan. He’s evidently picked up on my one horror: presenting a case. I love doing the research and prepping witnesses, but the thought of standing up in a courtroom before a judge and jury makes me weak in the knees.

For some reason I can’t bring myself to tell him that, so like most cornered women, I come out swinging. “I’ll tell you why, if you tell me why you left Chicago?”

This is the one question that Duncan has left unanswered.

He gives me a pained smile. “I wondered how long it would take you to bring that up.”

Something in his voice makes me immediately regret my boldness. I put my arms around his neck, drawing his face close to mine. “I’ll strike that question, counselor, if you can think of a decent bribe.”

His relief is more than obvious. “How about this?” He plants a long sweet kiss on my lips and ushers me out the door.

I pout all the way to my apartment, longing for a cat to kick or a roommate to rag on, but by the time I crawl in bed, my focus is on tomorrow’s lunch with Reena. What on earth was I thinking? Facing my enemy after all these years will only bring back the pain.

I groan into the darkness, wondering if I have some sort of built-in mechanism that sabotages every male-female relationship I’ve been in since Paul Carpenter walked out of my life.