"Do you want one?"
I nodded. "I'll need one if you're going to keep me up late tonight," I said, my eyes narrow.
"Count on it, Mrs. Morgan," Drake said with a delicious smile. "I have so many plans for you..."
That made my heart race and my flesh respond.
It would heighten my arousal to have to wait all evening, eating dinner with my father and Elaine and then returning home to an entire night with my handsome and very sensual and lusty husband.
I took in a deep breath and tried to be patient but it was hard.
Chapter 6
DRAKE
As we drove along the highway that bordered the coast on our way to Ethan's, I held Kate's hand.
"How are you, Mrs. Morgan?" I kissed her knuckles. "Excited about tonight?"
"I am," she said and squeezed my hand. "I've been thinking about it all day."
"Me, too," I said, a surge of lust right to my dick at the thought of having Kate all to myself for the night. "We're lucky that Elaine is such a willing grandmother."
"I know," she replied and watched out the window at the passing scenery. The area was beautiful, with tree-lined streets at the edge of the cliff overlooking the bay.
We pulled up in the driveway and I parked the car, going around to Sophie's door to remove her car seat while Kate gathered up her diaper bag. We went into the house and were greeted by a smiling Ethan in his wheelchair. He zoomed around, the joystick in one hand, a bottle of beer in the other. He seemed in really great spirits.
"Come in, come in," he said, waving to the living room. "We're going to sit on the deck and watch the ocean for a while. The ribs are on the barbecue and are cooking low and slow, Cajun style. They've been on all day."
"Sounds fantastic," I said and carried Sophie inside. While I took her out of her car seat, Kate went into the kitchen to speak with Elaine and so Ethan and I went to the deck. They had a playpen set up for Sophie filled with toys, so I put her into it and she was happy to play for a while. I sat on a lawn chair beside Ethan, who handed me a bottle of beer from a cooler.
"So, tell me about Liam," Ethan said, eyeing me from under the brim of his Yankees baseball cap.
"I want to try for joint custody," I said. "I don't want him living with his grandmother instead of me while Maureen is in Indonesia. I don't want him to grow up without at least one parent in the home. No offense meant against Brenda, but I am his father."
Ethan nodded and took a drink of his beer. "Maureen's not happy about that, I take it?"
I shook my head. "She thinks I'll be a bad influence because of the trial and my past."
Ethan didn’t say anything for a moment and I wondered if he felt she had a point.
"I have to tell you that, as a former judge, I might be concerned on first reading of your case that she might be right. I have the benefit of knowing you, and I know the opposite is true. If anyone would be a good – a great – influence on Liam, it would be you. But you're going to have to overcome a judge's natural prejudice against you."
"I understand," I said, trying to see it from a judge's point of view. "I have two strikes against me already. I don't need any more."
Ethan nodded. "The key will be to marshal a whole lot of positive character witnesses for you, people who can counter those black marks. If I were your lawyer, that's what I'd recommend. You have a stellar record at NYP both as a world-class neurosurgeon and as a professor of neurosurgery. You have a history of volunteer work with Doctors Without Borders in Africa. You have a charitable foundation you started in honor of your father that does good works around the world. You're independently wealthy, practicing medicine when you really don't have to work at all. All those things will be weighed against the two black marks. It's more important what you have been doing in the last five years of your life, rather than in the previous ten when you were younger."
I watched the surf, my mind on how a lawyer would represent me in front of a judge. What he or she would say.
"Do you know any good lawyers out here?"
"I'll check around with a few judges I know. They can suggest a few who know how to finesse a case like yours."
"I appreciate it. I hate that I have a case that needs finessing but I guess I do."
"Don't worry about it. You deserve to be Liam's guardian, considering you saved the boy's life. That'll be worth a whole lot in the mind of a judge. At least, it would with me if I had your case in front of me."
We sat silent for a moment and listened to the sound of the ocean washing onto the beach.