Chapter Eleven
CHAPTER ELEVEN
TREVCOULDN’TSHAKEthe bad feeling he’d had since leaving Allison’s office. She’d grown so quiet after they’d made love, as if she’d regretted it.
And she’d been so distant when he’d left.
He couldn’t help but feel that he might not see her again. Fingers snapped in his face, drawing his attention back to the meeting he’d called in his office.
“Where were you?” Simon asked.
“Like you can’t figure that out,” Stone said with a snort. “I can smell her on his clothes.”
Allison did have a distinctive scent: a combination of a crisp-smelling cologne and rain. She smelled like an ice queen might. But Allison was all passion and fire and heat. Or she had been until he’d hurt her. He knew that he had with his suspicions.
“Did you learn anything new?” Ronan asked.
Trev nodded. “That it’s not her.”
Stone snorted again. “Is that your head or your dick talking?”
Trev glared at him. “C’mon, you all heard what she said. It makes no sense for her to sabotage us. If we look bad, she looks bad.”
Simon sighed. “That’s true. But if not her, who?”
They’d been racking their brains for months trying to figure it out. While no one had really wanted it to be her, it would have almost been a relief if it had been so that they would finally know. So that they could finally stop the sabotage.
Trev glanced at the closed door of his office. Was their receptionist like hers? Did Miguel listen outside their door?
Edward hadn’t been at the door this time when Trev had left her office, which was good considering what he would have overheard. He’d been busy at his desk—on the phone and computer. He’d barely glanced up as Trev had passed him.
Miguel hadn’t looked at him at all either time Trev had passed him since their receptionist had let Allison into that meeting. Did he feel guilty? Regretful?
Trev lowered his voice, just in case there was an eavesdropper outside the door, then he said, “Allison suggested that it could be Miguel.”
Simon uttered a sharp laugh.
And Stone snorted yet again.
“He let her into that meeting,” Trev reminded them.
“You know Miguel,” Ronan said. “He has that weird sense of chivalry. Maybe he thought she deserved to know that we suspected her.”
“And she repays that by casting the suspicion on him,” Simon said.
“How did he know we suspected her?” Trev asked. And a chill chased down his spine. “Did any of you tell him that?” Because Miguel hadn’t known when he’d tried pumping Trev for information about the meeting he’d called the week before.
Simon tensed, his blue eyes widening. Then he shook his head. “No. It’s not possible. There’s no way in hell Miguel would ever betray us.”
Stone had represented him when he’d been brought up on gang-related charges. He’d gotten him off on probation, which Miguel had served at an after-school program he still worked at despite having completed his hours many years ago.
Trev didn’t want to believe it, either. It didn’t make sense. He uttered a ragged sigh. “I don’t know who the hell it is.”
“You know,” Stone said, “you just don’t want to face the fact that you’re falling for the mole.”
Trev tensed now. “No,” he hotly denied. He wasn’t falling for anyone. Ever...
“It has to be her,” Stone continued, almost gently. “She probably took your notes to help out her father—”
“No.” He shook his head.
“You don’t even know who it is,” Stone said. “She could have.”
“But then why go after the rest of you?” Trev asked.
“Cast suspicion elsewhere,” Ronan offered.
Trev knew she regretted helping smear Muriel. He suspected that was why she’d started buying Bette’s Beguiling Bows. The lingerie didn’t seem her style—although she looked hotter than hell in it. But since she felt bad about hurting Muriel, she certainly would not have tried to frame her for office espionage.
A knock sounded at the door.
Since it was his office, he called out, “Come in.”
Miguel opened the door.
“Thanks for not walking right in this time,” Trev said.
And Miguel’s face flushed. “I shouldn’t have brought her to Simon’s office,” he admitted.
“Why did you?” Trev asked.
“Because I don’t believe she’s the mole,” he said. And now he met Trev’s gaze, and his eyes were dark with reproach. “And she deserved to know that you suspected her.”
He wasn’t the only one who’d seen through Allison’s ice queen facade to the vulnerable woman she really was.
“How did you know?” Trev asked.
“I wouldn’t have survived the streets if I wasn’t aware of what was going on around me,” Miguel said. Then he looked at all of them. “And neither would any of you.”
It was true. But Trev still felt uneasy.
“Why do you think it’s not her?” Stone asked. He seemed the most determined to think it was her now.
Miguel reached for the remote sitting on Trev’s desk. A TV rose from the middle of the conference table. Miguel clicked it on and reversed footage to a breaking news report from a local station.
His stomach lurched. And he turned toward the others. “Which one of you called her?”
Each partner shook his head. They all looked as shocked as he was.
He turned to Miguel.
“Not me,” the receptionist said. “But doesn’t this prove to you that it’s not her?”
Trev had already believed her. But now he worried that he wouldn’t be able to convince her of that, not after she saw this report. He hoped like hell she didn’t, or he had no doubt that he would never see her again.
But the thought had no more entered his head than the sound of heels striking hardwood echoed from the hall. The door opened this time without a knock. It opened so hard that it struck the wall behind it.
Allison stood in the doorway, shaking with fury. There was no doubt she had seen the report that played yet across the television screen. “Gloating?” she asked.
Trev tensed. “What?” He had never bragged about being with her. The others had just assumed.
She gestured at the television. “Which one of you talked to that reporter? Fed her those lies?”
They all stared at her, dumbfounded.
Miguel must have realized he’d left the front desk unmanned, or the burly former gang member was scared of her, because he rushed out of the room.
“It doesn’t matter which one of you did it,” she said, but she glanced at him as she said that. And he knew that it did matter—if it was him.
But he’d been with her. Surely, she had to realize that he’d had no time to talk to anyone let alone a reporter. Hell, none of them ever talked to reporters without her present.
“I’m going to sue you all for slander,” she threatened them. “How dare you drag my company down with yours!”
“We had nothing to do with that report,” Simon told her.
“What?” she asked. Her voice had gone so shrill she sounded nearly hysterical. “Are you going to blame me for that, too? What the hell do you think I’m doing—committing career suicide?”
They were all silent. Like Trev, they had to be realizing how off base they’d been about her. She was definitely not an ice queen or a fool. There was no way she would have risked damaging her own reputation to damage theirs.
“I’ve got this, guys,” he told the others and walked toward his door to gesture them all out.
“You’ve got this!” she shouted. “Hell, no, you don’t got this! I’m not going to be sweet-talked or seduced out of suing Street Legal! I’m going to bring your damn precious practice down for real!”
Stone and Ronan hurried out with not even a glance at him. They were letting him take this one for the team. And he understood why. He’d been the one who’d suspected her in the first place.
But he knew now if she had been the mole, there would have been a lot more damage done to the practice than had already been done. She wouldn’t have just hurt them. She would have destroyed them just as she was threatening to do now.
Simon, as the managing partner, paused in the doorway. “I should handle this,” he told Trev.
But he shook his head. He knew her better than the others. Now was not the time to argue with her, not when she was as angry as she was.
Her face was flushed, her body tensed. She bristled with fury. No. Simon would not be able to charm or threaten her out of a lawsuit.
Hell, Trev wasn’t sure what he’d be able to do, except wait for her to calm down.
Simon glanced at her. She stood right in front of the television, watching the report again. And he shook his head. “You shouldn’t be alone with her...”
Just how dangerous did he think she was?
Of course, Edward had warned him that she’d try to kill him. She hadn’t at her office. He wasn’t so sure that she wouldn’t try now.
“I’ll be fine,” he lied to his partner. He had no idea if he’d survive another passionate encounter with Allison McCann. But he closed the door behind Simon and locked it, locking them inside together.
“Allison...”
She’d gone curiously quiet after all the threats she’d shouted. But now she turned back toward him, and he saw the tears running down her face.
Panic clutched his heart. He’d never done well with tears. Even knowing how his mom had been able to turn them on and off, he’d still let them manipulate him into agreeing to things, like working when he was too young, like letting her leave him to pursue her career...like telling her not to worry about him when she should have worried.
But Allison was more prone to act like nothing bothered her than to cry. No. Her tears were real. Just more hurt than angry.
“Allison...” he murmured again, and he started toward her with his arms outstretched.
But before he could pull her into an embrace, she stepped back and began to laugh and laugh and laugh as if she was unable to stop.
Allison’s chest hurt from her laughter. Or maybe that was from the tears. She had no idea. And clearly neither did Trevor. He stared at her in horror as if he’d thought she’d lost her mind.
And maybe she had when she’d barged into his office with all her threats. But she was getting a grip now. She drew in a deep breath to stop the laughter, to stop the tears.
She hated crying—especially now when she had no right to her tears.
“Are you okay?” Trevor asked her. He held his arms out, but his hands just touched her shoulders, turning her fully toward him.
She shrugged. She had no idea if she was or what she would do now. “So this is karma...” she murmured.
“What?”
“I did that to so many other people,” she said and she gestured back at the television screen. “I was the source for reports like that. Now I know what it feels like.”
And she didn’t like it.
“You issued statements about our cases,” he said. “You helped me show what those corporations were covering up.”
“Your cases were easy,” she said. She’d never had a crisis of conscience over them. “But Ronan’s... What we did to Muriel Sanz...”
“Made her a household name,” Trev said. “Her career is bigger than it ever was. Hell, she was just voted the world’s most beautiful woman.”
But the magazine that had given her the title was only looking at her outside. Thanks to McCann Public Relations, everyone had thought the supermodel was ugly inside—that she was a liar and a cheat.
But that had been Ronan’s client, Muriel’s ex-husband.
“Stop beating yourself up about that,” Trevor told her.
How had he known that it bothered her? Most other people thought she truly was an ice queen who had no feelings and no conscience—just like her mother.
She shivered. But Trevor had gotten to know her, so well that it scared her even more than someone trying to take down her firm. But since Trevor knew her so well, he would know exactly how to hurt her, take away what mattered most to her. Her company...
“Was it your idea?” she asked, and she gestured at the television again. It had stopped at the end of the report.
His eyes widened in shock or maybe innocence. Was it real or feigned, though? She couldn’t trust anything about him—anything he said or did.
He shook his head. “I was with you right after I left here.”
“You could have called her on the way to my office,” she said. “Or you could have had one of your partners or Miguel do your dirty work.”
Just like they had always had her do it.
Karma really had bit her in the ass. She deserved this, whatever this was.
“It was the mole,” Trevor said.
“What mole?”
“Our mole.”
But was it their mole? What if it had never been their mole?
“You said the cases that were sabotaged were ones I had worked on,” she said.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Every one of them I had touched?”
“Yes, that’s the only reason I thought it could have been you. You were the only thing every one of them had in common.”
She released a shaky sigh as she realized what that meant. “Oh, my God,” she murmured, “It was me...”