Last Kiss Goodbye Read Free Page A

Ivy froze, momentarily caught off guard when a special news segment flashed on the screen. Abram Willis, the lawyer who’d been working on Matt Mahoney’s case, appeared in front of a massive stone, columned structure, a flock of reporters on his heels. The courthouse in Nashville.
    A tall man with thinning hair and a tanning-bed-bronzed complexion stopped in front of the lawyer, blocking his exit. “This is Don Rivers reporting to you from C & N News. We have a live interview with Abram Willis, the nationally acclaimed attorney, currently fighting to free falsely accused prisoners.”
    “Ivy—”
    “Shh.” She pushed past George and turned up the volume, her eyes glued to the set, her adrenaline churning. The distinguished attorney paused to address the group, absentmindedly straightening his tie, which matched his streaked gray hair. But it was the man beside him who captured Ivy’s attention.
    Well over six feet tall with jet-black hair, and eyes so dark brown they looked black. His powerful body exuded pure raw masculinity, as well as bitterness and anger. The scar that zigzagged down his left cheek added an air of brutality that bordered on frightening. But something about his darkness drew her, made her wonder if he really was the hard, cold man he appeared on the surface. Pain radiated from his body, and his eyes held such deep sadness that Ivy literally trembled with compassion.
    For a fleeting second, another image passed through the far recesses of her brain, the image of Matt Mahoney as a teenager. He’d been fierce, angry, frightening. But all the teenage girls had wanted him, had whispered about the girls he’d taken in the back of his daddy’s ’75 Chevy.
    Now he looked exhausted, half-dead from defeat. Yet a small spark lit his eyes—relief at his sudden and unexpected freedom.
    “Mr. Willis, is it true that the court overturned the ruling on Mr. Mahoney’s murder conviction?” Rivers asked. “That he spent fifteen years in jail for a crime that evidence now proves he didn’t commit?”
    Willis nodded, puffing up his chest as he straightened his suit jacket, but Matt averted his face as if shying away from the camera. “That’s correct,” the attorney said. “Justice has finally been served. Mr. Mahoney has been cleared of charges and has been pardoned.”
    The reporter shoved a microphone in Matt’s face. “Mr. Mahoney, tell us how it feels to be free.”
    “What are you going to do now?” another reporter shouted.
    A chorus of others followed. “Are you receiving monetary retribution for the past fifteen years?”
    “Are you going home?”
    “If you didn’t kill that family, do you know who did?”
    Ivy pressed her hand to her mouth, waiting for his answer. But Matt scowled at the camera, pushed the microphone away with an angry swipe of his hand and stalked through the crowd without responding.
    “What the hell is it, Ivy?” George said, sliding his hand to her waist. “You act like you’ve seen a ghost.”
    She gestured toward the screen with a shaky hand, the black hole of her past threatening to swallow her. “That’s the man who was convicted of killing my parents.”
    MATT INHALED THE CRISP fall air as he walked away from the courthouse, barely noting that the smells of grass, honeysuckle and clean air that he’d craved were missing, that the city with its concrete buildings and sidewalks had destroyed those things, just as prison had decimated his dignity. Goddamn bloodsucking reporters. He’d half wanted to use them as a tool to vent his case, since they’d sure as hell done a number on him years ago. But he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
    And what could he say?
    That he was bitter. That he hated the system that had failed him. That he despised the citizens who still stared at him as if he was guilty. That he wished he had a nice home to go to. Someone waiting on him. A family. A loving wife or lover. Anyone who cared about him. A future.
    He didn’t.
    In