The book is based on a South Carolina statute that makes it a felony for an adult to send e-mail to a minor if the e-mail is intended to entice the minor. The story is set in my hometown. Myrtle Beach is a tourist town that swells to big city size during the summer. Despite the seasonal influx, Myrtle Beach is small town South Carolina, southern and rebellious to the core. It's easy to overlook the area's traditional values until they smack you where it hurts, which is just what happens to the hero of E-mail.
I practice law in South Carolina. A couple of years ago I was at a CLE (Continuing Legal Education) Seminar. A brilliant colleague was presenting on a little-known statute from the Palmetto State that makes it a felony to entice a minor to commit a sexual act by e-mail, but if the minor is 17 or over, consent is a defense. Mind you, all you have to do to commit the felony is press send. The communication is the crime!
The story starts in the middle of a Family Court divorce hearing and follows the ensuing felony trial from opening statements to closing arguments. If you enjoy legal suspense you should give E-mail Enticement a read to see how passionate the law can be when it intersects with love.
He sat behind the defense table, staring at the girl being sworn as a witness in his divorce hearing. A nudge from his lawyer, who'd been watching his face, interrupted his thoughts.
"What does she know?" Jacobs inquired.
"Know about what?" Alix asked.
Jacobs' eyes bored into his client's in silent demand. It went unheeded as the other man's attention never left the girl, following her hands as they smoothed her skirt over her hips before she bit her lower lip and sat down in the witness chair. The lawyer watched his client shift in his seat as his skin tightened over his prominent cheekbones. Alix's dark sparkling eyes and slightly ruddy complexion told the rather portly, balding attorney things he didn't want to know. Under the surreptitiously surveying gaze, Alix moved to straighten the suddenly tighter fit of his pants.
"How far has it gone?"
"What?"
"How far has it gone?" Jacobs repeated the demand that went unheeded a second time.
As Alix's wife's dapper young lawyer, Darby studied his legal pad, Rachel looked up at the familiar black eyes and the courtroom and lawyers disappeared. Her eyes worshipped as his devoured.
"Damn," mumbled Jacobs, shooting a glance at Sue. Alix's soon-to-be ex wasn't the brightest bulb in the pack, but how could she miss this? She didn't even look up, absorbed again, as she had been for most of the trial, in the lengthy financial declaration of the Greek billionaire trying to leave her with a prenuptial agreement giving her measly two million. Her mind was so full of dollar signs that she missed the path to her goal for a much higher settlement currently sitting on the witness stand.
Alix mouthed, "It'll be okay. Don't worry. I'm here."
The Judge tilted his head and looked interested.
Jacobs' whisper turned into a hiss. "Damn it, stop it."
With a slight shrug and a wry, self-deprecating grimace, the whispered reply came, softly, tenderly. "I can't."
Jacobs watched his sturdy case tremble on the brink of collapse. At the sink-or-swim moment, Lynch, a young up and comer in the firm, earned himself the partnership that years of work hadn't brought. With a glance at his counterpart at the other table, Lynch observed, "Adam sure seems to have a hard for this witness. Wonder if he's still fishing or has he already cast his line?"
The observation jolted the client's attention to the associate who'd been leering at Rachel since she entered. Tenderness evaporated, replaced by tight anger as the young lawyer winked at the witness. Alix started to rise only to be jerked back down by his attorney's clutching hand.
"Get a grip!" Jacobs instructed.
Angelis subsided to seethe in his seat.
The Judge's shoulders relaxed, though he cast a warning glance at Jacobs who felt his own tension ease. The lawyer suspected that the rage surging through his client was pure green jealousy over the unusually mature teenager, poised ever-so-slightly on the wrong side of eighteen. But the associate sat beside Sue, and the Judge saw one pissed off soon-to-be ex spouse casting angry glances at another. That sight in this venue was so commonplace as to be expected.
