Part 2

Nicki didn’t feel like a party. In her fantasy, she wasn’t all glossed up in a strapless red dress with plastic stays digging into her sides. She wasn’t wearing pinching six inch heels. She wasn’t smiling until she thought of her face would split in two.
In her fantasy she was devouring a mystery novel and chocolate chip cookies while she soaked  in a hot bubble path to ease the bruises that still ached a bit three days after her nasty adventure in the East End alley.
Unfortunately, her imagination wasn’t quite good enough to keep her feet from hurting. There was plenty of glitz and glamour, lots of cheek bussing and glad handing. It was, after all, a party thrown by Arlo Stuart, hotel magnate, as a campaign party for Tucker Fields, Urbana’s mayor. Tonight she was attending the party for two reasons. The first was that she was friends with the mayor’s assistant Jerry Bower. The second was that her boss had used the right combination of pressure and diplomacy to push her through the gilded swinging doors of the Stuart Palace.
“ god you look amazing,” Jerry Bower stopped beside Nicki to press a quick kiss to her cheek. “ sorry I haven’t had time to talk. There was a lot of meeting and greeting to do.”
“ things are always busy for the big boss’s right arm.” she smiled toasting him. “ quite a party.”
“stuart pulled out all the stops.” with a politician’s eye, he scanned the crowd. The mix of the rich, famous and influenced pleased him. There were of course other aspects to the campaign.
“I’m properly dazzled,” Nicki assured him.
“ ah, but its your vote we want.”
“you might get it.”
“ how are you feeling?” taking the opportunity in hand, he began to fill a plate with appetizers.
“ fine,” she glanced at the fading bruise on her forearm.
“really?”
She smiled again. “ really. Its an experience I don’t want to repeat, but it did bring it home, straight home to me that we’ve got a lot more work to do before Urbana’s streets are safe.”
“you shouldn’t have been out there.” he mumbled.
“ why? Why should there be any place, any place at all in the city where a person isn’t safe to walk? Are we supposed to just accept the fact that there are portions of Urbana that are off limits to nice people? If we’re..”
“ hold it, hold it.” he held up a surrendering hand.
“ the only person someone in politics cant comfortably outtalk is a lawyer. I agree with you okay?” he snagged a glass of wine from a passing waiter.
“ I was stating a fact. It doesn’t make it right. It just makes it true.”
“it shouldn’t be true.” her eyes darkened in both annoyance and frustration
She relaxed and laughed up at him. “ all right enough shoptalk. Tell me who’s here that I should know and don’t.”
Jerry entertained her. He always did. She hooked her arm easily through his. It was a matter of chance that she turned her head and in that sea of people, focused on one single face.
He was standing in a group of five, with two beautiful women hanging on his arms. Attractive. Hell yes, she thought. She stood there taking in all his features almost in a dazed state. He wore his tux as if he was born in one. Easily casually. His smile widened with something one the women on his arm said. Then, without turning his head, he merely shifted his gaze and locked on Nicki.
“…. and she brought the monster a wide screen tv.”
“ what?” she blinked, and though she realized it was crazy, she had felt like she had broken out of a spell.
“what?”
“ I was telling you about Mrs. Forth Wright’s poodles.”
“ jerry who Is that? Over there. With the red head on one side and the blonde on the other?”
Glancing over, Jerry grimaced, then shrugged. “ I’m surprised he doesn’t have a brunette sitting on his shoulders. Women tend to stick to him as though he was wearing fly paper instead of a tux.”
She didn’t need to be told what she could see with her own eyes. “ who’s he?”
“Graham, Drake Graham”
Her eyes narrowed a bit, her mouth pursed. “ why does that sound familiar?”
“ its splashed literally through the society section of world almost every day?”
“ I don’t read the society section.” well aware it was rude. Nicki stared stubbornly at the man across the room. “ I know him,” she murmured. “ I just cant place where.”
“ you’ve probably heard his story. He was a cop.”
“ a cop.” Nicki’s brow lifted in surprise. He looked much too comfortable, much too part of the rich and privileged surroundings to be a cop.
“ a good one, apparently right in Urbana. A few years ago, he and his partner ran into trouble. Big trouble. The partner was killed, and Graham was left for dead.”
Her memory jogged then homed in. “ I remember now. I followed his story. My god he was in a coma for….”
“nine or ten months,” Jerry supplied. “ he was on life support and they had just about given up, when he opened his eyes and came back. He couldn’t do the street life anymore, and turned down a job offer with UPD. He’d come into a plump inheritance while he was in the twilight zone, so I guess he took the money and ran.”
It couldn’t have been enough she thought. No amount to money could have been enough. “ it must have been horrible. He lost nearly a year of his life.”
“ he’s made it up for lost time. Apparently women find him irresistible. of course that might be because he turned a three million dollar inheritance into thirty billion and counting.” Jerry watched as Drake  smoothly disentangled himself from the group and started in their direction. “ well well, he said softly looks like the interest is mutual.”

Drake had been aware of her since the moment she’d stepped into the ball room. He’d watched, patient, as she mingled then separated herself. He’d seen her smile at Jerry, observed the other man kiss her and brush a casually intimate hand over her shoulder.
He’d find out just what the relationship was there.
Though it didn’t matter. couldn’t matter, he corrected. Drake had no time for women with intelligent eyes. But he moved steadily toward her.
“Jerry,” Drake smiled. “ its good to see you again.”
“ always a pleasure. Mr. Graham. You’re enjoying yourself?”
“of course.” his gaze flicked from Jerry to Nicki.
“hello.”
For some ridiculous reason, her throat snapped shut.
“Nicki, I’d like to introduce you to Drake Graham, Mr. Graham, Assistant District Attorney Nicki Maraj.”
“ an A.D.A.” Drake’s smile spread charmingly. “ its comforting to know that justice is in such lovely hands.”
“competent.” she said. “I prefer competent.”
“of course,” though she hadn’t offered it, he took her hand and held it for a few brief  seconds
“ will you excuse me a minute?” Jerry laid a hand on Nicki’s shoulder again. “ the mayor’s signaling.”
“ sure.” she summoned up a smile for him, though she was ashamed to admit she’d forgotten he was beside her.
“ you havent been in Urbana long.” Drake commented.
Despite her uneasiness, Nicki met his eyes straight on. “ about a year and a half. Why?”
“because I’d have known.”
“really? Do you keep tabs on all the A.D.A’s?”
“no.” he brushed his finger over her earring. “ just the beautiful ones.” the instant suspicions in her eyes delighted him. “ would you like to dance?”
“ no.” she let out a long, quiet breath. “ no thanks, I really cant stay any longer. I’ve got work to do.”
He glanced at his watch. “ its already past ten.”
“ the law doesn’t have a time clock, Mr. Graham.”
“Drake. I’ll give you a lift.”
“no.” a quick unreasonable panic surged to her throat. “ no, that’s not necessary.”
“ if its not necessary, then it must be for pleasure.”
He was smooth she thought, entirely too smooth for a man who just shrugged off a blonde and a brunette.
“ I wouldn’t want to take you away from the party.”
“I never stay late at parties.”
“Drake.” the redhead, her mouth pouty and moist swayed up to drag on his arm. “ honey you haven’t dance with me yet. Not once.”
Nicki took the opportunity to make a beeline for the exit. It was stupid she admitted, but her system had gone haywire at the thought of being alone in a car with him.
She stepped out into the steamy summer night.
“ hail you a cab miss?” the doorman asked her.
“ no.” Drake cupped a firm hand under her elbow. “ thank you.”
“ Mr. Graham,” she began.
“Drake. My car is just here, Miss Maraj.” he gestured to a long sleek limo in gleaming black.
“its lovely,” she said between her teeth, “ but a cab will suit my needs perfectly.”
“ but not mine.” he nodded at a tall, bulky man who slipped out the driver’s seat to open the rear door.
“ the streets are dangerous at night. I’d simply like to know you’re gotten where you want to go, safely.”
She stepped back and took a long careful study, as she might a mug shot of a suspect. He didn’t seem as dangerous now, with that half smile hovering at his mouth. In fact, she thought he looked just a little sad. Just a little lonely.
She turned toward the limo. Not wanting to soften to much, she shot a look over her shoulders. “ has anyone ever told you you’re pushy, Mr. Graham?”
“often, Miss Maraj.”
He settled beside her and offered a single long stemmed red rose.
“you came prepared,” she murmured. Had the blossom been waiting for the blonde, she wondered, or the redhead?
“ I try, where would you like to go?”
“ the justice building. Its on sixth and…”
“ I know where it is,” Drake pressed a button and the glass that separated them from the driver slid open noiselessly. “ the justice building Frank.”
“ yes sir,” the glass closed again.
“ we used to work on the same side,” Nicki commented.
“which side is that?”
“law.”
He turned to her, his eyes dark, almost hypnotic. It made her wonder what he had seen when he had drifted all those months in that strange world of half life. Or half death.
“ you’re a defender of the law?”
“ I like to think so.”
“ yet you wouldn’t be adverse to making deals and kicking back charges.”
“ the system is overburdened.” she said defensively.
“oh yes, the system.” with a faint movement of his shoulders, he seemed to dismiss it all. “ where are you from?”
“Denver.”
“ no, you didn’t get cypress trees and magnolia blossoms in your voice from Denver.”
“I was born in Georgia, but my sister and I moved around quite a bit. Denver was where I lived before I came to east Urbana.”
Her sister, he noted. Not her parents, not her family, just her sister. He didn’t press. Not yet. “ why did you come here?”
“because it was a challenge. I wanted to put all those years I studied to good use. I like to think I can make a difference.” she thought of the mendez case and the four gang members. “ I have to make a difference.”
“ you’re an idealist.”
“maybe. What’s wrong with that?”
“idealist are often tragically disappointed.” he was silent a moment, studying her. She was beautiful in both light and shadow. More than beauty, there was a kind of power in her eyes.
“I’d like to see you in court,” he said.
She smiled and added yet one more element to the power and beauty. Ambition. It was great combination.
“I’m a killer.”
“ I bet you are.”
 He wanted to touch her, just the skim of a fingertip on those lovely shoulders. It was with both relief and frustration that he felt the limo glide to the curb and stop.
Nicki turned to look blankly out the window at the old towering building.
“that was quick.” she murmured, baffled by her own disappointment.
“thanks for the lift.” when the driver opened her door. She swung her legs out.
“I’ll see you again.”
For the second time, she looked at him over her shoulder. “maybe. Goodnight.”
He sat for a moment against the seat, haunted by the scent she had left behind.
“home?” the driver asked.
“ no.” Drake took a long, steadying breath. “ stay take her home when she’s finished. I need to walk.”