Page 49 of Legal Attraction
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.”
