Chapter Six
CHAPTER SIX
EXCITEMENTCOURSEDTHROUGHTrev that he was about to see Allison again. He was so anxious that he nearly pushed aside her skinny assistant instead of following the guy down the hall to her office. Less than a day had passed since he’d been in her apartment, since he’d been inside her...
But he’d missed her.
“It’s better for you to come to the office,” her assistant said, “rather than trying to see her at home.”
Edward. That was his name, wasn’t it?
The young man continued, “She probably didn’t even let you in last night, did she?” He glanced back at Trev as if waiting for a reply.
As he had with his own receptionist, Trev stonewalled this one, too. It was none of this guy’s damn business if she’d let him inside her place or not. Inside her or not.
Trev had never been the kind of guy who bragged about his conquests. Not that he’d conquered Allison McCann. In fact, it might have been the other way around since he was no closer to getting evidence that she was the mole.
Maybe he needed to pump old Edward for more information. But they’d stopped outside her door. So he couldn’t do it now, where she might overhear them talking.
“Would she have called me here if she had?” Trev asked, turning the question around on Edward. Obviously, Allison hadn’t bragged, either, about her conquest. Edward had no idea they’d been together the night before.
And when Trev walked through the door Edward opened for him, he had no idea, either—when he looked at the cool expression on Allison’s beautiful face. Her pale blue eyes stared right through him.
He stared back, hungry for the sight of her. Hungry for her.
While he couldn’t see through her at all, he could see through her glass desk. She didn’t wear a dress today. She wore gray slacks and a jacket over a pink blouse that was buttoned to her chin as if she didn’t want to expose an inch of her body.
But he’d seen it already. And all he had to do was close his eyes to see it again. As he did, his body hardened with desire.
Damn, he wanted her. But it didn’t appear that the desire was reciprocated today.
Why had she called him here?
He had a bad feeling that she was going to renege on the agreement she’d made last night and that she didn’t want to have sex with him again.
Hadn’t it been as amazing for her as it had been for him?
Maybe he should have taken more time, made certain she had so many orgasms that she wouldn’t be able to freeze up again, like she was now. Her stare was even colder when she turned it on her assistant.
“Please close the door on your way out, Edward,” she informed him.
He hesitated, though, and glanced at Trevor. “I didn’t ask Mr. Sinclair if he would like coffee or water—”
“I’m fine,” Trev assured him. Edward couldn’t bring him what he wanted. Only Allison could give him that, like she had the night before.
A powerful release...
He needed it again—needed her again—as the tension wound tightly inside him. It had begun to build from the minute he’d left her the night before. And when he’d been called to her office, he’d hoped that she’d felt the same way—and that she needed him again.
Edward hesitated yet inside the open door, tempting Trev to shove him out and slam the door shut. “Would you like anything?” he asked his boss.
“No,” she said. But she was looking at Trev now. “I don’t want anything.”
“Ouch,” Trev muttered.
Edward glanced at him before finally stepping through the door and pulling it closed. Allison stared at the door, her eyes narrowed as if she was trying to see through it. Probably to see if her assistant was listening outside it.
Trev wouldn’t put it past the skinny little guy. He seemed abnormally preoccupied with his boss. But then given how beautiful she was, it was no wonder the guy might have become obsessed with her.
Finally, she turned her attention to Trev and arched a red brow over one of those icy-blue eyes. “Are you hurt?” she asked. She must have been referring to his muttered ouch.
“I’m not going to lie,” he said with a grin. “I am a little sore.”
She sighed. “That’s too bad. I guess we will have to give you a chance to recover.”
“I’m fully recovered,” he assured her as his erection pushed against his fly. He stepped away from the door, moving toward her desk. “Is that why you called me here?”
She shook her head. “No. This is business only.”
He stopped within a few feet of her desk, not trusting himself to get any closer. If he did, he wouldn’t be able to control his desire for her.
Hell, it was already out of control. Last night he’d totally forgotten his purpose for wanting to work more closely with Allison McCann. He needed to get proof that she was the mole.
“Business only?” he queried. “I thought you wanted nothing to do with playing politics.”
“I was thinking about what you said last night.”
She hadn’t allowed him to say much, not wanting an argument. Instead, she’d challenged him to action. Heat flashed through him as he thought of all the actions they’d done.
“What in particular?” he asked. “How hot you are?”
Even though her face flushed, she narrowed her eyes. “Business, Mr. Sinclair.”
He feigned a shiver. “Oh, Ms. McCann, it’s so very cold in here.”
It actually was. With its white walls and furniture, the office was very sterile—very cold. Trev wasn’t really cold, not when he was anywhere near her because then all he felt was the heat of desire.
The office was the exact opposite of her bedroom decor—all dark and soft and warm. Just as she was the exact opposite of what she’d been last night.
Was she mad at him? Or was this how she would always act outside her apartment, outside her bedroom?
“I thought it was your public persona you wanted reworked,” she said, “not mine.”
That was all the ice queen image was: her public persona. After last night he knew she was very different in private. In private, she was the fire queen.
“You reconsidered?” he asked with surprise. She’d been so adamant that she’d wanted nothing to do with politics. “You’re going to help me?”
“Just with your image,” she said. “Not your campaign.”
“Why not?” he asked. “What do you have against lawyers and politicians?”
She leaned back now in her white leather chair, and she studied him through narrowed eyes. The frigidness was back. “Why are you so curious about me?” she asked, and she glanced at the door.
Edward had given him up. The little weasel. But then Trev wasn’t surprised she’d broken the man. With the way she was staring at him, he was starting to sweat, a trickle of perspiration running down between his shoulder blades.
“You’re an intriguing woman,” he said with a grin. “Of course I’m curious about you.”
“Bullshit,” she said. “Why’d you ask about my name? If I changed it?”
Damn Edward...
“Did you?” he asked.
She glared at him. “Apparently, you already know that. How do you?”
“Don’t you Google everyone you meet?” he asked. “Of course, it wasn’t possible to find out anything about you before you started McCann Public Relations.”
She shrugged her slender shoulders. “That’s because there’s nothing to know.”
“I doubt that,” he said. There was a lot more to Allison McCann than he had ever realized. And he’d always been intrigued by her beauty, by her cool professionalism.
Of course, he’d seen that slip a couple of times. She held tightly to it now, using it like a shield against him.
“Why did you change your name?” he asked. “You on the run from the law or something?”
She smiled.
“A jealous lover?” That, he could believe. Just the thought of her previous lovers had jealousy coursing through him. And he hated that. He wasn’t the jealous type. Competitive—hell, yes. He always had to win. But that was the only thing he wanted. The win. Not the woman.
Never the woman.
Until now. He wanted Allison McCann or whoever the hell she was. But that was just because he hadn’t had enough of her yet. Once he was with her again...
Eventually, he would grow bored with her as he had every other lover before her. But a little voice inside his head whispered that no other lover had ever been as exciting as Allison was.
“You don’t need to worry about me,” she said. “I’m not going to run for office with you. It doesn’t matter who or what I am.”
“What are you?” he asked.
The mole?
She had to be. Nobody else had had the access she’d had to their case files. It had to be her.
But why?
“I’m a publicist,” she said. “A damn good one. I can help you revamp your image.”
“Maybe I like my image the way it is.”
She shrugged. “Then you don’t need me,” she said, and she crossed her arms over her chest as if she needed to protect herself from him. And maybe she did. He was after her—in more ways than she knew. Or had she grown suspicious? He heard some suspicion in her voice when she asked, “Why did you try to hire me, then?”
He nearly shivered for real at her coldness. She was catching on, and he couldn’t have that. He dropped into one of the chairs in front of her desk and sighed. “Okay, I do need you.”
More than she knew.
His body ached for hers, tension gripping him.
“Then you need to be straight with me,” she said.
His stomach flipped. How the hell had she gained the upper hand again? She was a more formidable opponent than he’d ever faced in court. And since he’d gone up against billion-dollar corporations, he’d faced some really high-priced attorneys. After his victories over them, he was now higher priced. He’d beaten them. He could beat her.
“You first,” he said. “Why’d you change your name?”
She chuckled. “I’m not running for anything.”
But she was running from something if she was the mole, if she had any idea he was onto her. And he was damn well onto her.
“It doesn’t matter who I am,” she said. “But I need to know who you are.”
He snorted. “You know me.” After last night she knew him better than most people did. He wriggled his brows suggestively. “You know me very well.”
Her lips curved into a slight smile before she pulled them back down as if fighting it. As if she was fighting him.
Why had she agreed to help him?
She shook her head. “I think you have a lot of surprises in you yet.”
He wriggled his brows again. “Let’s go back to your place and see how much I can surprise you.” He lowered his voice to a gruff whisper. “And please you.”
Color rushed to her face, and she released a shaky breath. He was getting to her. Pride suffused him that he could melt the ice queen.
But she sucked in a breath and regained her composure. “Voters don’t like surprises,” she said. “I need to know everything about you.”
He narrowed his eyes now. What was she up to? Edward had obviously admitted that Trev had pumped him for information. Was she returning the favor? Getting payback?
He had no idea what she was up to. But then he’d never known or she wouldn’t have gotten away with being the mole for as long as she had.
He shrugged, but that trickle of sweat streaked down his back again. He felt like he was on the witness stand, getting interrogated. “I think you know everything there is to know about me.”
She was the one who’d decided to use his and his partners’ pasts as teen runaways living on the streets in order to promote Street Legal. Not just as a rags-to-riches story but to show how resourceful and resilient they were.
“I know you’re a runaway,” she said. “But I don’t know why. What were you escaping? Druggie parents?”
That had been Stone.
“Con-artist father?”
That was Simon.
“Fighting parents?”
That was Ronan.
“You know all our stories,” he said. And he was chilled now. She knew them too well.
But she shook her head. “I don’t know yours.”
There was a reason for that. “I’m not a runaway,” he admitted.
She sighed. “You lied?”
“I never said that I was.”
“But you claimed you lived on the street with your partners,” she said as if she was about to call bullshit on him again.
He nodded. “I did. But I didn’t run away.”
She froze and stared at him, her blue eyes wide now with shock and her pale skin paled even more. “Your parents abandoned you?”
“Just my mom,” he said with a nonchalant shrug as if it didn’t matter. Hell, it had all happened so long ago that it really didn’t. “I don’t know who my dad is. I don’t know if she actually knows. I don’t even know where she was from. She moved to New York City to make it as an actress.”
“How old were you when you moved here?” Allison asked.
He searched his memory and sighed. “Young. I don’t remember ever living anywhere else.”
“What happened to her?” Allison asked. “Where did she go?”
“Hollywood,” he said. “She’d figured she’d have a better chance of getting acting jobs there. Maybe on a soap or something.”
“How old were you then?” she asked.
He shrugged again even though he remembered exactly how old he’d been. “Thirteen...”
And she gasped. “Only thirteen? Is that when you started living on the streets?”
He shook his head. “I stayed with the guy I worked for, refinishing floors. He let me live with him as long as I kept going to school.” Wally had only allowed Trev to help him after his homework was done. Wally Washington had also emphasized the importance of education, probably because he hadn’t had much himself.
Like Trev, he’d had to start working too young to help support his family.
She gasped again. “You were only thirteen. You shouldn’t have been working at all.”
“I had to,” he said. Despite all the auditions she’d gone on, his mother hadn’t landed very many acting jobs. He’d had to work or they would have starved. “I had no choice.”
Allison studied him quietly for a long moment, which made him uneasy. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking now. Then she asked, “How did you wind up on the streets?”
For the first time since walking down memory lane, he felt a real twinge of pain over the past. He flinched. “Wally died,” he said. “All the chemicals he’d been using on those floors had destroyed his lungs.”
That was the first big corporation he’d taken on, the one that had killed his old friend.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She hadn’t apologized about his mother abandoning him as if she’d known that hadn’t really bothered him. It had been easier in some ways to not have to worry about her; she’d never been a practical woman. But Wally...
Losing him had hurt. Trev was the only one who’d felt the pain. Wally’s kids hadn’t had anything to do with him for years. They hadn’t even come to see him when he’d gotten sick. But they had certainly showed up to see what they’d inherited once he’d died.
None of them had wanted the gangly fourteen-year-old kid. Instead of letting any of them turn him over to foster care, he’d taken off. Fortunately, he’d found his friends or he probably wouldn’t have survived.
“So that’s how I wound up living on the streets,” he said, and he jumped up from the chair. Restless, he paced near the tall windows of her office. “Will you be able to spin that the way you need to?”
“No spin required,” she said. “It’s a good story. The public will love it.”
What about her? Did she love it?
“But it’s not enough,” she said. “You’re going to have to make some changes.”
“To my past?” he asked. Despite how hard it had been, there wasn’t a thing he would have changed. He wouldn’t have wound up where he was if anything had been different.
“To your present,” she said.
“What do you want me to change?” he asked, and he neared her desk again. “My single status? Do I need a first lady?”
She gasped, and her face got even paler than it had been. She shook her head.
If he needed one, she obviously didn’t want the position.
“No,” she said. “You need to distance yourself from Street Legal. You need to leave the practice.”
“What!” Just the thought struck him like a bullet in the heart. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“There’s no way you’re going to win anything with them as your partners or even as your friends.”
The wound in his heart got bigger, leaving a gaping hole at just the thought of no longer being involved in Street Legal. “You want me to stop being friends with them?”
“That’s the only way you’re going to convince voters you’re trustworthy,” she said. “Your partners have had too much bad press the past few months.”
“I wonder why...” he muttered. That was her fault; the damn mole was tearing down Street Legal. Was that why she wanted him to leave, to destroy the practice all together?
He wouldn’t let her get away with it. But at the moment he was so angry he didn’t trust himself. It was almost as if she’d set out to deliberately infuriate him, to push him into losing control.
But before that happened, he strode toward the door and pulled it open.
“You wanted me to help you,” she called after him.
“I don’t need your kind of help,” he shot back at her before slamming the door behind him. Edward stood in the hall, just a short distance from her office.
He must have been listening, just as she had apparently suspected. The assistant smirked as Trev passed him. “Goodbye, Mr. Sinclair,” he called after him as if he thought he’d never see Trev again.
But Trev wasn’t giving up. His perseverance was one of the reasons he’d survived growing up as he had. Friendship was the other.
Wally’s and his partners’.
He wasn’t giving up on Street Legal. And he was damn well not giving up on proving Allison was the mole and punishing her for all the trouble she’d caused.
But now when he thought of punishing her, it wasn’t with criminal prosecution. It was with his hand slapping her sweet ass. And that was why he’d had to leave, because no matter how badly she infuriated him, he still wanted her.
Too much...