CHAPTER ONE
DAMN IT! RONAN HALL had been seeing her everywhere. But then, Muriel Sanz was everywhere: on every billboard in Times Square and on the cover of every magazine in every newsstand in the city. Hell, in every city...
Ronan hadn’t expected to see the woman here, though, in the lobby of the apartment building he’d just been about to leave. She’d walked in as he’d been walking out, but he’d turned around to follow her to the elevator. Maybe he should have expected her to be here, since he knew they were friends. Their friendship could cost him his law license if the bar association believed Muriel’s lies and the evidence she’d manufactured against him.
Damn her!
As the elevator doors began to slide closed, he shoved his hand between them and held them open. She wasn’t getting away from him. Not that she’d been trying. She hadn’t seemed to notice him at all as she passed through the lobby of the building in the Garment District. While crossing the polished terrazzo floor she had been looking down at her cell phone, typing a text.
Who was she texting? Her friend Bette? A lover? Given what he knew about her and her insatiable appetites, probably a lover.
The doors started to close again—on his fingers. He cursed and used both hands to shove them open so he could step inside the car.
She stood alone in the elevator, at the polished brass control panel, pressing the button to shut the doors. She had definitely seen him now. Her naturally tan skin was flushed, and her pale green eyes were bright with anger.
She was so unbelievably beautiful—maybe the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. That was why she was such a successful supermodel. Her hair had strands of every color in it, and her face was all cheekbones and full lips and those big, beautiful eyes. And her body...
Even though she wore a long, oversize sweater with black leggings, the green knit clung to every swell of her full breasts and curvy hips and ass. It just wasn’t fair she had a figure like that.
And he suspected none of it was surgically enhanced or the media would have discovered and had a field day with that, just as they had every other aspect of her life.
That was why he saw her everywhere—even in his damn dreams.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked.
He’d been in the building to see her friend Bette Monroe. He and his law partners, minus their managing partner, Simon Kramer, had come to talk to her on Simon’s behalf. Bette was Simon’s former assistant, and he was miserable without her—personally more than professionally. And it was Ronan’s fault that she’d broken off her personal relationship as well as her professional one with Simon.
So, after his partners had left, he’d stayed behind, trying to decide if he needed to come back and apologize to her again. Or maybe for the first time. He wasn’t exactly sure if he’d already apologized or not. But then, he wasn’t exactly sure if he owed her an apology or not.
“I’m going to see your friend,” he said, his decision made, and he reached for the control panel.
A button was lit up, but it wasn’t for the tenth floor where Bette’s apartment was. Before he could touch it, Muriel slammed both her palms against the panel, hiding the buttons but also pressing them all in the process. The doors closed, and the car began to ascend. The elevator was small, with smoked mirrors, polished brass and a floor that matched the terrazzo in the lobby.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
The car stopped and the brass-plated doors slid open. But she didn’t step out of the elevator. Instead, she jabbed the button to close the doors again. Then she pressed the button for the lobby, but all the other floors were already lit up. They would have to stop at every one going up before the car would bring them back to the ground level.
“You’re not going to harass Bette anymore,” she told him. “She is not the one who gave me the evidence I forwarded to the bar association.”
“Evidence.” He snorted. “That’s not evidence. All of it is forged bullshit, and that’s going to be easily proven.”
Her wide eyes narrowed with suspicion. “If that’s the truth, then why are you so tense? So nervous?”
“Because I’m pissed you’d go to such extremes to smear me.” A former runaway who’d spent some time living on the streets, Ronan had worked hard to achieve everything he had, and he hated that anything—especially her lies—could put his career and his partners’ law practice at risk.
She snorted now. “That I would go so far to smear you? You hired a PR firm to destroy my image! And for what? Just so you would win a bigger settlement for my slimy ex in the divorce?” Her long, thick lashes fluttered, but he doubted she was flirting with him. Was she blinking back tears?
He felt a twinge of something. Sympathy? No. He had none for women like her. The only thing he should feel for her was suspicion and caution. He had no doubt she would try to play him—just like she had her ex-husband when she’d had him sign that ridiculous prenup agreement before marrying him. The only way around it had been to prove who and what Muriel Sanz really was.
The elevator dinged, and the doors opened again. She jabbed the button to close them. “How can you sleep at night?” she asked him.
Not very well lately because he thought of her all the time, even when he was with another woman. He imagined Muriel’s beautiful face, her sexy-as-sin body...
How could he be so attracted to a woman like her? What the hell was wrong with his dick?
“I could ask you the same thing,” he said. “You’re the master manipulator. Is that how you convinced Bette to give you the stationery with the Street Legal letterhead?”
He had started to believe that his partner’s former assistant had had no part in Muriel’s sick plot. Bette Monroe had seemed stunned when he’d confronted her about her friend filing the complaint with the bar association.
“I told you,” she said, slowly, as if he was too dense to understand, “that Bette did not give me anything.”
“So you took it from her without her knowledge?” It would have been easy enough to do had she ever visited the offices of Street Legal. But he’d checked, and she hadn’t. Maybe Bette had brought some stationery home with her, though. He needed to ask her.
The elevator stopped and the doors opened again. She jabbed the button to close them. “I did not take a damn thing.”
He snorted again. “I’ll see if Bette remembers anything.” He had already interrogated her once, and of course she had denied helping her friend. But maybe she would remember Muriel going through her purse or taking something from her apartment. Would she admit it to him, though? Or would she continue to protect her friend?
“You and that sleazebag managing partner of yours have already treated Bette like crap,” Muriel said. “You are not going to hurt her anymore.” Now she jabbed the stop button, and the elevator jerked to a shuddering halt between floors.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked as an alarm began to ring, echoing throughout the small car. His head started to pound, nearly as hard as his heart had been since the moment he caught sight of her crossing the lobby like she was gliding down a fashion-show runaway.
Ronan was not crazy about confined spaces—especially being confined with her. He punched the button to restart the elevator.
It lurched up, then began to drop—the car and his stomach. He’d been worried about losing his law license, but apparently that wasn’t all that Muriel Sanz might cost him. He’d be lucky if he survived this elevator ride with her.
* * *
A scream tore from Muriel’s throat as her feet left the floor. The elevator was falling faster than she was, plummeting down the shaft. Then the car jerked so abruptly to a stop that she tumbled forward, falling hard. But she didn’t hit the terrazzo floor of the elevator car. Instead she hit a heavily muscled body that had fallen before she had.
Ronan Hall lay sprawled across the car, his legs stretched across the floor while his back and shoulders had slammed against one of the smoked glass and brass walls. Maybe his head had hit the wall, as well, since his eyes were closed.
Was he unconscious?
From where she’d landed against his chest, she stared up at his handsome face. His features could have been carved from granite; he was that chiseled—his jaw square, his cheekbones as sharp as his nose. His lashes were long and thick and black against his cheeks. They didn’t so much as flicker.
Despite herself and all the many thousands of reasons she had to hate his guts, concern filled her, and she asked, “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, his voice low and gruff. “Did we stop falling yet?”
She was afraid to move, just in case they hadn’t. That fear was the only reason she lay atop him, her legs tangled with his. Or else she would have scrambled off his body. But she didn’t dare in case the elevator began to fall again.
She sucked in a breath and held it, and his scent filled her nostrils and her head. He smelled so damn good—not like expensive cologne that her ex had always worn. No. Ronan smelled like soap and...
A scent that was his alone.
Not only was he handsome as hell but he had to smell good, too? It wasn’t fair, but she shouldn’t have been surprised. Life had not been very fair to Muriel lately.
She was too positive to let that keep her down, though. She would not stay down now, either, once she was certain the elevator wasn’t going to drop all the way to the bottom of the shaft and crumple like an aluminum can under a car tire.
“Are you okay?” Ronan’s voice, even deeper with concern, asked the question now.
She glanced up at his face to find his eyes open as he studied her. She shrugged, then gasped as the car creaked. Ronan’s strong arms slid around her, holding her still—or maybe she had already tensed because he’d touched her. Either way, she was frozen with fear—of falling and of how he was making her feel.
“Don’t move,” he said, his voice dropping so low that it was a deep rumble in his chest.
She had no intention of moving, but she couldn’t control the frantic beating of her heart. It was pounding so hard that she felt her whole body shaking with the force of it. Hers wasn’t the only one. His heart hammered in time with hers. Her breasts were crushed against his muscular chest.
“Can I breathe?” she asked, her lungs aching as she tried to control the panic making her want to pant for air.
“I don’t know if we should...” he murmured, but his breath stirred her hair as he whispered the words.
A strand tangled in her lashes, but she didn’t dare reach up for it. But that meant her hands stayed where they were, and she only just realized exactly where they were and what she was touching. Instinctively she’d extended them to break her fall, and since she’d fallen on him, her hands were on him. One was against his biceps while the other was braced on his thigh. Both muscles rippled beneath her touch, as if he’d just realized where she was touching him, too.
And his body, which had already been taut with tension, grew harder yet. Against her abdomen, she felt his erection straining the fly of his dress pants.
He must have come right from the office to see Bette, since he was still wearing a suit. In the pictures she’d seen of him in his downtime, he’d had on jeans and a T-shirt. Not that she’d seen that many pictures of him in his downtime. If he and his partners in the Street Legal law practice hadn’t been as notorious as they were in Manhattan, he probably wouldn’t have been photographed at all. But he and the others were infamous for being ruthless litigators and lovers. When they were photographed outside the courtroom, they were usually with a famous female—an actress or model or fashion designer...
She tried to shift her hips, so her mound wouldn’t press so tightly against his cock. But he groaned. And one of his arms slid around her back as his hand grasped her hip.
Through gritted teeth, he warned her, “Do. Not. Move.”
The elevator had stopped dropping. It had even stopped making those ominous creaking noises. “I don’t think it’s going to fall,” she said.
“I’m not worried about the elevator,” he replied.
“Then why are we lying on the floor afraid to move?” she asked.
He groaned again and his fingers tightened their hold. But she doubted that he was in any real pain—because his mouth curved into a slight, naughty grin. “Maybe I was just enjoying you throwing yourself at me.”
She sucked in a breath of shock and wriggled, trying to move off him. But his hands held her too tightly, and all she managed was to grind her hips against his groin. And to rock the elevator again.
The cables creaked. But they held. The car was not going to tumble any farther down the shaft. She was not worried about dying anymore. Instead, she was worried about her reaction to Ronan Hall.
Instead of slowing down, her heart was beating even faster. Her skin was tingling and hot everywhere her body was in contact with his—which was pretty much everywhere. He was so muscular, so tall and broad.
And when she’d sucked in that breath, she’d inhaled his scent again; it filled her head. The way he would fill her...
His erection was so long and hard. Heat rushed straight to hrt core, making her hot and wet. For him?
No. It wasn’t possible. She could not be attracted to the man who had destroyed her reputation, and nearly her career and her life, as well.
“Let me go!” she demanded.
“Where are you going?” he asked. “We’re stuck in an elevator. So we might as well make the most of this opportunity.” The hand not clutching her hip slid up her back to her head, which he held in his palm while he pressed his mouth to hers.
As their lips connected, Muriel felt a jolt she wanted to attribute to shock. But she knew it was something else—something that had her nipples tightening and heat streaking to her core: lust.
He kissed her tentatively, at first, just skimming his lips across hers. Then she gasped at another jolt of desire, and he deepened the kiss, sliding his tongue inside her mouth. His kiss was hot, passionate and wild.
And that was how it made Muriel feel: hot, passionate and wild. She didn’t want to desire this man, of all men. But he was so damn good-looking—not to mention muscular and skilled.
He was a master kisser—so good that he nearly made her come with just a kiss. But then he began to touch her, too, moving his hand from her hip up her side to cup a breast.
She sucked in a breath, which pushed her breast against his palm.
He gently squeezed, and her breath hissed out between their melded lips. And he groaned in response. He pulled back slightly and moved his hand to the buttons on her sweater, easily flicking them open.
She wore a camisole beneath the sweater. But it was one of her friend’s designs, so it was super sexy with bows holding it up at the shoulders. Once he’d pushed the sweater from her shoulders, he reached for one of those bows.
If he pulled it loose, the camisole would slip down, would reveal her breast for him to see and touch...
She wanted his hands on her. She wanted him.
But she couldn’t. Not really. Not after what he’d done to her—to her reputation, to her savings and to her sense of self-worth.
The only way she wanted Ronan Hall was...on his knees begging for her forgiveness. And she knew that wasn’t very damn likely to happen. Ever.
Not until she’d inflicted the same hell on him that he had put her through.