The Judge: A Sapphic Romance

Judge Anne Bandereth has built her life on two words: be careful.

Careful in her courtroom. Careful in her chambers. Careful on the forty miles of interstate between Burton and the bar in Loring Park where, twice a month, she lets herself be someone other than the Honorable Anne S. Bandereth.

She has never given a woman her name.

Until a dark-haired stranger with freckles and a dagger tattoo takes her hand in a dark corner, and Anne forgets every rule she has ever made.

The next Monday morning, that stranger walks into her courtroom.

Jesse Celt, twenty-five, charged with petty theft, public defender assigned. She is standing at Anne's defense table. She is wearing a wrinkled blouse. She has the same dark eyes that were, two nights ago, looking at Anne through dim bar light.

Anne recuses herself in forty seconds flat. Personal conflict. No explanation. The case goes down the hall.

But the woman doesn't.

A slow-burn sapphic romance between a closeted judge with everything to lose and a working-class woman she cannot stop carrying around in her chest. Steamy, slow-burn, with a HEA.