One Night With You

Gwynne Forster

Everybody's guilty of something…And Judge Kendra Rutherford is guilty of letting handsome architect Reid Maguire become a tempting distraction, and allowing his legal battle to become entirely too heated and personal. But after losing his reputation in a bitter courtroom fight with his ex-wife, Reid is determined to clear his name and rebuild his career. Now only the sexy judge presiding over the trial can give him back everything he lost. But she's making it hard for him to keep his priorities straight, especially when their passion and rival ambitions collide, and they're both guilty of losing their hearts…

One Night With You

Gwynne Forster

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Acknowledgments

My sincere thanks to my editor, Mavis Allen, who makes it a pleasure to write; to Carole Joy Smith, who has known me longer than most people have and whose friendship and never-ceasing encouragement are among the true treasures of my life; and to my beloved husband, my solid rock every day of our marriage.

Chapter 1

“I’m fed up. I deserve a life, and I’m going to have one,” Kendra Rutherford said aloud minutes after she awoke that cold December morning. So resolute was she that, without waiting to brush her teeth, she wrote a letter to the Chowan County, North Carolina, court clerk.

Dear Sir,

For the last five years, I have gone once monthly to every hamlet in Chowan County to judge the cases awaiting trial. I am tired of it. I am bored with it. I want a change, and if you cannot assign me to a single, permanent jurisdiction, expect my resignation.

Yours sincerely,

Kendra Rutherford, JD, Esq.

She addressed, stamped and sealed an envelope, thinking, I can always return to law practice. Arguing some of these petty disputes is less boring than judging them anyway.

“But being a judge is an esteemed position,” her sister, Claudine, said when they spoke later that day.

“Big deal,” Kendra replied. “It’s been so long since I had a date that I wouldn’t know how to act on one. Nobody invites me to go anywhere. It’s been a year since I was in anybody’s home other than mine, excluding yours and our parents’, of course. In the first place, people who know I’m a judge practically genuflect when they see me, and in the second, I don’t stay any one place long enough to make friends with men or women. Half the time, my family has no idea where I am unless I telephone.”

“Good grief, Kendra, I hadn’t thought of it that way. Papa loves saying, ‘My daughter Kendra, the judge.’ He’ll be unhappy if you quit.”

“He’ll be even more unhappy if I go nuts. Fourteen years after getting my law degree, I don’t have a single thing to show for it. As a judge, I’m at the bottom of the pile. Socially, I’m not even in the pile. There’ll be some changes made. And soon.”

“It isn’t like you to do anything rash, Kendra.”

“That’s the worst thing you could have said to me. Hell, Claudine, I don’t even remember being a teenager. Work hard, study hard, please everybody! That’s been my life since I remember it.”

“Yeah? And it paid off, didn’t it?”

“Depends who’s looking at it. Look, sis, I’d better pack,” Kendra said. “I have to try cases in six towns before I get back home. Last time I was on this circuit, I ran out of stockings and underwear, so I have to concentrate on what I’m doing right now. Talk to you soon.”

Reid Maguire propped his left foot on the bottom rung of a ladder that leaned against Philip Dickerson’s stables and looked eye to eye at the owner of the largest agricultural enterprise in southeastern Maryland.

“It’s time I left Dickerson Estates and got on with my life,” Reid told Philip, the man who had saved his life and, in due course, become closer to him than his own brother. “I’ve saved enough to get started, and I have a job. I’ll be an assistant architect in a noted firm, but after what Brown and Worley and that class-a