Brad focused his eyes and tried again. He'd all but lost his patience with 'Galloway vs. Rhode Island'. It was no use. Every technique he'd been taught was bailing tonight. He even reminded himself of what his undergrad tutor had told him time and time again--'Dyslexia is a sequencing problem. You need to learn to replicate what you see.'

Screw sequencing and replication. The damned 'B's' looked like 'D's' and it was pissing him off.

Brad flicked off the computer and sighed. It had been eight torturous days since he'd talked to her. Eight torturous days since he'd touched her. He'd never longed for anyone in his entire life and he wasn't happy about longing for his boss.

Hope was stubborn and irrational--most of the time she wasn't even very nice. But she'd burrowed somehow, down deep into the very pit of him and he couldn't figure out how to pry her loose.

More than anything else, that was what he wanted. He wanted the memory, the scent, the allure of Hope Milton to be gone. He'd done so much thinking over the last few days, his brain felt like the old sponge his mother always left by the sink--dripping, holey, mangled. If Legal Ethics was a thorn in his side, Hope was a goddamned spear and she was jabbed somewhere above his third rib and his heart.

Brad hurled his legs onto the desk. He wasn't an unreasonable guy and he wasn't someone who didn't recognize his limitations. Hope wasn't going to give in. She knew what she wanted out of life and even though he hated what she wanted, he respected her for it. She wasn't coming back. She wasn't going to crawl to him and beg forgiveness and tell him he was right, that she loved him too and would love to get started any minute now on one of those children he wanted so badly.

No, Hope was too smooth, too polished, too general-mangerish for that. She was gone and his heart had taken the royal beating of his life. It's not like he hadn't been aware of it from the start--he knew damn well that he'd felt too much even then. He also knew that though Hope enjoyed his body, she wasn't going to surrender her soul. And true to form, she hadn't.

Brad stretched and pushed the chair back, trying hard not to think of Hope sitting at it, dripping all over the cold bare metal--no, he wouldn't go there. He wouldn't remember her body again tonight.

He knew what he should do--what any sane guy would do--but could he? Could he touch someone that wasn't Hope ever again?

"Shit," Brad said and hoisted up from his chair. He'd be damned if she'd take everything from him. He had every intention of going back to Wisconsin. He'd establish himself as a damn good attorney and then he'd find a wife. He'd thought a lot about possible chicks to fill the position. The most likely candidate was the younger sister of his brother Dean's wife. Rachel, at only twenty-two, was a hot little package--blonde and built--and she'd been pining over him for years. Last he knew she was still a virgin--she'd told her sister, Mary, who'd told his brother who'd passed the ever so important information on to Brad.

A hot little virgin who worshipped his ass.

She'd give him kids--as many as he wanted--and she'd be the perfect arm-candy of a wife. And marrying his brother's sister-in-law would be a nifty little story to tell his clients, colleagues, grandchildren.

Standing here in the rundown apartment on 'Legal Row', Brad felt calmer somehow with the decision made--Rachel would be the one. Brad swiped up his almost empty beer and swigged.

Now he could concentrate on classes, on the looming bar exam, on the rest of his life. He felt like the damn Bachelor on that TV show. He'd chosen--whether for the right reasons or the wrong--it didn't matter. It couldn't matter because his first choice--the logical choice--had no desire to be Mrs. Bradley Simon. He could fool himself and pretend that he could fuck some sense into Hope, make her see it his way, but he couldn't. She'd never see it his way.

So Rachel would be his bride and Hope would always own his heart, but neither knowledge stopped him from pulling Kendall Bannister's number out of his wallet.

Brad picked her up from a duplex east of town and they met up with his Corporate Law buddies at a dive near the turnpike.

Kendall plastered her form-fitting jumpsuit against Brad's leather jacket. It was annoying the way that her hands trailed his chest. "This is Tommy and Michelle, Raymond and Marla," Brad said. He caught Marla's glare. She'd made it obvious that she too was available since the day he'd met her his second time through Criminal Law 101 two years before. "And this is Kendall." Brad hitched his booted foot around a rickety chair and pulled it out. He'd intended it for Kendall, but she pushed him down and fell into his lap instead.

Green Day sang out from tinny speakers. Brad was treated to a lungful of smoke from the table behind him. "What do you want?" he asked his date who'd taken to twirling the ends of his hair around her pointer finger.

"A Stinger."

Brad turned to the waitress who'd obviously worked too long of a shift. "A Stinger and a Coors."

"So what do you do?" Raymond asked. His doughy face was flushed from his one-hour jumpstart.

"I'm a sales representative for a cosmetology firm." Kendall wrapped her arms around Brad's neck.

"Sales rep." Raymond nodded and Marla looked humiliated to be usurped by a cosmetology sales representative.

"I handle most of the salons in the county." Kendall reached for her drink that the waitress had returned with. How fucked up was this? Kendall wanted him, Marla always had. Rachel from back home would be his wife.

Problem was, he wanted someone else entirely.

Back in the pre-Hope days, Brad would've bedded either Kendall or Marla by now--probably both. Kendall had snuck in a few French kisses on the drive from her apartment, but Brad wasn't even hard. Had Hope ruined him for life?

It couldn't be. He just needed recovery time.

"So you're all law students?" Kendall asked.

"Yup, third year." Tommy raised his frothy beer mug and turned to catch the kiss that a slightly tipsy Michelle planted on him. They'd gotten married the summer after their first year. Brad didn't even attempt to explain to Kendall that he was older than all of them and been at Usher law for four years.

But watching Tommy and Michelle made Brad feel young and naïve. That kind of love seemed impossible to achieve. Would he feel it for Rachel someday? Would he miss it if it never happened again?

Michelle's blonde hair fell over Tommy's shoulder and Brad looked away when Tommy's finger gave his wife's nipple a tiny flick. Kendall must've noticed. She shifted closer to Brad. "Wanna dance?" she purred.

Brad felt her tongue trace his ear. "Maybe later."

Kendall reached for a peanut still in its shell, cracked and then crunched. "I think now is the time." She took his hand and pulled him onto the floor.

Brad glanced around at the throngs of dancers gyrating to the New Jersey beat of Bon Jovi. Kendall had something else in mind. The dance floor flashed with cheap colored lights under Plexiglas--three blocks were burned out.

"I'm so glad you called me." She pushed her shapely, leather-covered form against him. Her long nails scraped the nape of his neck.

Brad wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her in. This had to work. This had to be the formula to eradicate Hope from his mind and more importantly, his heart.

Kendall's hands journeyed up to the waves of his hair. "Come outside with me for a minute. I'm sooo hot," she purred.

Whoa. Could there be a more loaded line in the history of loaded lines? Brad glanced around and saw Raymond snicker and take a sip of his drink.

Now or never.

Brad snatched and untangled Kendall's hand from his hair and pulled her toward the door. The sharp early April air bit the second they made it outside, but in seconds Kendall's sleazy body was crushing his to the stucco wall of the building. It was close to eleven and most everyone had arrived for the night. The parking lot was quiet and would be for at least an hour until the drunken clientele attempted to make their way home.

"You are so beautiful," Kendall whispered and nipped Brad's ear. Her tongue was fast--seconds later it was buried in his mouth. Brad's eyes flashed open. How long would it take her to discover that his tonsils had been gone since he was ten? He stroked her back and tried to focus.

Her hands were busy. They'd wormed under his leather jacket and v-neck sweater. She spat a curse when she realized that he wore a tee shirt beneath it. Obviously not a patient chick, Kendall scratched his nipple right through the fabric. She was attacking him, violating him, forcing herself where he hadn't invited her to go.

She was doing exactly what he'd done to Hope--and more than once.

"Mama likes," Kendall murmured.

Mama likes? What the fuck?

Then inquisitive hand journeyed south. In seconds she had his jacket thrown open and his Levis unfastened. The only tell-tale signs that it wasn't a horrid, erotic dream was the snap of forty degree air and the sound of his hesitant zipper.

Because Brad was a guy and his brain was located precisely between his legs, he felt the pulsing hardness in his boxers--but it wasn't a burning need. It wasn't a driving force to touch and probe and be touched and probed. It wasn't an inherent desire to connect.

It was just down and dirty horniness.

He saw the awareness in Kendall's eyes framed with thick blue powdered shadow as soon as she made contact with his flesh. She tugged to free him. Just to be sure, she glanced down. "Uncut cock. Yummy!"

Then she was on her knees in her leather jumpsuit, sucking and slurping and going to town. Brad detected the teasing sharp flicks of a tongue-ring.

He rolled his head against the prickly wall and did his damnedest to concentrate on the sleaziest blowjob he'd been the recipient of in years. Kendall was obviously practiced in the art and it was evident that she'd experienced uncircumcised cocks before. She knew exactly where the buttons were.

While the awareness should've pleased him, all Brad could think about was Hope--so tentative, so intrigued--as she took him in for the first time. Why had he enjoyed that so much more? Why had her hesitation and ultimately her novice skill, pleased him leaps and bounds beyond this cool and precise sucking?

Brad flinched when Kendall incorporated her teeth. She giggled from behind a mouth filled with cock and deep- throated him with that sublime twisting move.

And he wanted it over.

He reached down and squeezed his balls until he exploded and shot a steamy load clear down her throat. She drank and drank and drank and he watched her neck as it contracted with each swallow.

Brad tried to steady his heart and fight the emptiness that seemed to envelope him. Kendall disengaged her mouth, then moved to give the eye of his cock a little lick, fitting the tongue-ring into the hole, digging out every last drop of cum. "I've never drank so much before," she said when she stood up and rubbed her chest against his.

"Thanks," Brad muttered as he tucked himself away. He zipped, adjusted his jacket and reached for Kendall's hand.

When he attempted to tug her back toward the door, she wriggled away. "Wait!" she squealed. "I didn't get off."

Brad glanced at a couple who'd exited the bar, hands groping, tongues lapping. That guy would be in before they even started the car they were heading for.

Brad looked back at Kendall--the ultimate, mindless fuck. Her tits were beckoning. They'd be full and ripe-- probably adorned with deep brown nipples.

She must've caught him glancing at her ample chest. She reached up and massaged her tits through the stiff leather. "I need to come."

Brad found himself following her toward his beat-up Nissan. She slid inside and blew on her hands while he climbed in. A puff of smoky air surrounded her and he could smell his juice on her breath. The second he'd pulled the door shut, she was on him--kissing him, jabbing her tongue down his throat.

Brad twisted his neck to stop her, but she just continued the assault on his jaw and Adam's apple. "You wanna suck my titties?" she whispered.

He could feel the weight of them against his own chest. Better to expedite things. "Sure."

It took no more than Kendall sitting up and rolling down a flap of leather for her jugs to spill out. By the glow of a streetlight at the entrance of the parking lot, Brad could see brown nipples standing at attention--both with jeweled studs adorning them. He'd never sucked a pierced nipple before. Deciding it would be quicker to hit her with a double shot, he heaved the two tits together and with his tongue swiped both nipples at the same time. "Ooh!" Kendall squealed. "Lick Mama's nipples, Bad Boy. Suck Mama's big nipples."

This chick was really unbalanced.

Brad kept up the rhythm, the bite of the rings felt strange and foreign under his tongue. How would she ever nurse a baby? Did she care at all that it would be next to impossible with a sapphire and emerald hanging from her tips?

"Bite them, baby. Bite them! Chew Mama's big titties!"

Not wanting to prolong this a second more, Brad bit down and chewed the tips, taking care to flick them with his tongue at the same time. "Ahh! Ahh! Ahh!" Kendall squealed.

Brad increased the flicks.

"Do you wanna fuck me?" Kendall shouted, loud enough for the couple who'd staggered out to pull from each other in the next car over and look.

No, he didn't really want to go there.

"I don't have any rubbers," Brad muttered with her nipple still between his lips.

Kendall swatted his back. "What? How the hell can you not have any rubbers in this day and age?"

"I'm too big. They're too tight with my foreskin."

She swatted him again. "Oh damn you! Eat me then. Get me off by eating me!"

She was already peeling down her jumpsuit when Brad sat up. He could've wagered a bet that she had a clit-ring and he would've won. She was almost completely shaved clean, save one ribbon of red hair about an inch long. A ruby glistened from the swollen hood of her clit.

Kendall flung one leg onto the dashboard and the other over the seat. "Eat me," she commanded.

Fuck.

Brad looked at her--spread eagle and willing--and he didn't desire her at all. He hadn't been able to get enough of Hope. When he'd intended just to give her teasing licks, he ended up devouring her, drinking her juice like it was an antidote for pain and sorrow. He needed her very essence--mother's milk in the form of pussy cream.

But he'd give Kendall the old college try.

He lowered and gave her ripe cunt a flick of his tongue. She squirmed, he repeated and she hissed, "Yes!"

The clit-ring tasted more metallic than the two in her nipples. Ph of the pussy or some shit he was sure. It felt annoying under his tongue, but she seemed to like it. She bucked and squirmed. "Tongue me! Fuck me with your tongue!"

Brad probed her hole with his finger as he sucked on her clit. "More fingers!" she commanded. "More fingers!"

He slid in another and then another until all but his thumb was buried and still she ground against his hand, begging for more. "What does it take to get you off?" he asked finally--depleted, disgusted, sad.

"Bite my clit, chew my clit!" she hissed as she fucked his fingers.

Brad bit down, the ring clicking against his tooth. He almost smiled at the thought of chipping it and explaining to his parents why the braces they'd pinched and struggled to pay for were of no use since he'd chipped a tooth on a sleazy girl's clit-ring. He chewed and sucked her button while his fingers dove in and out.

"Yes! Yes! Yes!" Kendall mercifully shouted finally as she orgasmed and then fell still. Brad pulled his fingers out and wiped them on the leg of his jeans.

"Bring a rubber next time," Kendall hissed from behind closed eyes.

Next time?

Shit.

The bar was noisy and smoky when Brad and Kendall wandered back in. He wanted to be home, nursing a beer and his heart. He didn't want to be in the rowdy room with air that was stinging his eyes. Kendall had manually flung his arm over her shoulders and was playfully licking his fingers as they moved toward the table where the others waited.

"Pussies."

Brad turned to see a hulk of a guy behind him. The guy lifted a tattered cap from his shaved head, gave it a scratch and then lowered it again. Though Brad stood a respectable six feet, this guy was six three if he was an inch. "Excuse me?"

"I said you're pussies."

Kendall squeezed Brad's bicep. Raymond and Tommy had apparently heard. They pushed from their seats and away from the table.

Brad gave a charming smile. "Do we know you?"

"I heard you say you're law students. Usher Law I'll bet."

Brad took a step in. "That doesn't make you a rocket scientist--it's the only law school in town."

The guy moved closer, the Wild Turkey he'd apparently enjoyed permeated the air. "You're nothing but rich boys who come in here when you wanna be bad."

Brad surveyed the posse who backed the thug--a few snickered, a few wound up and spit. Brad was a trained hunter. He knew when to be cautious and quiet and in turn when to strike. "Why don't you just sit back down and we'll do the same?" he said, calm as he could.

The guy's gapped-toothed grin was menacing. "I don't think so."

Brad tried to clear his mind. His brothers always said that his temper was slow in coming, but nasty when it arrived. Choir-boy looks masked it most of the time, but he could feel it brewing now.

Tommy approached. "Let's just forget this, okay fellas?"

The Hulk's bloodshot eyes turned toward Michelle. Tommy obviously saw and his demeanor wasn't polite anymore. He moved to lunge, but the redneck was quicker. He hurled a wooden chair that came to a crashing halt at Tommy's feet.

Brad prided himself on loyalty. Seconds later he was in the fray--pounding, heaving, hurling. He vaguely heard Kendall and Marla scream and Michelle repeating Tommy's name.

It was hard to tell who was with them and who was against them, but Brad held his own, hoping that he didn't wail on an ally.

What could've been whole minutes later, the saucy smell of cheap brew and new blood was mixed with a blast of night air. Patrol lights whirred and Brad felt himself held, pinned, hauled away.

"Some date!" he heard Kendall call as a cop forced him into a black and white.

Hope's head pounded as she reached over the mountain of tissue, flicked on the bedside lamp and grabbed the phone. "Hello," she grunted.

"Hope?"

"Doris?" Hope sat up and massaged the place above her aching sinuses.

"I'm sorry to bother you, but my son just called me. You know, the 911 operator?"

Hope glanced at the clock. One a.m. "What is it, Doris?"

"He said there was quite a brawl tonight out at Spanky's. Brad was involved, Hope. I thought I should tell you. I didn't want you to read it in the paper tomorrow."

Hope's hand flew to her mouth. Was he hurt? Why did she care more about whether or not he was hurt than about the reputation of Milton's? "Is he all right?" she asked finally.

"I think so, but he and a few others were arrested. They made bail and I think he's headed home."

"Thanks for calling, Doris. I'll talk to you in the morning," Hope said and gently hung up the phone.

Marla's rich, lawyer father bailed them out. Tommy and Raymond agreed to pay the guy back within a month's time. Brad knew that wouldn't be possible for him and he'd be damned if he'd ask his parents, so instead he agreed to work for one month--free of charge--in Krebs' stuffy, boring patent office doing everything from pouring coffee to scheduling lunch. How the hell he'd find the time he didn't know, but at least he'd escaped spending the night in a cell.

Brad toweled off his hair and paused when he heard a knock at the door. "Fuck," he said when he stubbed his toe on a chair leg as he passed. If it was Kendall, it just might be her lucky day. He sure as hell could use a good lay. He pulled the door open without looking.

It wasn't Kendall.

Hope stood on the other side. Brad had never seen her looking so casual--he'd only seen corporate and nude. She wore a short leather jacket, faded jeans and hair pulled into a high, swinging ponytail.

And her nose was red.

"Can I come in?"

Brad stepped back and let her pass. Then he remembered he was only wearing a towel. "Just a second." He trotted to grab a pair of jeans and pulled them on behind his bedroom door. He didn't trust himself to be half-naked and alone in his apartment with the girl who didn't want him. She'd probably seen the first edition of the paper.

"Does your eye hurt?" she asked when he came back.

"A little."

"I heard what happened."

Brad slid onto the arm of the battered recliner. "I don't think it'll be any reflection on Milton's. My law career is a different story. I'm not looking forward to laying this on my parents."

She sneezed--big, mighty, loud.

"Bless you."

Hope reached into her pocket and came out with a well- worn tissue. She blew--big, mighty, loud.

"I have a cold." She sounded awful--muffled, crackly, sick. Brad knelt and touched her forehead with his hand.

"You have a fever."

She caught his gaze with watery eyes as he squatted in front of her. "You were with the girl from shoes," she said in a little voice. "I saw her name on the credit card that day and then I heard the same name on the news on my way over here. You were with her, weren't you?"

Brad stood up and slid his hands into his back pockets. "Are you pissed because you think the store will get bad press or are you pissed because I was with that girl?"

Hope hopped up and in seconds her arms were around his neck. The heat of her sick body radiated, traveling down his chest to his jeans.

"I'm not mad," she whispered and then sneezed again.

She could be so confusing. Brad peeled her arms off. "Then what are you?"

"Can I come home with you?"

He knew he looked dumb as he tilted his head, but he couldn't be getting this right. "We are home, Hope."

She shook her head---three big shakes. "No, to Wisconsin. Can I come to Wisconsin with you?"

Brad's eyes squinted. "You want to come to Wisconsin with me?"

She nodded up and down, but she looked so dizzy. "Uh huh. For Easter." She tried desperately to make use of the soggy tissue one last time. "I saw that you put in for the time. I'd like to go if your family wouldn't mind--if you wouldn't mind. If you still can leave the state after all of this."

"I can. We think the charges are going to be dropped, but what about the store?"

Hope turned away and he stared at her leather-jacketed back. "My assistant manager can handle it with Rose's help."

"What does this mean, Hope?"

She grabbed his face between two burning hands--one still held the saturated tissue. "Does it have to mean anything? Can't it just mean that I want to be with you and since you're going to Wisconsin, I'll have to go there too?"

"My parents would love to have you. It's me they might not want after I tell them that I got busted for assault."

Hope kissed him smooth and sweet. She backed up then and tried to catch her breath that the kiss had robbed her of. "I shouldn't have done that. I don't want you to get sick. You have so much to do."

"Echinacea." Brad scooped her into his arms, walked to his sparse room and laid her on the unmade bed. He took the time to tuck the covers around her chin.

"Are you laying down with me?" She sounded about twelve-years-old.

"I'll sleep on the couch." Brad leaned in and placed a chaste kiss on her forehead. "Feel better," he said and turned out the light.