Page 36 of Legal Attraction
“You weren’t married long enough to be awarded alimony,” Ronan reminded him.
“But you got me a great settlement.”
“Yes, I did.” Far more than what Ronan now realized the man had deserved. “And you agreed to that settlement, so you can’t go after any more.”
“But Muriel would still only be a face and a body with no one knowing her name if it hadn’t been for us,” Arte persisted. “That should get us something, some percentage of her earnings.”
It wasn’t Ronan or the PR firm that Muriel should have worried would send her a bill. It was her damn ex.
“It got me a complaint to the bar association,” Ronan said. “That’s why I called you.”
“Complaint?” Arte asked, and he tensed now.
“Yes, Muriel claims I suborned perjury,” he said. “She thinks I coerced all those witnesses to lie.”
Arte laughed again, but this time it sounded hollow with nerves. “Don’t worry about it. She can’t prove anything.”
“There’s nothing to prove, right?” Ronan asked. “I believed those people were all speaking the truth.”
“They were—of course they were.”
“The same truth, nearly line for line,” Ronan murmured. “As if they’d rehearsed it...” Why hadn’t he noticed that before? Why hadn’t he questioned them—and Arte Armand—more?
Maybe it was what they’d said about her cheating, about her orgies, that had distracted him from reality and plunged him into the fantasy of a naked Muriel Sanz, insatiable for sex.
Arte shrugged his thin shoulders. “They all saw the same things,” he said. “So, of course, they’re going to describe them the exact same way.”
Now Ronan knew who’d written the script.
“If they were lying, I could lose my license,” he said.
Arte reached out and squeezed his arm. “Don’t worry. You had no idea.”
“That they were lying?” He needed to know. But if Arte admitted to what he’d done, Ronan would probably be tempted to tear him apart. Even now, his hands were clenching into fists.
“No, no, of course not,” Arte stammered. “I don’t know why she’s so upset, anyway. It’s not like the trial hurt her or her career...”
That was the argument that Ronan kept giving her, too. But he heard how self-serving it sounded now. “She is upset,” Ronan said. And he was beginning to understand why.
Arte uttered a regretful sigh. “Because of her grandparents...”
“What?”
“They raised her after her mom flaked out and ran off,” Arte said. “They’re real sweet, real conservative people. They must have been devastated.”
Over what had come out of the trial, over what Ronan, using McCann Public Relations, had put out there for them to see and hear. He flinched.
Arte sighed again but straightened in his chair. “But they know her, so it’s not like they believed...” He pressed his hand to his mouth, as if trying to push the words back in.
“It’s not like they believed the lies?” Ronan prodded him.
Arte shook his head. “No, no, not the lies. The truth,” he stammered some more. “They wouldn’t believe the truth about her. They would only see the best in her.”
“That she’s straightforward and honest,” Ronan said.
And Arte turned toward him, his brow furrowed. “You believe that about her?”
“That’s what one of her true friends has said about her,” Ronan replied.
