Attractive Nuisance (Legally in Love Book 1) Read Free

churches started to sing in her head, a low note that then soared to the heights of the audible range, with one soloist strumming the heavens with her vibrato.
    Hello, gorgeous. There, standing alone at the back wall, leaning against it with his arms folded and one leg crossed over the other, stood the best thing Camilla had seen since she walked through the mall and saw those posters hanging in the window of the menswear store. Sharp suit, broad shoulders, dark hair in one of those cuts that slicks up and over in the front when a guy cares about how he looks. Not that he looked like he tried too hard. He looked like he wore his fabulousness with casual grace. Man, was she sweating? A warm glisten rose to her forehead and neck.
    “Miss Sweeten? You were saying?”
    “Huh?” Holy crap. She was still in court. And making her closing arguments—before Judge Harper. Her throat filled with cotton and her legs turned to lead. Nothing but butterflies zoomed in her head—refugees from her stomach a minute ago when she saw that dreamboat at the back of the room. Her eyes strayed there again, big mistake, and he had a jaunty grin pulling at one side of his face.
    He was laughing at her!
    The temperature of her face and neck rose about fifteen degrees, and now her skin there probably matched the burgundy of her business suit. Geez. All her clothes shrank in an instant. Everything went too tight and itchy on her shoulders, around her collar and stomach. She had to get out of here.
    Suddenly, Sheldon was at her side. “Your honor, my colleague was saying—” He rested his hand on her shoulder, grabbed her eyes with his own and turned her back around to face Judge Harper. Camilla’s eyes met the judge’s. The bear could pounce at any moment and tear her limb from limb—but instead, laughter danced in his eyes. Oh, now he was a circus bear. And Camilla was the clown.
    “Uh, yeah. Like, totally. I think I’ve made my case.” Like, totally? What? Did she just fly in from California in the 1980s in a time machine airplane? Guh! She stumbled to her chair and grabbed the water bottle on the table. She should splash this thing in her own face, wake herself up. But her blouse was white. The last thing she needed was to augment her disgrace with a wet t-shirt contest.
    “Thank you. And the defense?”
    The attorney for Mr. Tipton shot Camilla a sorry glance. Great. She’d rather have his ridicule than his pity. If she could slide down in her chair and disappear right now under the table—why didn’t they make trap doors beneath these things? Surely she wasn’t the first prosecutor to wish for one.
    That was it. She could go into courthouse renovation construction—in her next career, after she lost this job.
    “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.” Judge Harper rose, and the courtroom followed suit.
    The bailiff hollered, “The judge will take a recess and return with the verdict.”
    Camilla exhaled heavily. Sheldon leaned in close.
    “What the junk just happened to you?” He wrenched his head around and peered at the back of the courtroom. “It was like an invisible alien ship swooped in, attacked and left you lobotomized. Oh, I see.” He held out the ee on see, nodding knowingly. “So, it seems Camilla Sweeten can be charmed by a man after all. Ha! I wonder who he is. You should bring him to dinner to meet Lydia when you come on Sunday. Lydia will cross examine him, get the goods.”
    “Shut up, Sheldon. I am dying here. Did you see how fast I went into the death spiral? Now old Tilton is going to get off, free to attack someone with his granddaddy’s blow gun or samurai sword or something.”
    “You mean Tipton?”
    “Oh. Right. Whatever. I am so dead.” With her already being on Falcon’s bad side and the staffing changes in the wind, Camilla might have just signed her own career death warrant. She’d be staying home, rereading her worn copy of The Compleat Angler for the next five years and tying fishing flies