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