Courting Death - Carol Stephenson [30]
Late Friday I returned from a witness deposition on another case only to find the staff gathered at my office door. Catching the lead secretary’s eye, I asked, “Maria, what’s going on?”
She grinned. “You have flowers. We were trying to get up the nerve to open the card.”
“Flowers?” No wonder the staff was atwitter. With a year’s abstinence from the dating scene, I myself could only describe the excitement welling up inside me as giddiness. Everyone stepped aside so I could enter the room. My jaw dropped. A lavish bouquet of blood-red roses stood in a vase on my desk.
Only one name floated to the surface—Sam. My fingers trembled as I opened the envelope. But my excitement fled as I read the card. Looking forward to spending time with you. Damian Quint.
I looked up at the expectant faces. “Sorry, ladies. They’re from a friend of a client.” I could almost see the collective drop of shoulders as they turned and went back to their stations. I flopped down in the chair, leaned my elbows on the desk, and braced my chin in my hands.
“Why the glum look?” Kate strolled into the office.
“I got flowers.”
“How perfectly dreadful,” she murmured as she stroked one of the blossoms. “Name the culprit and I’ll beat him up with one of the fronds.”
“They’re from the wrong guy.”
Understanding lit her face as she sank into one of the visitor chairs. “Not from Sam.”
“Nope.” I leaned back and propped my feet on the edge of the desk as I considered the truth of my disappointment.
“Still.” Kate cocked her head to gaze at me. “Someone thought enough of you to send you these. Is he good looking?”
I nodded. “Very. Damian Quint. He’s a friend of the Whitmans. Wants to buy me a drink.”
“That’s a very non-threatening first date. The problem is…”
“All I could think about when he asked was how much background information I could obtain on the Whitmans.”
Kate nodded. “Occupational hazard in the dating world.”
Grinning ear-to-ear, Carling rushed in carrying rolls of bright pink fabric. “I got the T-shirts.”
I blinked. “What T-shirts?”
She dumped two shirts into the remaining chair and unfurled one. Across the fuchsia-colored front, in bold black letters read Dent, Rochelle and Sterling. She flipped it around to the back to show off the tagline: The criminal attorneys who care.
“We’re going to stand out in the crowd tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I stared at the shirt. “Oh, the race.” At some point I had agreed to run with my partners in the West Palm Beach Police Race for Drug-Free Kids. Sam would be there—he was one of the officers who first organized the race several years ago.
“Look, I’m not sure I can—”
Carling held up her palm. “Hold it right there, Sterling. You promised. I know darn well you made arrangements with Sophie to be at your house. You’re not wiggling out of this commitment.”
“Besides.” Kate smoothed an imaginary wrinkle on her still perfectly pressed skirt. “Sam will be there and some little birdie might tell him you received flowers from another man.”
I gave my friends a long, slow smile. “There is that.”
Saturday morning found me with others milling on Flagler Drive by the Intracoastal Waterway. Even as the sun’s morning fingers of pink released their grip on the blue sky, I knew it was going to be a perfect day for running. With fifteen minutes until the race, I ran through my warm-up stretching routine. Kate and her fiancé, the firm’s investigator Gabe Chavez, had gone after bottles of water for our group.
Beside me Carling sat on the ground and grumbled. “I don’t know why I thought this was such a bright idea. I should be in bed sleeping and enjoying my Saturday.”
I grinned down at her. “It’s for a good cause, and one early morning run won’t kill you. You might even like it.” Over the past year running had been my salvation. While I never could outrun my problems, for a blessed period every day I could