Take the Bait Read online

  More than just eye candy

  Rookie attorney Dani Wellford’s taciturn client has the strangest request: “Send me to jail.” Easy case, right? Wrong, especially as she faces Cam Townsend, the hot assistant DA who’s hell-bent on seducing her—and winning the case. The way he wears his suits should be a crime; he gets Dani’s mojo going, in the courtroom and the bedroom.

  Before long, their professional ethics are more tangled than the bedsheets. But when Dani goes to battle against her firm’s old-boy network trying to prove a hefty case of discrimination, she ends up with the most unexpected ally...and perhaps just the right bait for a lifelong sentence.

  Take the Bait

  Cindy Dees

  Dear Reader,

  It’s been a long-held dream of mine to be able to go to a cozy bed-and-breakfast with a few close writing friends, sip at tea and nibble crumpets, and spend lazy days writing to my heart’s content. At long last, that dream came true, and this story is the result of that working vacation.

  Lest you get the wrong impression of gentle contemplation and leisurely plotting, let the record show that Dani Wellford and Cameron Townsend exploded into life all of a sudden and pretty much wrote their story themselves. I actually had to tell them to slow down and let me introduce Dani’s quirky client Alex Peters to the headlong rush of their romance.

  It was a mad typing race to keep up with these two, and I felt physically and emotionally out of breath by the time we all reached the final page. Here’s hoping you feel the same way after you reach the end.

  I normally tell readers to sit back, relax and enjoy the story, but this time I’d better warn you to buckle your seat belts and secure all the loose items around you before you embark on this wild ride. Have fun and happy reading!

  Warmly,

  Cindy Dees

  Dedication

  This one’s for Daemon Suede, whom I did my level best to channel throughout the writing of this story. You’re the best!

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  CHAPTER ONE

  DANI WELLFORD LOOKED around the interrogation room nervously and set her briefcase on the metal table in front of the steel handcuff bar used for the more violent prisoners. 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 frizzed out red waves in twenty different directions. Crap. Now she had to find a comb and fix it.

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

  The man standing in the doorway like a conquering general was a full head taller than her and his designer suit fit like it had been painted onto his godlike physique. Jeez. Even his light brown hair was perfect—that politician’s mixture of short and conservative touched with sun-kissed, wind-blown, Kennedy-clan cachet. One look at him made her feel so inadequate she briefly considered crawling under the table and hiding.

  “Dan Wellford?” he asked, looking over her shoulder into the corners.

  She could only stare as his voice rolled over her like softcore porn, invading her pores with a promise of sexual excess.

  “Sorry. Wrong room,” he bit out.

  He started to back out of the doorway and she blurted, “No! Right room! I’m Dan. Uh, Dani. I mean Danielle.” Dammit. She sounded like a breathless sorority girl meeting the captain of the football team. She thrust her hand out. “Danielle Wellford. Whitney, Marcos & Pinter.”

  He stepped fully into the room and shut the door behind him. “Cameron Townsend, assistant district attorney. You got stuck with the pro bono gig for Wimpy this month? Who did you piss off?”

  Her first reaction was to choke back laughter at the nickname for her new law firm. She hadn’t heard that one, yet. It was doubly humorous because WMP was the biggest legal bully in New York and prided itself on throwing its weight around for the Big Apple’s richest assholes who got themselves in legal trouble.

  She’d actually volunteered for the pro bono work assigned to the firm by the court, thereby earning the heartfelt gratitude of all her fellow junior associates at the firm. But she wasn’t about to tell this ADA that.

  “Met your client yet?”

  She frowned. “Yes, I have, actually.”

  “Alexei Koronov’s a strange bird,” he commented.

  That was a word for it. Her client was in his early twenties. Recently graduated from medical school. Brilliant. Tortured. Taciturn. And cooling his jets in county lockup for a spectacular DUI arrest involving blood alcohol three times over the limit, the New Jersey Turnpike and a Porsche clocked at one-hundred-seventy miles per hour. To top it off, he’d clocked a couple cops resisting arrest, gotten tossed in jail and declined to post bail, which was doubly odd, given that the guy could easily afford it.

  “Great. Then we can plea this bad boy out and be done here in ten minutes. I have a squash game across town in an hour.”

  Townsend sprawled in the chair the detective would normally sit in and gestured her into the prisoner’s seat across the table. It smelled of vomit and nervous sweat. The two of them had been relegated to this piece of shit interrogation room because there was some sort of employee sexual harassment training thing going on in all the conference rooms in the building. She was fuzzy on the details of the scandal that provoked the training, but apparently, it was badly needed around here.

  The way Counselor Townsend was eyeing her chest beneath her gray wool suit was a little unsettling, in fact. Okay, a freaking lot unsettling. His eyes were that piercing blue of a male model staring out of a whiskey ad. Or a strip club. This guy would be hell on wheels pole dancing in a jock strap and combat boots.

  That image firmly planted in her mind, she stared back at him boldly. “What have you got?” she demanded.

  He opened the manila folder on the table in front of him and intoned in a bored voice, “Five-thousand-dollar fine, two years probation, a thousand hours community service. He can serve it in a hospital if he wants. God knows, the emergency rooms around here could use the help.”

  A pretty reasonable deal, truth be told. She couldn’t believe her client was making her do what she was about to do. But she took a deep breath and replied gamely, “No deal.”

  Townsend jerked upright in his chair. Interest flickered in his heretofore glassy-eyed 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 before he’d finally been cornered and forced to stop his joy ride from hell. It was a foregone conclusion that Dani would accept whatever crumbs the DA’s office chose to toss her way on this case.

  “You’re going to counter? For real?”

  The arrogance underlying his questions irritated the living daylights out of her. “No, Mr. Townsend, I’m not. My client would prefer to take this to trial.”

  “You’re kidding me. It’s a waste of everyone’s time, and he’ll go to jail. Hard time. Felony conviction. Your pretty boy won’t do well in jail.”

  Her eyes narrowed. He was right, of course. They both knew Alexei Koronov was guilty. But the system still had to run its course. She said lightly, “There’s always a chance of a procedural mistake. Last year the city had over a hundred cases dismissed due to errors by police, attorneys and the courts.”

  “You’re going to risk years in jail for your client in hopes that I’ll screw up my job?” To
wnsend demanded in disbelief. “I happen to be damned good at what I do, Miss...” he looked down at a 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? Three whopping months? Is this your first criminal case? Honey, I’ve prosecuted a thousand cases just like this one in the past five years. 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 overwhelmingly masculine presence abruptly filled the room. His gaze raked up and down her body once. Twice.

  She was not turned on by this misogynistic bastard! But darned if something hot and turbulent didn’t fire off deep in her gut. Maybe this was that thrill of the hunt thing she’d heard some of her law professors describe. Yeah. That was it. She was experiencing anticipation of the fight to come.

  She said pleasantly, “I hear they’re having anti-sexual harassment training here, 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 on her first ever pair of Louboutin stilettos, bought with most of her first paycheck from WMP. They clicked loudly on the linoleum, six-inches of red-lacquered screw you to one Cameron Townsend, Esquire.

  * * *

  CAM COLLAPSED BACK into the chair behind him, laughing under his breath. Where in the hell did Whitney, Marcos & Pinter find a firecracker like her? Oh sure, she had the gray suit and black leather briefcase that was the company’s uniform of choice. But that fire-engine red hair and those curves busting out all over her snugly tailored suit had no business in the frigid halls of that dusty firm.

  It had been a long time since he’d been surprised in his work. What on earth was she thinking to turn down what was a pretty damned generous plea bargain for a guilty-as-hell client? He’d be shocked if a judge even let this thing go to trial, it was such a slam dunk.

  Actually thinking about strategy for a change, he pondered how to maneuver this case in front of a judge who would twist arms over at WMP to get their junior associate do-gooder under control and off his docket with a quiet plea bargain.

  He had to admit, he was turned on by the way she’d glared him down and dared him to put up a fight. Most women were so busy planning how to trap him into marriage and sucking up to him...or sucking down on him...that they posed no challenge anymore. Sex had become a been-there-done-that bore for him.

  But Dani Wellford...he’d bet she was a tiger in the sack—

  God, she was right. He had no business thinking about her like that. But those fuck-me shoes, and the way her ass had wiggled as she sashayed out of the interrogation room. Day-umm. She was one smoking-hot attorney for the defense.

  Shaking his head at his complete loss of decorum with her, he gathered up the Koronov file and made his way back to his file-jammed office to pick up his squash gear. As tempting as she might be, he’d long had an inviolable policy never, ever, to screw anyone he might end up on the other side of a courtroom from...in any context, professional or personal.

  As hot and nubile as Dani Wellford might be, she was not for him.

  * * *

  WELL PLEASED WITH herself for her showing against the bronzed Adonis who was going to be her first legal opponent, Dani made her way down from her little cubbyhole of an office to the catered cocktail party being thrown by the partners to welcome this year’s crop of new associates to the firm. It was, of course, a mandatory affair for her to attend. She took a martini off the tray offered to her by a waiter even though she despised the drink. The stemmed, triangular glass looked cool, at any rate. Suppressing a grimace at the sweet-salty bite of vermouth and olives, she wandered deeper into the sea of gray wool, quickly reviewing the names of wives and girlfriends from the list her shared secretary had provided her.

  “Hey Dani! Welcome to the firm.”

  She turned to the familiar voice of her favorite paralegal and gave her a warm hug. “Thanks, Zoey.” Zoey Suarez had made her transition from law school to the real world immeasurably easier so far. That and she was one of the few drones at the place who had an actual personality.

  “So. How’d it go today?” Zoey demanded.

  “The meeting with the ADA? Pretty good. He was severely pissed that Alex turned down the plea deal, but we expected that. I figure the next thing he’ll try will be an end-around with a judge to force my client into a deal.”

  “You gonna let him?”

  She shrugged. “I serve the client’s will. I’m his counselor, not his boss. Alex seems determined to take this thing to trial.”

  “Is he counting on his youth and good looks to sway a jury? Or better yet, your youth and good looks?”

  Dani laughed. “I doubt it. Turns out he was born in Russia. Maybe he has a fundamental misunderstanding of how our legal system works. I thought I’d stop by the jail tomorrow and talk him through it all.”

  Zoey made a face. “If I were you I’d stay away from that—” she broke off. And murmured, “Well, hello, future Mr. Suarez.”

  Dani followed the direction of her friend’s gaze and all but spewed martini all over the back of Mrs. Pinter. “What the hell?” she grumbled under her breath. “Who let him in here?”

  “Have you ever seen a prettier piece of meat in a suit?” Zoey purred.

  “That’s the severely pissed off ADA. Cam Townsend.”

  “That’s the famous Cameron Townsend?” Zoey exclaimed. “I heard he was hot, but I had no idea he was that hot!”

  Dani had no intention of being sucked into a sexual fantasy fest in regard to that particular arrogant, condescending district attorney. “What’s he doing here? This is a private party for employees only.”

  “Word has it he’s the next jumper at the DA’s office,” Zoey said low.

  Dani lurched in alarm. The guy was suicidal? Why wasn’t someone doing some sort of intervention for him if he was that stressed out? Crap. And she’d been all combative and in your face with the poor guy. She asked sotto voce, “Is there a big problem with ADAs killing themselves?”

  Zoey laughed gaily. “I didn’t mean that kind of jumper, silly. I meant he’s rumored to be the next ADA to jump from the prosecutor’s bench across the aisle into a big, lucrative defense firm.”

  “Like WMP,” Dani said heavily.

  “Exactly. ADAs do it all the time. They start their careers as prosecutors, learn all the inside tricks and then go make the big bucks defending guilty bastards from the prosecutors. You know, like we do around here.”

  Dani nearly inhaled her olive and slapped a hand over her mouth to keep from guffawing aloud. She finally managed to gasp, “Sacrilege.”

  “I’m just a sixty-hour-a-week wage slave. What’re W, M and P going to do to me? I’m way below their exalted notice.”

  Dani was beginning to think that might not be such a bad thing. “Let me guess. Townsend’s invited to this private party because WMP is putting on a full-court press to recruit him.”

  “That would be correct, grasshopper,” Zoey intoned solemnly. And then she giggled and tossed back her martini in a single gulp.

  Dani did the same, and then succumbed to a full body shudder. God, that tasted like Drano. She grimaced as Zoey snagged two more martinis off a tray a waiter was carrying past and shoved one into her hand. She gazed across the crowd of suits in search of her bosses from on high and muttered, “I suppose I should go make nice with the partners. Any advice, oh lowly wage slave?”

  “Grovel at their feet and flash cleavage when their wives aren’t looking.”

  Dani’s head whipped around to stare at the paralegal. “You’re telling me to use sex to advance my career?”

  “Hell, yes. This is the real world, Dani. I’ve been meaning to tell you to invest in some naughty lingerie. Neon colored stuff t
hat’ll show through your white blouses and leave thong lines through your skirts.”

  Dani’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding. Tell me you’re kidding.”

  “Serious as a heart attack, baby. Why do you think you got hired? Affirmative action and scenery for the clients.”

  Stunned, Dani moved away from Zoey, who had no reason to be anything other than totally honest with her. She’d been top of her class at an admittedly small law school upstate. But she thought she’d rocked her interviews here and they’d been impressed with her law review articles. She’d thought actual brains and talent had landed her this job, not tits and ass. Silly her.

  She felt like someone had just buried a fist in her belly. Hollow. Deflated. Dammit. She’d worked freaking hard to be taken seriously—

  “Fancy seeing you here.”

  She closed her eyes briefly in mortification. Painted on a bright smile. Turned around. “Counselor. So glad you could come today.”

  Cameron Townsend smiled ironically. “No, you’re not.”

  “No. I’m not,” she agreed. “What brings you to Whitney, Marcos & Pinter?”

  “Surveilling the enemy.”

  “Liar.”

  He jolted. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Do people frequently let you get away with flippant crap like that?” she asked pleasantly.

  He blinked once. Twice. “Yes. They do.”

  “Because they’re blinded by your sun-bleached hair and brilliant smile?”

  He flashed said brilliant smile at her and took a step closer to murmur, “Noticed my hotness, did you?”

  She rolled her eyes and barely managed not to stick her finger down her throat. “Seriously. Why are you here?”

  “Worried I’m here to tattle on you for being an idiot and turning down the best plea deal you’re likely to see out of my office for a long damned time? By the way, the DA is right tweaked that you turned me down.”

  “If you want to discuss my client’s case, you can do so with me when we enter our plea with the judge.”

  If anything, he got taller as his spine went ramrod stiff. “Mark my words. This is not going to go well for you, Dani.”