Legal Desire. Lisa Childs
him to keep the news to himself.
Finally, he heard the ding of the elevator as the car arrived at the floor for Street Legal, the law practice he owned with his three best friends—guys with whom he’d survived living on the streets. The rumble of deep voices echoed off the high, open ceiling of the reception area. They were probably complaining about his calling this early Monday morning meeting.
Their usual business meeting was Tuesday morning. But this wasn’t business as usual, and it couldn’t wait any longer.
Along with the voices, he heard the tap of dress shoes against the hardwood floor: Simon. The heavy strike of boots: Stone. And the soft squeak of tennis shoes: Ronan.
They were all here. And within seconds they trudged into his office. Like Simon, who was the managing partner, Trev had a conference table in his. As a class-action-lawsuit attorney, he always had multiple clients. Sometimes even this voluminous space wasn’t big enough for those meetings.
But it was big enough for this one, for the four of them.
Ronan glared at him through narrowed dark eyes. “Why do you look so damn happy?”
“Maybe he finally got some,” Stone suggested. He was equally bleary-eyed.
Simon shook his blond head. “Nope. He would look as exhausted as we do if he was getting any.”
“You all do look like hell,” Trev agreed.
“Jealous?” Ronan said as he dropped onto one of the chairs around the conference table. Then he eagerly reached for the carafe of coffee sitting in the middle of the reclaimed wood table.
Trev felt a pang of something that could have been jealousy. But he dismissed the ridiculous thought. He had no reason—absolutely no reason—to be jealous of these guys. He could have sex any time he wanted. And love? He wanted no part of that mess.
“Disgusted,” he corrected Ronan, and he shook his head to emphasize his point. “How the mighty have fallen.” He made a tsking sound with his tongue against his teeth. How had it happened when they’d all sworn they would never risk their hearts?
Fools...
He really did pity them. Just pity.
Not envy.
“Yup, he’s jealous,” Stone said with a deep chuckle.
Trev snorted. “Yeah, right.”
“Did you call this meeting for dating advice?” Simon asked. Since Simon was the managing partner, he usually called the business meetings. “Do you want to find out if Bette or Muriel or Hillary have a friend that they can set you up with?”
He felt another pang, but he knew what this one was: his pride was stinging.
“I don’t need a setup,” he assured his friend. “I am the only one of us not thinking with his dick nowadays, which is probably why I’m the one who finally figured out who the hell the mole is.”
He had their attention now. Three pairs of eyes widened and focused on him as three jaws fell open in shock.
“You figured it out?” Simon asked. As managing partner, he had considered it his responsibility to find out who the hell the mole was that had been selling information from their case files or passing off forged or real information as coming from their case files.
It wasn’t that Trev hadn’t trusted Simon to find the mole. But he’d had a vested interest. Since Trev had been the first one the mole had hit—during his biggest class-action lawsuit yet—he’d taken it personally. And because he hadn’t been willing to risk the mole compromising his next case, he had put off taking another one until the damn mole was caught.
“Who is it?” Ronan asked.
Trev was surprised the rest of them hadn’t figured it out yet. Now that he knew, it seemed obvious. How had they not suspected her sooner?
“Who?” Stone asked.
All of them were impatient to hear the identity. Maybe they wouldn’t have minded if he had cut their weekends short for this.
“I don’t have proof,” he cautioned them. “Yet. But I’ll get it.” He had already put a plan in motion.
Simon arched a blond brow. “Are you really sure you know who it is? Remember that I once thought Bette was the mole.”
And instead, she’d turned out to be the first woman for whom Simon Kramer had ever fallen. That would not be the case for Trevor.
“Who is it?” Stone asked again, his voice gruff with impatience.
Trev shook his head as he had earlier—with pity—that they hadn’t figured it out like he had. “Allison McCann.”
“No...” Simon shook his head now but in protest. “That’s not possible.”
“It’s not just possible,” Trev replied, “it’s probable. She’s the one thing every one of those cases has in common. She and her public relations firm worked every one of them.” He gestured toward his door. “You’ve even given her an office to use on our floor with access to our computer system that has all our files.”
Simon’s face paled. He was the one who had set up the office for her—the one who’d hired her firm to ramp up their public image years ago, the one who encouraged them all to use her to help sway the public to their side of their cases. He shook his head again, but it wasn’t in protest. It was in self-disgust. He looked sick.
While Simon’s face had paled, Ronan’s flushed with anger, and he cursed.
But Stone was stubborn. He snorted. “C’mon, Trev. You just want to sleep with her, so you’re trying to convince yourself she’s the mole.”
Simon had tried to seduce Bette into admitting she was the mole. Instead, she had seduced him.
Trev had no intention of seducing anyone let alone being seduced. He had a better plan than risking the frostbite having sex with Allison McCann would give him.
“You were there when she admitted she hates lawyers,” Trev reminded him.
And Stone’s face paled. He released a ragged breath.
“If she hates us all so much, why the hell does she do our PR?” Ronan asked. He was clearly on board.
Even though they were all lawyers who loved to argue, none of them could belabor the point that it all made perfect sense. It had to be Allison McCann. She was the one who’d been selling them out and sabotaging them.
“Why?” Simon asked.
“Who cares?” Trev shot back at him.
He didn’t give a damn why she’d done it. He just intended to stop her.
That wasn’t all he planned to do to the mole. He wasn’t going to risk frostbite. But he was intrigued and attracted enough to see if there was any thawing the ice goddess that was Allison McCann.
She had been summoned. She hated that. She had her own business. She was the boss. But if she wanted to keep that business going, she had to have clients. So she worked for them. They were the boss. And she was their bitch.
Allison had learned young how to be a bitch. She’d been taught by the biggest one she’d ever known. But she had no time to think about the past because the elevator bell dinged, announcing her arrival to the floor of Street Legal.
These were her best clients but her least favorite. The things she did for them...
Would have kept her awake had she had a conscience anymore. She’d sold that long ago—along with her soul—in order to have her own business. With a sigh, she stepped off the elevator and headed through the reception area.
The receptionist, a former gang member, watched her approach. She had never understood why they’d chosen his face to be the one clients saw