Holidays at Crescent Cove Read Online Free PDF Page A

furniture. Cozy, friendly, the softer side of the rational lawyer.
    And feeling singularly solitary at the moment.
    Grace went over to the window and looked out. Jake’s truck was just pulling out of a parking place directly below her apartment. So close, she could open the window, jump and land in the bed, and ask him what he meant by sexy. And probably break a leg or two, not to mention revealing more of her body that she cared for anyone to see.
    â€œGrace Holcombe, you’ve got a self-esteem issue—issues.” She snared a bear claw from the box and went to the kitchen to make another cup of coffee.
    She stopped after the bear claw just to prove she could. Put the rest of the booty in plastic and sat down on the couch to drive Jake McGuire out of her mind. It only took the image of Sonny Cavanaugh killing that pregnant young woman to do it.
    She knew she wasn’t really responsible for his felonies. Even if she hadn’t gotten him off the first robbery charge, he would have made bail, maybe even pulled community service with no jail time at all. First offense—at least the first one he’d been caught at, anyway. His insistence that he’d fallen in with the wrong crowd, saw the error of his ways, yadda yadda. The excuses, the lack of remorse. It made her sick.
    God, she remembered it like it was yesterday. How the hell did a twenty-four-year-old get his hand slapped for getting in with the “wrong “crowd? Other men his age were building a career, starting families, going to war, and he was stealing cars and knocking off convenience stores for the fun of it.
    Even if she’d bungled the case and he had been found guilty, he would have been back in a matter of months. He’d killed—twice. And chances are he would keep killing if someone didn’t nail his butt to the wall.
    How could her father, a man she had wanted to be like her entire childhood, agree to represent a man like Sonny Kavanaugh. Grace had worked her butt off to graduate from law school at the top of her class, not just because she was so zealous about learning everything there was in her fight for justice, but to gain her father’s praise. She’d initially even given up her plan to practice small town law for, just to please him.
    And where had this all led? He’d kicked her out of the firm and banished her from the family. What kind of man was he really?
    And why did she care? It was hard to believe that just this morning she’d been envying Jake and Margaux for their families; even Bri, who was making her own.
    It was better not to have family if this was what they demanded. Her father obviously didn’t care. Her mother was unhappy about the breach. She’d spent the first two years trying to reconcile them and finally just gave up. Grace suspected that her parents pretty much led separate lives. But hadn’t they always? Even before she blew the family apart?
    Her father was stubborn and so was she. He took her abdication personally, but she was the one who had paid. But it was worth it. At least she had her integrity, though integrity didn’t go far toward paying the rent. He was the one who took money to fast-talk a jury into letting the scumbag go instead of sending him to jail where he belonged.
    She knew all of his excuses. “Everyone deserves a fair trial, everyone is innocent until proven guilty, it’s an imperfect system, but a just system.” Was it? When some poor kid, barely repped by a court-appointed public defender, was sent away for lesser offenses, while Sonny-boy hired the most persuasive lawyers with the most clout in town and walked. That was just?
    When had her father sold out to the double standard, loophole riddled LAW and left justice behind?
    She clicked on the television and wandered over to her DVD collection, looking for something to watch, to bring back her fire for the bar, her belief in the law, a movie where the bad guy gets what he