Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Layla

2 years earlier

“You’ll need to change your shoes.”

“Shoes?” I looked down at my feet. The red Brian Atwood strappy sandals didn’t exactly go with the look of my conservative lawyer suit. But if I was forced to work here on a Saturday, I needed something to help me feel human. And they certainly weren’t so off that I’d need to change them. I looked back up at the corrections officer. “What’s wrong with my shoes?”

“No open-toe shoes allowed in a federal correctional facility.”

You’ve got to be kidding me.

“No one told me. I drove four hours at five o’clock this morning to get here. It’s my first day of volunteering.”

She smirked. “What’d you do wrong?”

“Wrong?”

“Lawyers who volunteer up here on the weekend are usually not really volunteers.”

“Oh.”

The corrections officer raised a brow—she was waiting for an actual answer.

I sighed. “Two hundred hours of community service for violating attorney-client privilege.”

She whistled. “Two hundred hours. Sanctions dished out here are easier than that.”

“Oh yeah? What happens when someone gets in trouble here?”

“Snitches get stitches.”

Great. Just great.

She handed me back my identification. “So you have an extra pair of shoes or what?”

“I don’t. Is there a store around here where I can grab a pair of pumps or something?”

“Twenty miles up the road is a Walmart.”

I looked at my watch. “I’m supposed to start in thirty minutes.”

“Better get a move on then.”

***

I was inside a prison. Not in the type of visitor room you might see on TV—one where the visitor is on one side of thick safety glass, and the parties need to lift a phone to hear each other—but inside an actual prison where men walked around freely. Unlike the neighboring, higher-security prison, the Otisville minimum-security prison camp where I’d be teaching classes every Saturday for the next few months felt sort of like a college. The perimeter of the facility had no fencing. Inmates didn’t even live in locked cells. Instead, they had dormitory-style housing and lockers. If I hadn’t known it was a prison when I walked in, I wouldn’t have looked twice at the men walking around in leisurely khakis and button-downs. Most could have passed for professors. They seemed to be mostly older men, clean cut, and with an air about them that said their other homes were penthouses.

“How many people does this facility house?” I asked the guard walking me to the library.

“Goes up and down on any given day, but usually a little over a hundred.”

We walked through a door and down a long, windowed corridor. The men outside were smiling and seemed to be enjoying themselves.

“Is that…a bocce court?”

He chuckled. “Yep. Got a baseball field better than my kid’s high school, too. They don’t call these camps Club Fed for nothing.”

The place was way nicer than I’d expected, but the library—the library was pretty damn insane. Two dozen stacks held more books than my local public library had housed growing up. There were large tables with wooden chairs that reminded me of the ones I’d sat at until late at night in law school. A glass wall separated a large classroom with a flat-screen computer monitor at every desk.

“Jeez.” I looked around.

“Not what you expected, I take it.”

“Not at all.”

The guard pointed toward the classroom. “The library will be closed to anyone who isn’t registered to take your classes. So you can use the classroom or the library, whatever you want. I think there are fourteen guys registered in the class that starts today, not including Westbrook. So you’ll have plenty of room.”

“Westbrook?”

“He coordinates all the classes going on right now.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Speak of the devil.” The guard lifted his chin. “Here comes our resident pretty boy now.”

I turned to find a tall, dark-haired man coming toward us. Walking with another man, he kept his head down until he reached the doorway to the library. When he lifted it, the view made my heart do a little two-step dance. “Pretty boy” didn’t do the man justice. He was gorgeous. Ridiculously so. The type of rugged, dark, masculine looks that probably made him completely arrogant and full of himself. My weakness.

Our eyes caught, and a slow, cocky smile spread across his face. It was then that the big guns came out—the most prominent, deepest dimples I’d ever seen.

Yep. He’s definitely full of himself.

Although…maybe this punishment wouldn’t be so bad after all.

The guard made the introduction. “Westbrook, this is Layla Hutton. She’ll be teaching the inmate pro-se appeals class.”

He extended his hand with a nod. “Nice to meet you. Grayson Westbrook. Guards here only call people by their last name. Civilians call me Gray.” His eyes did a quick sweep over me. “I’ll have to stick close by. A lot of these men haven’t seen a woman as beautiful as you in…” He shook his head. “Hell, this might be a first for most.”

The guard chuckled. “Yeah. That’s why you’ll be sticking close by, Westbrook.” He turned to me. “Like I said, this is a minimum-security camp. Our doors aren’t locked, and prisoners are basically on the honor system. No violent offenders in here. They decide to leave, they get brought back eventually, and then they’re not guests at this nice facility anymore. You feel okay if I leave you with Casanova here for a bit while I go grab a bite to eat? We have limited staff and usually leave lawyers and regular contractors on their own if they’re comfortable.” He pointed to cameras on the walls and ceiling. “We’ll always have eyes on you and be a shout away. And the library door will be locked since it’s closed today.”

“Umm…sure.” I was actually pretty nervous, although some of that was alleviated when the gorgeous program coordinator flashed his dimples again.

After the guard disappeared, Gray walked me to the adjoining classroom. “So…you draw the short straw at your firm for pro bono work or get yourself in trouble and this is part of your punishment?”

I guess most attorneys didn’t volunteer to drive to the middle of nowhere and teach convicted criminals how to overturn their appeals out of the goodness of their hearts. “Punishment. Today is the first day of my prison sentence.”

“It could be worse. You could actually be a resident here instead of being forced to work here for a while.”

“True.”

“What did you do that got you into trouble?”

“Don’t you know it’s not polite to ask a woman her age, weight, or why she almost got disbarred?”

He smiled. God, he needed to stop doing that. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

Gray turned on the laptop at the front of the classroom. “This has Wi-Fi, but it’s limited. If you need a site that isn’t accessible, just let me know, and I’ll get you access.”

“Okay. Great.”

“Class doesn’t start for another two hours or so. I’ll hang around next door in the library so you can get yourself set up. If you need anything, just tap on the glass.”

I spent the next half hour making sure I had access to all of the research resources I would review during my first presentation. Then I went over the slides I’d prepared.

Gray had taken a seat in a chair in the library and was reading a book—wearing glasses he hadn’t worn earlier. They must’ve been for reading. Since I had overly prepared to teach the class today (as usual), I had plenty of time to kill. And… I was curious to see what the bespectacled Adonis looked like up close. So I went next door to the library side.

“Quicksand, huh?”

Gray had been engrossed in his book and didn’t hear me come in.

“Is it fiction or non-fiction?” I asked.

He looked up. The thick-rimmed, square glasses he wore really worked for him—worked for me. The sharpness of their shape complemented his angular jaw. He slipped them from his face, and I found myself debating whether I liked him better with or without while he spoke.

“Non-fiction. It’s a memoir written after the author received a lung cancer diagnosis. It’s sort of his look back while he was still here.”

“That sounds depressing.”

“It does. But it’s actually not. It’s funny. He looks back at the shit he took seriously with a whole new perspective at the end. And he realizes some of the most important days he ever had were just ordinary ones spent with the right people.”

I took a seat at the table across from him, and our eyes met. He shut the book. I’d just met the man, knew nothing about him other than he worked at a prison, but I had the strangest feeling that today was one of those important days. It was crazy.

We smiled at each other in silence, our off-the-charts chemistry rising to an incendiary level, until the guard opened the library door.

“Just checking in on you. All good?”

I waved. “Everything is fine. Thank you.”

“I’ll be back later, before your students arrive.”

“Okay.”

Gray hadn’t taken his eyes off of me during the exchange with the guard. He didn’t even pretend to look elsewhere while I settled back into my seat. It made me feel like a teenager being watched by the cute boy next to me in math class—sort of a nervous excitement. But my way of dealing with nerves was always head-on. Even in high school, I’d turn to the boy and smile back until he backed down or made his move. It was no different now.

“You’re staring at me,” I said.

His smile widened. “You’re beautiful. Does it bother you that I’m appreciating that?”

I held his gaze. “No. You’re not so bad yourself. Will it bother you if I stare?”

The gleam in his eyes sparkled a little brighter. “By all means, stare away.”

We spent the next few minutes just looking at each other. It was the oddest interaction I’d ever had with a man I’d just met.

“Tell me something about you, Layla Hutton. Other than your age, weight, or reason for near disbarment, of course.”

“I’m twenty-nine, weigh a hundred and eighteen pounds, and I found out a client was abusing his wife, so I broke confidentiality and reported it to the police.”

He smiled and rubbed his chin. “Sounds like you should have gotten a medal for that last part, not nearly suspended.”

“Yeah, well…that’s how I feel. But the disciplinary committee and the partners at the law firm where I work have a different way of thinking.”

I sighed. It actually felt good to meet someone and get all of that off my chest right away.

“You know what?” I said. “This is the way it should always be. You meet a man. He tells you he thinks you’re attractive. You tell him it’s mutual. Then you air your dirty laundry. If he still looks at you the same way, you continue. If not, you walk away. Life’s too short to waste time.”

“I agree. Tell me, how am I looking at you after you’ve aired your dirty laundry?”

I studied him. He arched a brow when I leaned in closer to get a good look at what he was thinking inside that handsome head of his. What I found gave me goosebumps. The eyes really are the windows to the soul.

I sat back in my chair. “You’re looking at me like you’d like to see me naked.”

Gray threw his head back in laughter. “Very good.”

I lifted my chin. “Your turn. Tell me your dirty laundry.”

His dark eyes shadowed and his expression turned serious. “I’m thirty-one, weigh two hundred and five the last time I checked, and…” He paused and leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table as he looked directly into my eyes. “And I was sent to prison for insider trading that I didn’t commit.”

My smile wilted before the last part even registered in my brain. I was confused. “You’ve been to prison?”

“I’m the program coordinator, Layla. It’s my job. My inmate job.” Gray leaned closer and searched my eyes. “How are you looking at me now?”