Page 39 of Legal Attraction
Muriel laughed. “You’re always working the angles, huh?”
“Is that a problem?”
“It is when you smear innocent people.”
Allison jumped up from her chair now. “If you made this appointment in order to attack me, then you should leave right now.”
“If I’d wanted to attack you,” Muriel said, “I wouldn’t have made an appointment. I would have done it someplace public and embarrassing, like your favorite restaurant or on the street outside. I would have wanted to embarrass you like you embarrassed me.”
Allison’s pale skin flushed, but it wasn’t with embarrassment. It was anger. “I was just doing my job, Ms. Sanz,” she said defensively. “You should not be taking this personally or making it personal.”
“It was personal to me,” Muriel said, flinching as she remembered having to warn her grandparents. Well, she’d tried. But she’d been too late. The story had already broken before she’d had the chance.
Allison shook her head. “Is that why you filed a complaint with the bar association against Ronan Hall? Out of spite?”
Muriel snorted. “Spite? I am not a child.”
“You’re acting like one,” Allison accused her. “Lashing out...”
She was tempted to show this bitch exactly what acting out looked like, but she held her temper. Physically. Verbally she let the other woman have it. “I could sue you for defamation of character,” she threatened. “Those witnesses were lying. I have proof of it.”
“Forged memos,” Allison said with a disdainful sniff.
“That’s what Ronan claims,” Muriel said. And she was beginning to believe him. “So you’ve talked to him.”
“I work closely with all of the partners of Street Legal,” Allison said.
How closely? And did she just work with them? Or was it more than work?
“I know,” Muriel said. “That’s why I’m here. I want to know whose idea it was to publicly smear me. Yours or Ronan’s?” She wanted to cross her fingers in the hope that Allison would take the responsibility. That she would say that Ronan fought her over every press release.
But Allison said nothing. She just sat back down and shook her head.
“I deserve the truth,” Muriel said. “Not that I expect you to recognize it.”
Allison leaned back in her chair, and her beautiful face twisted into a tight grimace, like she’d sucked on a particularly sour lemon. “You wasted your time coming here,” she said. “Unless slinging your insults will make you feel better...since all your recent success obviously hasn’t.”
“So you’re of the same school of thought as Ronan,” Muriel said. “That the end justifies the means.”
Allison just tilted her head and studied Muriel through those icy blue eyes of hers.
“It doesn’t,” Muriel told her. “Not when the means were so mean...” Tears stung her eyes now, and she rushed toward the door. When she opened it, she slammed into the body standing outside it.
And she nearly plowed over Allison McCann’s assistant who’d obviously been listening at the door. “If I’d known why you were here,” he whispered as he led her through the reception area toward the elevators, “I could have told you that you were wasting your time.”
“I should have known I wouldn’t get any answers here,” Muriel agreed as she blinked back her tears of frustration.
It was Ronan’s fault that she was so damn frustrated. She wanted him so badly. But she didn’t want him if he was really the man she’d originally thought he was—the liar, the ruthless lawyer.
Who was he?
“You should have asked me,” Edward said as he led her toward the elevator.
Muriel stopped. “You know?”
“I sit in on all of Allison’s meetings,” he said, “except for this one.”
Apparently he was the one to whom Muriel should have spoken. Maybe that was why Allison hadn’t allowed him to sit in.
