CHAPTER TWELVE
RONAN’S HAND SHOOK as he lifted the glass of water to his mouth. “I should have had you guys meet me at the bar,” he said. He could have used a stiff drink, instead. But he’d called the meeting in Simon’s office, and they all sat around the conference table they used every Tuesday morning for their business meetings.
But it wasn’t Tuesday morning.
And this wasn’t about business as usual. Of course, ever since he’d been reported to the bar association, it hadn’t been business as usual, at least, not for him.
“Do you want a drink?” Simon asked as he stood up and moved toward the bar in the back of his office.
It was Saturday night. Simon should have been with Bette. It was Ronan’s fault he wasn’t. As if Bette didn’t already hate him enough, now she would have another reason. But she wasn’t the only one who hated Ronan. Muriel did. And he wasn’t too crazy about himself right now, either.
“Pour me a drink,” Stone requested. “The trial starts next week.”
“Are you ready for it?” Trevor asked him.
“Of course,” Stone replied. “I’m just a little worried that I might have some surprises. Like Ronan has.”
Ronan had had too many surprises lately.
“Any leads on the mole yet?” Trevor asked Simon.
The managing partner shook his head. “Nothing. I can’t figure out who it could be.”
And that wasn’t good. Simon was the best judge of character of all of them. If he’d been tricked, this mole was good. Very good.
It hadn’t taken much to trick Ronan. He’d fallen easily for Arte’s bunch of lies. “That’s why I called this meeting,” he said.
“You know who the mole is?” Simon asked in surprise. Then he sighed. “Don’t tell me Muriel Sanz. She doesn’t have access to our office.”
She’d walked right in one weekend, but Ronan didn’t bother sharing that. He didn’t believe it was Muriel, either. “I don’t know who the mole is, but I’m worried about the practice,” he said.
“Why are you worried?” Simon asked.
“I think I’m going to get disbarred,” he admitted, and his stomach clenched then sank with the admission.
“You didn’t know those witnesses were lying,” Stone said. “That’ll come out during the investigation of the complaint. You’ll be fine.”
“Street Legal will be fine,” Simon added. Because he was such a good judge of character, he knew that Ronan wasn’t worried just about himself.
He wasn’t worried just about the practice, either. “I really screwed up,” he said.
“The guy’s a con artist,” Simon reminded him.
He shrugged. “But I took it further than I had to. I used McCann to smear the hell out of Muriel.”
Because he’d thought she was like his mother, and he must have subconsciously and childishly been using Muriel to get back at the woman who’d destroyed his father.
“I need to have McCann put out more press releases with the truth about Muriel,” he said. It was only fair to undo the damage he’d done.
“Then the bar will think you knew those witnesses were lying,” Stone said. “You need to keep your mouth shut and let this play out.”
“And keep your zipper up, too,” Trevor advised. “It doesn’t sound like your plan to seduce her into dropping the complaint worked. Sounds like she seduced you, instead.”
She had. He couldn’t deny that. But it had made him discover the truth. “I screwed up,” he repeated. “And I need to fix it.”
“You can,” Stone said. “But wait until the complaint has been withdrawn.”
“She’s not going to withdraw it,” Ronan said. And he didn’t blame her for not believing him enough to do that. After what he’d done, he would never be able to earn her trust. He, more than anyone, understood how hard it was to trust at all—let alone to trust someone who had already hurt you.
Regret filled him. He was so sorry that he’d hurt her. But sorry wasn’t enough.
“So we need to make it go away,” Simon said.
And Ronan had an idea about how to do that. “I’ve got a plan.”
“Your last one didn’t work,” Trevor reminded him. “You should have let me seduce her into dropping the complaint. Are you willing to let me try now?”
“No!” Ronan snapped with such force that Stone grabbed his arm, as if he was afraid that Ronan might leap across the table and go for Trevor’s throat. He was tempted. But he relaxed back in his chair. “Simon has to do this.”
“No,” Simon snapped now. “She’s Bette’s friend. And I’m not cheating on Bette.”
“Have her join in,” Trevor suggested with a lustful sigh. “That would be fun.”
Simon cursed him.
“Two women too much for you to handle?” Trevor teased.
“I can barely handle one,” Simon freely admitted.
“This has nothing to do with women,” Ronan said. “I want Simon to seduce a man.”
“What?” All three of his partners uttered the question.
“Muriel’s ex,” Ronan said. “He checked you out the other day. I think you could get him talking.”
“He’s gay?” Trevor asked, his mouth hanging open in shock. “And he was married to The World’s Most Beautiful Woman?”
Simon sighed and just murmured, “Con.”
“Yes, he is,” Ronan said. “And if we can get him to admit that he asked those witnesses to testify and coached them on what to say, I think the bar would throw out the complaint against me.”
“I am not going to seduce a man,” Simon said.
“You don’t have to seduce him,” Ronan said. “Just con him.”
Simon’s blue eyes narrowed.
So Ronan goaded him, “Unless you’ve lost your touch and aren’t up to the task anymore.”
Simon cursed him now, but he was grinning. Then he asked, “This isn’t just about saving your license or the practice, is it?”
“Of course it is,” Ronan said. “What else could it be about?”
“Muriel,” Simon replied. “You’re falling for her.”
Ronan shook his head as panic clutched his heart. That was why he’d run from her apartment the night before—because of the emotions that had rushed through him. He’d wanted to stay; he’d wanted to hold her all night. He’d wanted to wake up and have her face be the first he saw. But it was, anyway; she was forever on his mind.
“No,” he said and wished that he sounded as if he meant it. “I am not falling for anyone. I just want to right a wrong.” And once that was done, he would forget all about Muriel Sanz. That was the problem. He had to clear his conscience. Then he would be able to get her off his mind and out of his...
Heart?
No. She wasn’t in there. No woman had ever been in there.
“I just need for this to be over,” he said. And for his life to get back to normal, to picking up women in bars for one-night stands while he focused only on work.
For some reason, normal sounded empty and hollow now.
* * *
Muriel’s pulse quickened when the doorbell pealed. Had Ronan returned?
She hoped like hell that he had. As wonderful as the night before had been, it had ended too soon. He’d run off too quickly. If he’d stayed...
Hell, if he’d stayed, she would have started getting used to his being around. She would have started envisioning a future with him. And that wasn’t possible for so many reasons.
No. It was better that he’d run off. And if she was smart, she wouldn’t open the door to him. But she wanted him again—still—so she pulled it open without even looking through the peephole.
But she should have, because if she had, she would have never opened the door. Not to Arte Armand. That was one man she was never allowing back into her life.
Hell.
But she was so shocked that he’d have the guts to come and see her, that she could say nothing. And apparently, her silence unsettled him because he began to nervously stammer, “Mur-Muriel, I—I know that after everything that happened, you probably don’t want to see me.”
If he was waiting for her to argue, she couldn’t. “No. I don’t want to see you.” Because now she couldn’t see what she once had—the sweet, funny man she’d thought she loved.
She could only see the lying weasel he had become. Or maybe he had always been the lying weasel. How had she been so blind? She closed her eyes now, as just the sight of his ridiculously handsome face made her feel sick. Where Ronan’s features could have been carved from granite, Arte’s would have been porcelain or some other smooth, flawless material. His features were so perfect that he was more pretty than handsome. Had she been shallow? Had she fallen for his almost pretty good looks without seeing his real character?
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 table 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.