Matter of Trust Read Free Page A

run-yourself-stupid-so-you-didn’t-freeze-to-death tackle-fest which also gave the gang of old law school buddies a chance to catch up after Christmas and the busy New Year break.
    And it had been busy. In the past five months, David had become a first-time father to the most beautiful little girl in the world, and husband to his aqua-eyed partner, fellow criminal defence attorney Sara Davis. The first event assuring that he would not sleep more than three hours a night at least until the spring, and the second giving him the courage to get through it.
    Lauren’s birth had given David a new perspective on life – one that was full of promise. It had made him realise just what a huge responsibility being a parent was; a responsibility he’d taken on gladly, making a commitment to himself that his tendency to sometimes neglect those closest to him, to live solely for a case, would now be a thing of the past. He would never forget how he had put his life – and, as a consequence, Sara’s and that of his unborn child’s – at risk while trying the Logan case last year. And he had no intention of doing anything like that again, even if it meant knocking back cases he felt compelled to take on.
    Moments later, Northeastern won the line-out and made the most of their advantage by driving the ball a further ten yards toward their line. Then David got lucky when the Northeastern half-back allowed the ball to slip through his fingers, giving him the opportunity to scoop up the icy piece of pig skin and run it hard back toward the halfway line. After breaking the tackle of a broad-shouldered full-back, and beating the cross-defence from a red-faced prop whose large wet hands luckily lost their grip on his ankles, David weaved around the last of the Northeastern defenders to score in the far-right corner – his fellow team mate Jay Negley topping off his victory by converting his try and securing the BC team a solid seven-point lead.
    Soon after, the ref blew the whistle for half-time and David and his buddies left the field for a much-needed drink before returning for another forty minutes of self-inflicted torture.
    â€˜David, your face!’ said Sara as soon as he reached them.
    David smiled to see the roses in her mocha-coloured cheeks and the equally crimson face of his blonde-haired, green-eyed, five-month-old daughter who looked like an Eskimo wrapped in her pale pink snow gear. ‘I’m fine,’ he told Sara. ‘Tony here says the cold will freeze it in place until I can get stitches.’
    â€˜That’s a lie,’ said Bishop reaching down to take a bottle of water from the cardboard box at their feet. ‘Your husband said he wanted the wound to look as gruesome as possible so that he could impress you by refusing anaesthetic before the stitches.’
    â€˜David thinks I’m impressed by stupidity?’ asked Sara.
    â€˜Well, you married him, didn’t you?’ Tony replied.
    They all laughed.
    Despite the cold and the almighty gash in his cheek, David felt that for the first time in his life, he had finally found some form of contentment. He could not remember a time when he had not been subconsciously looking for an elusive ‘something’ – when he did not feel the need to keep moving, learning, to bury himself in work.
    He’d left the family home in Newark immediately after high school, choosing to study law at Boston College rather than go to Rutgers or follow his older brother’s footsteps into their father’s shipping business. He had married his college sweetheart, gotten his heart broken when she left him for somebody else, and basically spent most of the next decade ploughing through case after case with his boss, mentor and friend Arthur Wright and their irreplaceable office assistant Nora Kelly.
    In fact, it was not until he’d met Sara, almost four years ago, that he’d discovered there was more to life than