Legal Attraction

by Lisa Childs

  What character? During the divorce, it had become clear that he had none.

  “I didn’t think you’d still be mad,” he said, as his lips puckered into a petulant pout.

  Was he that oblivious to how much he’d hurt her?

  “What?” she asked. “How stupid do you think I am?” She had been pretty stupid to fall for Arte in the first place let alone marry him. But she’d thought the prenup would cover her assets. She hadn’t realized someone like Ronan Hall would be able to get so easily around it.

  “You’re not stupid,” Arte said. “You’re very smart. You used what happened—all the media attention—to take your career to the next level. You’re The World’s Most Beautiful Woman.”

  She flinched. The title had begun to wear on her, especially since she felt she hadn’t earned it—not like so many other women out there who’d made smart choices. Not someone like her, who kept going for inappropriate man after inappropriate man.

  But he must not have noticed her reaction because he continued, “That just goes to prove that there is no such thing as bad publicity.”

  Maybe Allison McCann would be able to use that for her next ad campaign for her own business. But no matter what campaign Allison launched, she wasn’t getting Muriel’s business.

  “I didn’t need any publicity,” she reminded him. Since she was fourteen, she’d always had steady work as a model. Her grandmother had worked as a seamstress for a designer who’d given Muriel her first job.

  “I do,” Arte said. “I’m producing that musical I always talked about.”

  She didn’t know what he was waiting for—congratulations? She knew the only way he’d managed to produce anything was from taking so much money from her in court.

  He smiled like a little boy trying to convince his mother to give him a cookie or maybe a puppy. “And I could use some publicity for it,” he said, “so people will come and see it.”

  He’d taken some money from her but not enough to produce anything on Broadway. So it must have been off-off.

  “Is that why you’re here?” she asked, as her stomach churned with disgust. “You want me to mention your play?”

  “Or you could invest in it.”

  If anyone deserved a slap in the face, it was her ex. But he didn’t inspire any passion in Muriel. Maybe he never really had. Because whatever attraction she’d once felt for him paled into insignificance compared to what she felt for Ronan.

  All she could do was laugh in his face. “You’re crazy if you think I would help you after what you did.” And she pushed the door toward him to shove him back into the hallway.

  But he caught the edge of the door and held it. “Please, Muriel.”

  And she saw the desperation in his eyes. Karma must have finally bitten him in the ass. He was probably on the verge of losing everything he’d taken from her.

  “Why don’t you go see what Ronan Hall can do for you?” she said. But she only made the suggestion because she wanted to hear what he would say about his former divorce lawyer.

  “I already did,” Arte admitted. “He said that the settlement was final. I can’t get any more money from you.” His mouth pulled into that petulant pout again. “Even though all the publicity over the trial has made you even more successful.”

  And he obviously wanted a cut of it, like he was her agent or something. She felt sick. Why had she not realized what a mercenary little man Arte Armand was? How had she been so fooled?

  Because she always tried to see the best in people...unlike Ronan who only saw the worst. Why hadn’t he seen Arte for what he was, though?

  “No, you can’t get anything more from me,” she agreed. She would never help this slimy jerk with anything.

  “He told me that you filed a complaint against him,” Arte continued.

  So who had called the meeting between the men? Ronan? Or Arte?

  It didn’t matter. All that mattered was Muriel finally learning the truth.

  “I’ll testify against him if you’ll give me just a little more money,” Arte said. “Or if you don’t want to pay me, you could mention the musical in some of your interviews or on your social media.”

  Her fingers curled into a fist. Maybe instead of slapping him, she should just slug him. But she had to know. “What would you do?”

  “I’d claim that he knew those witnesses were lying,” Arte said. “That he put them up to it. Isn’t that what you want? For him to lose his license?”

  She shook her head. “No, Arte. What I want is the truth.” But she wasn’t sure that he would know what that was, even if it bit him on the ass right next to the teeth marks from karma.

  He tensed, as if sensing a trap.

  “I’d offer to pay you for it,” she said. “But I’d still have no idea if you were telling me the truth or just what you thought I wanted to hear.”

  So she wasn’t going to learn anything from Arte Armand, at least, not anything she could trust.

  “I’m good at that,” he admitted, “telling people what they want to hear, showing them who they want to see.”

  She shivered as she realized she hadn’t been as stupid as she’d thought she was. She had been played by a master.

  And she had a feeling that Ronan had been played, as well—even before Arte confessed, “I knew about Hall’s childhood—how his mother cheated on his father.”

  “How?”

  “Social media,” Arte told her with a cluck of disapproval that she didn’t spend more time on it.

  She had never been big on social media. She wasn’t the model who took selfies and posted them all over the internet. She left the picture taking to the professionals.

  “Some tabloid reporter dug up the scoop about his past,” Arte said.

  “And you used it?” she asked, totally disgusted that he had preyed on Ronan’s past and his pain.

  Arte seemed almost proud of what he’d done, though, as he nodded. “I knew he was the only lawyer who could break that prenup you had me sign. But he had to be motivated.”

  So Arte had motivated him.

  “Why?” she asked. “That’s what I don’t understand. I thought we were friends.” They had been—before they’d become husband and wife. They had always been more friends than lovers. And she was beginning to realize why.

  “Things just don’t happen for me like they do for you,” Arte said. “You’ve never had to work for anything. It just falls in your lap.”

  The modeling. The notoriety. Even those memos she now realized were forged. Those had just dropped into her lap, as well.

  Maybe he was right. But she still wasn’t about to forgive him for what he’d done.

  “It doesn’t excuse what you did,” she said.

  He sighed. “No. It doesn’t.” He started to turn away from the door. “I was wrong to come here.”

  “Yes, you were,” she agreed. But she was glad that he had—because now she knew she wasn’t the only one he’d played. He’d played Ronan, too. “But you were right about something else.”

  He turned back toward her.

  “There is no such thing as bad publicity,” she tossed his words back at him. “So go to the press with your scoop.”

  His brow furrowed. “What scoop?”

  “The truth,” she said, as if it should have been obvious. But to a man like Arte, the truth was the last thing that was obvious to him. “Tell them what you did to me.”

  “Would that make amends to you?”

  “You don’t care about me,” she said. He never had. “But you care about your musical. Get it some attention.”

  “But I’ll be the bad guy,” he said, clearly horrified at putting himself in the position he’d forced on her. “People will hate me.”

  He hadn’t minded doing that to her. She grabbed one of the magazines from the narrow foyer tabl
e behind the door. Showing the cover to him, she said, “It seems like the media likes rooting for the bad guy lately.”

  Which was a sad commentary on life.

  He took the magazine from her and studied it. But she knew he wasn’t seeing her face there. He was seeing his own. He nodded. “You’re right... I need to do this.”

  And she realized now why those witnesses had lied for him. Some people would do anything for even a few minutes of fame. Fortunately for her, in this moment Arte was one of those people.

  Finally, he glanced up from the magazine to focus on her real face. “I need to do this for you, too. I am sorry, Muriel.”

  She doubted it, but she nodded as if she accepted his apology. Then she closed the door on his face and on her past. It was time to let it go. All of it.

  Even Ronan. Especially Ronan—because he hadn’t let go of his own past yet. It still affected him, still influenced him. He was never going to trust a woman or let one as close as she wanted to be to him. She didn’t just want him inside her anymore.

  She wanted to be inside him, as well—inside his heart. And she wasn’t sure he even had one.

  No. It was time to let the past go and Ronan Hall along with it.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  RONAN STARED AT the screen on Simon’s laptop as Arte Armand made a full confession on some internet talk show. “How the hell did you manage that?” he asked.

  All those years ago on the streets, he’d known Simon was a good con artist. But so many years had passed since then, he’d figured he might have lost his touch. If anything, Simon had only gotten better. He was in awe and executed a little bow of appreciation and respect.

  “Yeah,” Trevor chimed in from the other side of the conference table. “What’d you have to do to him to convince him to come clean?”

  Simon snorted. “I didn’t even meet with him.”

  “What?” Ronan asked. “That was the plan.”

  “Your plan,” Simon reminded him. “And there was no way it would work.”

  “Just like your seduction plan,” Trevor goaded him.

  No. That hadn’t worked, either. But he didn’t understand.

  “Why did Arte do this?”

  “Who cares?” Trevor asked. “Now you can have the complaint against you thrown out.”

  “He doesn’t need to,” Stone said. “My friend in the bar association said the complaint had already been withdrawn. They sent out a certified letter to notify you of that.”

  Had Muriel withdrawn it even before she learned the truth? Had she trusted him?

  Why? He’d done nothing to earn it.

  “This is it,” Simon said, as he fiddled with his keyboard. After rewinding a bit of the video, he pushed Play again and Arte’s voice cracked out of the speakers.

  “I recently saw Muriel,” he said.

  Ronan flinched, realizing the con had probably gone to her for money. It hadn’t mattered to him that Ronan had said he wasn’t entitled to any more. Hell, he hadn’t been entitled to what he’d already gotten out of her.

  Arte continued, “And she made it clear that the only way for me to make up for what I did to her was to tell the truth.”

  “Wonder if she paid him,” Stone murmured.

  Ronan cursed at the thought of that con getting another penny out of her. “I sure as hell hope not.”

  “So, you were lying about your marriage?” the reporter asked Arte.

  He chuckled and crossed his legs. “I’ve been lying about a lot of things.”

  “But you had witnesses at the trial that testified to the orgies.”

  “Never happened,” Arte said.

  “Why would those people lie?” the reporter persisted.

  Arte sighed. “I promised them things...like parts in the musical I’m producing.” And he began a self-promotion monologue that Simon quickly muted.

  “And now we know why he wanted to do the interviews,” Stone said. “Free publicity.”

  It sure as hell wasn’t out of any kindness of his heart. Ronan doubted he had one.

  “Doesn’t matter his reasons,” Trevor said. “It gets Ronan off the hook with the bar.”

  He squirmed slightly in his chair. He really hated sitting. “Yeah, I’m no longer in trouble with the bar, but how does it make the firm look that I was so easily duped?”

  He felt like a damn fool for getting played so easily.

  Simon shook his head. “You don’t think anyone has ever gotten away with lying to a lawyer before this?” He snorted. “People lie all the time.”

  Not Muriel. She’d been telling him the truth from the very beginning. He should have listened to her. Hell, he never should have taken the case against her.

  “I hope not,” Stone said. “I hope my client’s telling the truth.”

  “Why do you sound so cynical again?” Trevor asked Simon. “I thought you were all in love.”

  “I am,” Simon freely admitted, when once he would have been embarrassed to confess his feelings—to having feelings. “And Bette would never lie to me. I was talking about clients, about this business.”

  And all the lawyers nodded in agreement. As they knew, the law was a far cry from black and white. There were so many shades of gray.

  “I trusted Bette all along,” Simon continued. “She was right about Muriel.”

  “She was,” Ronan agreed. Muriel was as straightforward and honest as her true friend had claimed she was. He could only hope that she would be forgiving, as well.

  But could she forgive what he’d done? He didn’t think he could forgive himself.

  * * *

  The dressing room lights burned hot and bright above the mirror in front of Muriel. But despite the heat, Muriel shivered. She had been so cold lately—without Ronan’s touch, without his kisses and his passion.

  Did he know what she’d done? That she’d withdrawn the complaint? Or was he so furious that she’d filed it in the first place that he couldn’t forgive her?

  The truth was out now—all over social media—and even some of the bricks-and-mortar media outlets had reported about her divorce debacle. Arte was getting all the publicity he’d wanted.

  She couldn’t help but think he’d been wrong about there being no such thing as bad publicity. The public backlash had not been kind to him, threatening to shut down his musical before it even opened.

  And there had even been threats of legal action, of charges being brought against him and his friends for lying under oath.

  Muriel should have felt vindication. Her apartment looked like a funeral parlor again with all the I’m sorry flower arrangements. Everyone had apologized to her for believing her ex’s lies.

  Everyone but Ronan...

  She hadn’t seen him in over a week—since that night he’d run from her bedroom right after they’d had sex. Maybe wanting to tie him up had scared him off.

  She would have expected a man like Ronan—notorious for his sexual prowess—would have loved a little sexual play. But apparently that was only if he was in control.

  Was that why he’d run out? Because he’d been afraid he was losing control...?

  Was he starting to have feelings for her, too?

  Or was she only fooling herself like she had with Arte? He certainly had never been really interested in her—just in her money.

  She sighed and made a face at her reflection in the mirror. The shoot was over. She had nothing she needed to change into—no hair or makeup to do.

  In fact, from how quiet the photo studio had become, she suspected everyone had left but her. That was good. If there were reporters waiting outside, they might have given up by now. When everyone else left, they’d probably thought she sneaked out somehow. And she should have.

  But she hadn’t wanted to go home to that flower shop. She could have called
Bette to meet her somewhere. Or she could have gone out with some of the other models who’d invited her along to dinner and drinks.

  Her stomach growled. And she regretted refusing their invitation. But she hadn’t been very hungry lately. At least, not for food.

  She was hungry for Ronan. For even just a glimpse of him.

  The press had been hounding him, too, and they’d caught him outside the office of Street Legal. He’d looked so damn handsome even as he’d lowered his head and ducked into a waiting limo without commenting to reporters.

  What could he say?

  That he’d been wrong?

  Would a man like Ronan—a man that stubborn and proud—ever admit that he had been wrong?

  She had been wrong, too, though, and she hadn’t contacted him. Who was the coward now? Or maybe she was so used to things just falling in her lap, like Arte had pointed out, that she expected Ronan to do the same?

  She sighed and glanced into the mirror again. And this time it wasn’t her face she saw in the glass. It was his...

  She met his reflection’s dark-eyed gaze and asked, “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you to be done,” he said. “Everyone else left.”

  “You were here for the shoot?” she asked. “I didn’t see you.” And she looked for him at every one of them, hoping he’d show up like he had that once.

  “I couldn’t watch,” he said.

  She turned toward him then. “Why not?” This shoot hadn’t been for Bette’s Beguiling Bows. It was a perfume campaign. She had been wearing an evening gown instead of lingerie.

  “I couldn’t watch another man touch you,” he said. A muscle twitched along his tightly clenched jaw, and he spoke through gritted teeth. “Like that model was touching you...”

  She laughed at his outlandish claim. “You were jealous?” She couldn’t believe that a man with Ronan’s confidence would ever be jealous of another man.

  Unless he still believed all those lies about her. Didn’t he think Arte had finally told the truth?