Legal Attraction

by Lisa Childs

  Stone shook his head again. “He’s a sleaze but as far as I know, not a criminal.”

  “He’s a con,” Simon said from where he sat at the head of the table. “The guy’s a con artist.”

  Ronan sucked in a breath at the managing partner speaking his worst fear aloud. “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Takes one to know one,” Simon said. He had been a con artist himself. If he hadn’t, they all wouldn’t have survived the streets. His cons had kept them alive and fed.

  Ronan sighed.

  “What does this mean?” Trevor asked.

  “I think I could be in real trouble,” Ronan said. “Those witnesses lied. If the bar association finds out, they might not believe that I didn’t know, that I didn’t suborn perjury.”

  “So you might lose your license,” Stone murmured.

  Losing his license was the least of his concerns at the moment. He was afraid he’d lost more than that, like his chance of ever being with Muriel again.

  * * *

  Her body tense, Muriel followed the man as he led her down a long corridor. She was stiff and achy. Maybe she should have used her vibrator before this meeting. But she doubted that it would relieve her tension anymore. She was beginning to worry that only Ronan could do that.

  And that was why she was here.

  “I’m surprised you would want to hire McCann Public Relations,” the man murmured over his shoulder, his voice pitched low.

  Obviously, he knew Muriel and what his company and Ronan had done to her. Because of that, she wasn’t here to hire them. Hell, she didn’t need them. Not since she’d been labeled The World’s Most Beautiful Woman.

  No. What Muriel needed was answers.

  She hadn’t gotten any from Ronan. So she hoped she could get them here. From Allison McCann. The man stopped at the end of the hall and pushed open a door to a corner office. Sunshine poured through the two walls of windows and glowed like a spotlight on the woman behind the desk.

  Allison McCann, with her deep red hair, silky white skin and bright blue eyes, deserved the label of The World’s Most Beautiful Woman far more than Muriel felt she did. But Allison McCann always remained in the background.

  Muriel wasn’t sure how she managed that until the woman spoke, her voice so cool it bordered on frigid. “Ms. Sanz, please come in and have a seat.” She gestured toward the chairs in front of her glass desk. “Edward, close the door on your way out.”

  As the man turned to do his employer’s bidding, Muriel caught the look that crossed his face. And she shivered. His boss’s voice wasn’t the only cold thing in this office.

  The door snapped shut with a sharp click, and Muriel jumped. She hesitated a moment before walking toward that desk and that woman.

  “I’m sorry...” the woman murmured.

  “I didn’t come here for an apology,” Muriel said. She wouldn’t have expected this woman to offer one any more than she expected Ronan to do so.

  “I meant for Edward...” Allison gestured at the closed door. “So, if you didn’t come here for an apology, why are you here, Ms. Sanz? Are you in need of our services?” She sounded politely hopeful—not pushy.

  All the PR people Muriel had met were pushy. She was almost pleasantly surprised, until she remembered what this woman had done to her.

  “Why?” Muriel asked. That was what she wanted to know the most.

  The woman’s lips curved into a slight smile. “That is a fair question, given that you are already extremely high profile right now. But, of course, that is the best time to hire McCann Public Relations, so that we can help guide your career in the direction in which you’d like to go. Please have a seat and tell me where that might be.”

  Muriel hadn’t realized she was still standing. But she was too tense, too anxious, to sit. She walked toward the windows, instead, and stared down at Midtown. Allison had a view of a park from her corner office.

  “Do you want to cross over into acting?” Allison asked.

  “No,” Muriel replied. “I’m no actor.” She was too honest for that. Arte was the one who’d wanted to act and dance and sing.

  “Singer?” Allison asked.

  Muriel laughed. “God, no.” She held up a hand. “And before you ask, I’m not a dancer, either.” She had no rhythm—except with Ronan. With him, she always found the perfect rhythm—their movements coordinated to drive each other out of their minds and to ecstasy.

  “So you’re happy with your modeling career?”

  Muriel turned back to study Allison’s face. Did she detect some condescension? Some judgment? “Yes, I’m happy being a model.”

  “Why?” Allison asked.

  That was the question Muriel wanted the publicist to answer. But she answered Allison McCann first. “I admire the creativity of the designers. I enjoy showing off their hard work.” Especially Bette’s. She knew how long and how hard Bette had worked to achieve her recent success.

  Allison tilted her head and studied Muriel, as if trying to gauge if she spoke the truth. “I could use that quote to get you a lot more work,” Allison said. “Designers would love hearing that.”

  Muriel laughed. “You’re always working the angles, huh?”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “It is when you smear innocent people.”

  Allison jumped up from her chair now. “If you made this appointment in order to attack me, then you should leave right now.”

  “If I’d wanted to attack you,” Muriel said, “I wouldn’t have made an appointment. I would have done it someplace public and embarrassing, like your favorite restaurant or on the street outside. I would have wanted to embarrass you like you embarrassed me.”

  Allison’s pale skin flushed, but it wasn’t with embarrassment. It was anger. “I was just doing my job, Ms. Sanz,” she said defensively. “You should not be taking this personally or making it personal.”

  “It was personal to me,” Muriel said, flinching as she remembered having to warn her grandparents. Well, she’d tried. But she’d been too late. The story had already broken before she’d had the chance.

  Allison shook her head. “Is that why you filed a complaint with the bar association against Ronan Hall? Out of spite?”

  Muriel snorted. “Spite? I am not a child.”

  “You’re acting like one,” Allison accused her. “Lashing out...”

  She was tempted to show this bitch exactly what acting out looked like, but she held her temper. Physically. Verbally she let the other woman have it. “I could sue you for defamation of character,” she threatened. “Those witnesses were lying. I have proof of it.”

  “Forged memos,” Allison said with a disdainful sniff.

  “That’s what Ronan claims,” Muriel said. And she was beginning to believe him. “So you’ve talked to him.”

  “I work closely with all of the partners of Street Legal,” Allison said.

  How closely? And did she just work with them? Or was it more than work?

  “I know,” Muriel said. “That’s why I’m here. I want to know whose idea it was to publicly smear me. Yours or Ronan’s?” She wanted to cross her fingers in the hope that Allison would take the responsibility. That she would say that Ronan fought her over every press release.

  But Allison said nothing. She just sat back down and shook her head.

  “I deserve the truth,” Muriel said. “Not that I expect you to recognize it.”

  Allison leaned back in her chair, and her beautiful face twisted into a tight grimace, like she’d sucked on a particularly sour lemon. “You wasted your time coming here,” she said. “Unless slinging your insults will make you feel better...since all your recent success obviously hasn’t.”

  “So you’re of the same school of thought as Ronan,” Muriel said. “That the end justifies the means.”

  Alli
son just tilted her head and studied Muriel through those icy blue eyes of hers.

  “It doesn’t,” Muriel told her. “Not when the means were so mean...” Tears stung her eyes now, and she rushed toward the door. When she opened it, she slammed into the body standing outside it.

  And she nearly plowed over Allison McCann’s assistant who’d obviously been listening at the door. “If I’d known why you were here,” he whispered as he led her through the reception area toward the elevators, “I could have told you that you were wasting your time.”

  “I should have known I wouldn’t get any answers here,” Muriel agreed as she blinked back her tears of frustration.

  It was Ronan’s fault that she was so damn frustrated. She wanted him so badly. But she didn’t want him if he was really the man she’d originally thought he was—the liar, the ruthless lawyer.

  Who was he?

  “You should have asked me,” Edward said as he led her toward the elevator.

  Muriel stopped. “You know?”

  “I sit in on all of Allison’s meetings,” he said, “except for this one.”

  Apparently he was the one to whom Muriel should have spoken. Maybe that was why Allison hadn’t allowed him to sit in.

  The elevator dinged and the doors slid open to the empty car. Before she stepped inside, Muriel turned to him and asked, “So whose idea was it to smear me?”

  “Ronan Hall,” the man replied.

  And Muriel felt as though she’d been punched in the stomach.

  “Allison really felt horrible about it,” Edward continued. “But she has to honor her client’s wishes.”

  “And Street Legal is her client,” Muriel said. Not her.

  She’d just been a hapless victim.

  “It was Hall’s idea,” Edward continued. “He’s the worst one of those bastards from Street Legal.”

  “Are they a pretty big client for McCann PR?” she asked.

  “The biggest,” Edward said with a regretful sigh. “And the most ruthless.”

  So Allison McCann would probably not help Muriel out with the bar association—even if she knew for certain that Ronan had suborned perjury. And Muriel didn’t know for certain. She’d begun to believe him.

  But now she wondered if she’d been played—exactly the way he’d bragged to his partners that he would play her into withdrawing her complaint.

  Edward continued, “That’s why she had to do what Hall wanted. I’m sorry for what happened to you.”

  Before stepping into the elevator, she squeezed his arm in gratitude. His apology was nice, but it wasn’t the one she wanted.

  The person who owed her the apology was Ronan.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  RONAN NEVER SAW it coming. Muriel’s apartment door barely opened before two hands planted on his chest and shoved him back.

  “You son of a bitch!” Muriel yelled at him.

  “I guess I had that coming...” he murmured. But she didn’t even know about his mother—about how big a bitch the woman had been.

  “Yes, you did!” Muriel said, her voice shaking with anger. Then her green eyes widened with surprise as she stared at him. “You admit that you do?”

  What did she know? That he’d talked to Arte? He wouldn’t put it past the little bastard to have approached her and directly asked for money. No. He probably wouldn’t be that direct. He’d be sneaky and underhanded. Like Simon had said, Arte was a con artist.

  “What exactly are we talking about?” he asked.

  She pushed him again. But she wasn’t strong enough to hold him back. He stepped inside the apartment and kicked the door closed behind them.

  “What?” she asked. “Are you afraid that someone might overhear us? Are you afraid of making a scene?”

  He laughed. “I don’t care what people think.”

  “Yeah, right,” she scoffed. “You don’t want the bar association thinking you did anything wrong.”

  “I didn’t,” he said.

  But he was beginning to believe that he had. Even if it was unknowingly.

  “I talked to Allison McCann,” she said.

  “That bitch!” Outrage coursed through him. “She gave you a bill?”

  Muriel laughed. “No. She thought I was going to hire her, though.” And she laughed again until a snort slipped out. Then she tensed.

  And he laughed.

  “She is a bitch,” Muriel said. “But she’s a bitch who’s loyal to Street Legal. She wouldn’t tell me who ordered the smear campaign.”

  His stomach churned with the guilt swirling through it. “I did.”

  “I know,” she said. “Edward told me.”

  “Who’s Edward?”

  “The bitch’s bitch.”

  He laughed as he realized she was referring to Allison’s assistant.

  “Why did you do that?” she asked. “Why did you have to smear me in the press, too?” Hurt darkened her green eyes. “Wasn’t it enough to beat me in court? You won. Why did you have to win that badly?”

  Tears streamed from her eyes, but she squeezed them shut. Then she turned away from him as if she was embarrassed that she was crying.

  He wanted to reach for her, to comfort her. Her tears were killing him. But he knew he couldn’t take back what was already done. He owed her something, though.

  Maybe it was because she turned away that he was able to tell her the truth. Not about talking to Arte.

  He wasn’t ready yet to admit how wrong he’d been. But he could explain why he’d been wrong.

  “I did it for my dad,” he said.

  She turned back then, her brow furrowed in obvious confusion. “What? That makes no sense...”

  “I take every divorce case for my dad,” he said. “Because he should have divorced my mom. But he could never bring himself to do it—no matter how badly she treated him, how many times she cheated on him.”

  “Ronan...” She touched him, just her fingers on his arm.

  But his skin tingled with the contact and he shivered in reaction. Or maybe he was just suddenly very cold as he relived some of those moments from his past.

  “They fought all the time,” he said.

  “That must have been horrible,” she remarked, her voice soft with sympathy.

  He wasn’t looking for sympathy. He just wanted her to understand. “It was...so bad that I ran away. That’s how I met Simon and Stone and Trevor.”

  “On the streets...”

  She must have heard the story. Allison McCann had put out several press releases touting the rags-to-riches story of the lawyers of Street Legal.

  “So all the stories about you and your partners were true?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “It must have been rough.”

  He chuckled, but with a bitterness he’d never been able to leave entirely behind him. “Living on the streets was safer and easier than living at home.”

  “Are your parents still together?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. My father and I don’t talk about it anymore.” But they talked once a week—about the weather, sports, the practice...anything but his parents’ marriage. That was the arrangement he’d made with his father—once he’d contacted him again. “And I want nothing to do with my mother.”

  “I am not your mother,” Muriel said. “I didn’t cheat on Arte.”

  “I know that now,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  But he knew an apology was not enough to make up for what he’d done to her. He wasn’t sure what it would take for her to forgive him. Moreover, he wasn’t sure what it would take for him to forgive himself.

  * * *

  Muriel watched Ronan turn away from her and head for the door. He was just going to walk away?

  “Coward!” she called after him.
<
br />   He stopped and glanced back at her over one of his broad shoulders. “What?”

  “You’re running away again, just like you did when you were a teenager,” she said.

  His lips curved into a slight grin and amusement glinted in his dark eyes. “You think I’m running from you?”

  “Maybe...”

  Or he was running away from what he’d done.

  Or from what he’d admitted to her about his past.

  “I didn’t think you wanted me to stay,” he said.

  “I shouldn’t have lost my temper like that,” she said.

  “You’re a passionate woman.” His dark eyes gleamed with passion of his own.

  And Muriel’s heart began to pound fast and furiously. Even as angry as she was with him, she had missed him. Badly. Her body ached with an emptiness only he had been able to fill.

  He stepped closer to her. “You’re the most passionate woman I’ve ever known.”

  “Is that a nice way of calling me a slut again?” she asked as she tried desperately to hang on to her anger. It was safer to be mad at Ronan than to be mad about him.

  He chuckled. “I never called you a slut.”

  “Liar.”

  “I just let other people call you that,” he said, and his handsome face twisted into a grimace of regret. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “You believe me now?” she asked.

  He opened his mouth, but the words didn’t come. He wasn’t any more sure of her than she was of him.

  But did it matter right now?

  She wanted him too much to care about the past. Neither of them could change that. It had already happened.

  She wasn’t worried about it happening again. She wasn’t married now. She probably wouldn’t get married again. Obviously, she couldn’t trust her judgment.

  And because she couldn’t trust her judgment, she wasn’t ever going to risk her heart again. So she was safe having sex with Ronan—because sex was all it would ever be.

  She also wanted a little revenge, though, for all the terrible things he’d had McCann Public Relations spread around about her.

  “Muriel,” he began.

  But she pressed her fingers to his lips to stop him. “Shh...” she said. “Don’t say anything you don’t one hundred percent believe.”