Conflict of Interest

Chapter Forty Eight

Kim

"Carrie," I giggled like a teenage girl. "Get your phone."

"It's probably just the DA," she dismissed. "I'll call him later."

"Two weeks ago you were afraid to ask him to leave the office an hour early."

"Two weeks ago he hadn't chosen me as his successor. Now I can do no wrong."

"Will you answer it anyway? It could be important."

"It could be Donald Verrilli Jr., and yet, if that phone call can't get your tongue inside me, I don't care."

"Car, what if it's Clapp? Or Carver? What if they're charging the suspect, or they need legal advice?"

"Who cares?" she challenged, looking at me sternly. "I'm off the case. We both are. Now do you want to have sex with me, or don't you?"

Carrie was like a fed up mother of toddlers. I couldn't argue her logic, so I just sat there looking her incredible body up and down for another half-second before deciding that yes, ma'am, I did. Hell, I'd been waiting for this moment. I'd managed to control myself and not take her then and there in the backseat of her car that evening. I'd waited until we'd gotten all the way back to her apartment, even though I'd felt up her right leg the entire way there. The moment the phone stopped ringing, Carrie took it off the receiver and pressed the call button to leave it off the hook. That was how it stayed for the next couple of hours, and that was when I decided that I loved unemployed Carrie. 

When we'd finished, she laid her head back on the headboard, her arms upstretched, this satsified, complacent look on her face, like she knew that she'd been great and was still revelling in her own greatness. Admittedly, I knew that look well, and it wasn't just one she wore in the bedroom. Even though I knew Carrie hated post-coital cuddling - and hell, I did too - I laid my head on her chest because it just felt like the right thing to do. We were both silent for a moment.

"I feel like I need a cigarette," was what Carrie said.

I laughed. "Is that right, Carrie Bradshaw?"

"That's right, Big," she snapped right back. She reached over to hit the hang-up button on her landline, before putting it back in the cradle. The second she did so, it rang. She sighed.

"Caroline Ev--"

"Carrie," I heard a man's voice nearly bellow, given my close proximity to her and the phone. "I've been calling you for hours, your phone's been off the hook."

"I know," she said, sounding quite bored. 

"You know?"

"Yes, I know. I was busy."

If this was Carrie's boss, she had a hell of a nerve. But if the Green Falls District Attorney couldn't comprehend that a phone off the hook was the twenty-first century version of a sock on the door, I was concerned for our justice department. 

"What's this about another break-in?"

"It could be nothing. The police are following it right now."

"I sent Maggie down to the PD. They have someone in custody matching the prints."

"Okay," Carrie said, knowing this already. "Great."

"You don't seem concerned."

"Not my case anymore," she repeated. "Out of my hands."

"Empty nest syndrome?" he figured.

"Little bit."

"The case will be fine. I just thought I should keep you updated."

"I appreciate it."