The Gentlemen's Hour

8

“Business or pleasure?” he asks when he comes back in, Petra having handed him a shirt and jeans.

She gave him his clothes a tad reluctantly because (a) it’s fun to see him embarrassed; and (b) it’s not exactly painful to see him in the buff, Boone Daniels being, well, buff.

He’s tall and broad-shouldered, with the lean, long muscles that come from a lifetime of paddling a surfboard and swimming.

“And why can’t business be a pleasure?” she asks in that upper-class British accent that Boone finds alternately aggravating and attractive. Petra Hall is a junior partner at the law firm of Burke, Spitz, and Culver, one of Boone’s steadier clients. She got her good looks and petite frame from her American mother, her accent and attitude from her British dad.

“Because it usually isn’t,” Boone answers, feeling for some reason that he wants to argue with her.

“Then you really should find a new line of work,” she says, “one that you can enjoy. In the meantime . . .”

She hands him the slim file that was tucked under her arm. Boone nudges a copy of Surfer magazine off the cluttered desk to make a little room, sets the file down, and opens it. A deep red flush comes over his cheeks as he shuts the file, glares at her, and says, “No.”

“What does that mean?” Petra asks.

“It means no,” Boone says. He’s quiet for a second and then says, “I can’t believe Alan is taking this case.”

Petra says, “Everyone has the right to a defense.”

Boone points down at the file. “Not him.”

“Every one.”

“Not him.”

Boone glares at her again, then slides his feet into a well-worn pair of Reef sandals and walks out.

Petra and Cheerful listen to him pound down the stairs.

“Actually,” she says, “that didn’t go as badly as I anticipated.”

Petra had known before she asked that the Corey Blasingame case was deeply hurtful to Boone, that it put into doubt everything he believed in, everything he’d built his life upon.