Chapter Nine
CHAPTER NINE
A WEEKHADpassed since Trev had skipped the regular Tuesday business meeting. He knew better than to try that again—especially after all the calls he’d missed from his partners.
Well, he hadn’t really missed them. He’d declined to take them because he’d been busy—with Allison.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t gotten any closer to finding proof that she was the mole. But he’d gotten a hell of a lot closer to her in every position imaginable. His body ached a little from all the ways they’d had sex. And it ached because he wanted to do it again.
And again...
But he’d forced himself to leave her that morning, knowing that he had to make it to the office. Or else he’d continue to be a hypocrite. He’d been furious when she’d suggested he give up the practice and his friends but then he’d spent the past week avoiding them.
Some friend he was.
She’d distracted him with her beauty, with her body...
With her heart. He was beginning to know that, as well. She fiercely hid it behind that wall of ice she showed the world. But he knew she did that to protect herself because she’d already been hurt so badly.
He could understand not wanting to be hurt again. If she knew what he was really up to, that he had lied to her about running for office...
Then he would hurt her.
But if she was the mole, didn’t she deserve it? She’d hurt him, and she had hurt the practice, as well.
His friends...
Guilt clenched his stomach as he walked into Simon’s office where all the partners already waited for him. He felt as if he’d betrayed them. And he hated that feeling.
“He is alive,” Ronan said to Simon. “You didn’t need to worry.”
And he felt another pang of guilt. He could see that Simon had been worried. There were dark circles beneath his blue eyes. Trev might have thought Bette was just keeping him awake showing him new lingerie designs. Simon’s former assistant and current lover was the Bette of Bette’s Beguiling Bows. But there were also lines of tension in Simon’s face. So it hadn’t been sex—at least not just sex—keeping him awake. He was definitely under stress.
“You shouldn’t have worried,” Trev admonished him. “You all know I can take care of myself.”
Not only had he survived living on the streets, but he’d also survived all the threats against him when he’d taken on those billion-dollar corporations. A few of those companies had tried really hard to get him to drop the class-action lawsuit—so hard that he’d been jumped a couple of times. He’d handled those beatdowns better than he had Allison jumping him, though.
Every time she kissed him, touched him...he lost all control. All perspective.
“Allison McCann is more dangerous than anyone you’ve faced before,” Simon insisted.
“We don’t even know who she really is,” Ronan added.
“I know,” Trev said. And now he felt like he was betraying her—her confidence, her secrets—when he shared her past with them.
“So that’s why she does it?” Ronan asked with a snort of derision. “She’s tried to take down Street Legal because she has daddy issues.”
Trev shook his head. “I think it’s more mommy issues,” he said. “And isn’t that why you do what you do?”
Ronan’s face flushed. “I haven’t tried to take anyone down.”
“Muriel might not agree with you.”
Ronan’s face flushed a deeper shade of red over the mistake he’d made with that divorce case, with the one involving the woman he was now dating. “I didn’t know her sleazeball ex was lying.”
“But you and Allison were both willing to believe him over her because of those mommy issues you both have.”
“Fuck you!” Ronan cursed him.
He preferred it when Allison told him that. Hell, he preferred when Allison fucked him.
But he understood why Ronan was mad.
“So if she has mommy issues, why mess with us?” Simon asked.
Trev didn’t know. There was nothing feminine about any one of them. Not even their receptionist. He shrugged. “It doesn’t make sense.”
So was she really the mole? But if not, then who else? She was the one who’d had access to every affected case. She was the one. She had to be.
How he wished like hell that she wasn’t.
Stone groaned and shook his head in disgust. “I knew you were attracted to her. I knew she was going to get to you.”
Heat rushed to Trev’s face as he thought of her, of the ways she’d brought him more pleasure than he’d ever known. But she wasn’t getting to him. That was just sex. He shook his head. “Not at all!”
“You’re not attracted to her?” Stone asked. He was the criminal lawyer with killer cross-examination skills.
Even though he wasn’t on the stand, Trev had no doubt that Stone could break him. So he just confessed, “Hell, yes, I’m attracted to her. Have you seen her?”
“You’re sleeping with her,” Ronan said, and now he sounded disgusted.
Hadn’t any of them noticed how stunningly beautiful and sexy Allison was? What? Were all his partners blind?
“That wasn’t part of your plan,” Simon said. “You were supposed to get close working with her.” Simon had once thought Bette was the mole and had tried seducing the truth out of her. But she’d seduced him instead.
Having seen some of her lingerie firsthand on Allison, Trev wasn’t surprised Simon had gotten so distracted. He knew that he was, too—that he’d let her get to him.
“Yeah, how is the campaign coming?” Stone asked, amusement twinkling in his gray eyes. They all knew that there was no way he would actually run for office—any office.
He enjoyed what he did too much. He enjoyed taking down the big corporations who cared nothing about who they hurt, like they’d hurt Wally.
“It’s stalled out,” Trev admitted.
“Why?” Simon asked. “Because you’re sleeping with her instead?”
“Because she wants me to leave the practice and ditch you losers,” Trev said.
Simon gasped.
Ronan cursed. Her. In a particularly vulgar term that had Trev’s hands clenching into fists. And Stone stood up, so he was between them.
“Settle down,” Stone told them all. “It’s not like he’s actually going to do what she says.”
“But why would she say that?” Ronan asked.
“Because Street Legal hasn’t exactly had good press lately,” Trev pointed out.
“And whose fault is that?” Ronan asked. “She’s the one making us look bad.”
“I don’t have any proof of that, though,” Trev reminded them. And until they did, they couldn’t accuse her of anything.
“I don’t care,” Simon said. “We can’t risk having her around the practice anymore. We need to terminate the business relationship with her and ban her from the building.”
“And you need to terminate your personal relationship,” Stone told him. “For your own sake.”
Trev shook his head. “I’ve got it all under control.”
“But you don’t have the evidence we need to press charges against her,” Ronan said. He was still furious.
And Trev couldn’t blame him. If the documents submitted to the bar hadn’t been proven to be forgeries, he could have lost his law license.
They’d all worked too hard to get where they were, to launch the practice, to risk losing it. He understood why they wanted to get rid of Allison now.
But he wasn’t ready yet to let her go. “I will get the evidence,” Trev assured them. He only hoped that the evidence he found proved she was not the mole.
“How?” Ronan persisted skeptically. “You going to try Simon’s method of seducing it out of her?”
Stone snorted. “I think he’s already tried that.”
Trev couldn’t deny that he had. But while he’d gotten some information out of Allison, he was unlikely to get her to just admit that she was the mole—even if she was.
But he was beginning to suspect that he was wrong about her. That it was someone else. Or maybe that was all just wishful thinking on his part.
“So what are you going to try next?” Simon asked him.
“I’ll come up with something,” he assured them—and himself. Now his goal was more to prove that she wasn’t the mole than that she was.
“Yes,” a female voice suddenly chimed in with all the male ones in Simon’s office. “What are you going to try next?”
Trev tensed and whirled toward the door. They’d been arguing so loudly that none of them had heard it open. He certainly hadn’t.
But as always, now that he saw her, his body reacted—tensing with desire. Allison looked so beautiful in a long purple dress that buttoned all the way down the front. It was professional-looking but also sexy as hell as he could imagine undoing every damn one of those buttons.
But desire wasn’t all he felt. His heart pounded slow and heavy with dread.
What had she heard?
Allison glanced down to see if she was floating—because she felt as if the floor had dropped out from beneath her. And her stomach had dropped, as well. She had never felt as disoriented as she did now, not even when she had sex with Trevor.
“How the hell did you get in here?” Simon Kramer asked the question as if she’d barged into the meeting.
She turned back toward the hall, but Miguel was gone. “Your receptionist showed me back.” And opened the door despite the raised voices.
Simon arched a brow as if he doubted her explanation. She didn’t care what the hell he believed. Anger coursed through her now, replacing the shock she’d felt when she’d overheard what they were arguing about: her.
“Why are you even here?” Trevor asked her.
She couldn’t tell him now, couldn’t show him the breakfast she’d brought him. Fortunately, she’d handed the bag of pastries and cups of coffee to Miguel before he’d taken off. Or she would have dropped them and burned herself. And she certainly couldn’t show Trevor what else she’d brought him: another outfit from Bette’s Beguiling Bows.
“It doesn’t matter why I’m really here,” she said. And it didn’t anymore. “Apparently, you all think I have an ulterior motive.”
“How much did you hear?” Trevor asked.
Her stomach pitched. She hated being lied to, hated secrets, and it was clear that Trevor still wanted to keep some from her.
The thing was she had no idea how long she’d been standing there. She’d been so stunned that it was as if she had gone into shock. She’d barely heard their voices over the sound of her blood rushing in her ears as her heart had pounded frantically. “I heard enough to know that you all suspect me of something, and I want to know what it is.”
She’d noticed the suspicion on their faces when she’d seen them all the week before. And they had barely utilized her services the past few months.
Something was going on...
And they blamed her for whatever it was.
All four men exchanged glances with each other as if silently communicating. Maybe, after living on the streets together, they could communicate silently. They probably wished they’d been doing that before she’d overheard their conversation.
“I have the right to know what I’m being accused of,” she pointed out.
Or how else was she going to defend herself?
But she wasn’t so certain that she wanted to. If they could think the worst of her.
If Trevor could.
Did she want anything to do with any of them anymore?
She sucked in a breath as she felt a sudden twinge of panic in her chest and a hollowness in her core. It had only been a week since she and Trev had started sleeping together. She should not be so attached to him yet.
Or at all.
She knew better than to let her emotions get involved. And this was why.
Ultimately, people let her down. They lied. They broke promises.
“What is it?” she persisted. And she stared at the other three partners now. She couldn’t look at Trevor anymore, not without that hollowness hurting inside her. “What do you think I did?”
“Sabotage,” Simon replied. “We think you’ve been sabotaging Street Legal.”
She laughed at the ridiculous accusation. “I’m the reason the practice has as high a profile as it does,” she reminded them. She was the one who’d composed the press releases to spin their pasts into something glamourous—into something that had everyone talking about them.
“I’m also the reason you’ve won as many cases as you have.” She’d helped them try their cases before they ever made it to court. She tried them where it counted—in the public.
Ronan Hall snorted. “Yeah, right. We’re the ones who’ve won. You’re not in court with us.”
“Yes, I am,” she reminded him. She’d attended court so that she could talk to the press after every session. She had spent more time with Street Legal than she had any other client she had.
For them to think she would purposely sabotage them...
For Trevor to think that...
She glanced at him now, but he was looking away as if he couldn’t face her, either. She couldn’t believe that he would think that.
“You do have access to all our cases,” Simon said as if that was significant.
She shrugged. “You gave me access.”
Now he flinched. “That was apparently a mistake.”
“Why?” she asked, her voice getting sharp as her impatience grew. “Just what the hell do you all think I’ve done? How have I sabotaged anything?”
“You’ve brought up the bad press,” Trevor began.
But she wasn’t ready to hear from him yet. “That had nothing to do with me. You all won’t even let me help mitigate that bad press.”
And then she realized why. “You think I’m behind it? Why?”
“That’s what we’d like to know,” Simon said. “Why would you do that?”
“Is it because you hate lawyers?” Stone asked.
And she hated herself for letting that slip.
“If you guys look bad, I look bad,” she pointed out. “Sabotaging your practice is like sabotaging my own firm. Why the hell would I do that?”
She had worked so hard to start it, to make it a success. She’d spent the past several years focused mostly on business. Until this past week with Trevor, she’d had very little pleasure.
Maybe that should have told her something, though. Maybe her business wasn’t making her happy. It damn well didn’t seem to be satisfying her client.
She’d heard them talk about firing her, about banning her from the building. Losing them as a client would hurt her business. Losing Trev...
But apparently, she had never really had him. Trevor had only been trying to get information out of her, evidence of her doing something wrong.
The only thing she’d done wrong was getting personally involved with him.
“Maybe you were looking for job security,” Ronan suggested. “You create a problem and then you fix it.”
“What problems do you think I created?” she asked.
“It started with Trev,” Simon said. “His last big class-action lawsuit.”
“He won it,” she reminded them. What the hell were they talking about?
“That’s just because he’s that good,” Simon said. “But information got leaked to opposing counsel.”
“And you think I did that?” She looked at Trevor now and his eyes were narrowed, suspicion in the green depths. And she shivered.
“You said your father defends corporations like that,” Trevor reminded her. “Was he defending that one?”
She shook her head. “But it wouldn’t have mattered if he was,” she said. “I wouldn’t have helped him.”
“Daddy issues,” Ronan murmured.
And she glared at him.
“Is that why you went after me?” the divorce lawyer asked. “You sent Muriel those forged documents she turned in to the bar association.”
“What?” She knew he’d been reported to the bar, but she’d tried to undo the damage. “I didn’t forge any documents.”
“What about the information that was given to the assistant district attorney in my last trial?” Stone Michaelsen asked. “She knew information, supposedly from my case files, before I even knew it.”
Each of their accusations struck Allison like a blow. They all really believed that she’d betrayed them. Even Trevor.
“And how do you think I got that information?” Allison asked.
“You have access to all our files, to our computers,” Simon said.
“So? I’m not the only one who does. It could have been anyone on your staff.”
Simon shook his head. “I’ve checked all of them out. It’s not.”
“Well, it’s not me,” she said. But she was sick of defending herself, especially with them all looking at her like they were, like she was a criminal. “But please, block my access to your computers. Ban me from the building. I have no intention of ever coming back here.” She turned on her heel then and stalked out of the room.
“Allison!” It was Trevor’s deep voice that called out to her.
She didn’t even look back, though. She just said over her shoulder, “Go to hell!”
She had no intention of ever seeing him again, either.