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 the hell are you doing?” he asked as an alarm began to ring, echoing throughout the small car. His head started to pound, nearly as hard as his heart had been since the moment he caught sight of her crossing the lobby like she was gliding down a fashion-show runaway.
Ronan was not crazy about confined spaces—especially being confined with her. He punched the button to restart the elevator.
It lurched up, then began to drop—the car and his stomach. He’d been worried about losing his law license, but apparently that wasn’t all that Muriel Sanz might cost him. He’d be lucky if he survived this elevator ride with her.
* * *
A scream tore from Muriel’s throat as her feet left the floor. The elevator was falling faster than she was, plummeting down the shaft. Then the car jerked so abruptly to a stop that she tumbled forward, falling hard. But she didn’t hit the terrazzo floor of the elevator car. Instead she hit a heavily muscled body that had fallen before she had.
Ronan Hall lay sprawled across the car, his legs stretched across the floor while his back and shoulders had slammed against one of the smoked glass and brass walls. Maybe his head had hit the wall, as well, since his eyes were closed.
Was he unconscious?
From where she’d landed against his chest, she stared up at his handsome face. His features could have been carved from granite; he was that chiseled—his jaw square, his cheekbones as sharp as his nose. His lashes were long and thick and black against his cheeks. They didn’t so much as flicker.
Despite herself and all the many thousands of reasons she had to hate his guts, concern filled her, and she asked, “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, his voice low and gruff. “Did we stop falling yet?”
She was afraid to move, just in case they hadn’t. That fear was the only reason she lay atop him, her legs tangled with his. Or else she would have scrambled off his body. But she didn’t dare in case the elevator began to fall again.
She sucked in a breath and held it, and his scent filled her nostrils and her head. He smelled so damn good—not like expensive cologne that her ex had always worn. No. Ronan smelled like soap and...
A scent that was his alone.
Not only was he handsome as hell but he had to smell good, too? It wasn’t fair, but she shouldn’t have been surprised. Life had not been very fair to Muriel lately.
She was too positive to let that keep her down, though. She would not stay down now, either, once she was certain the elevator wasn’t going to drop all the way to the bottom of the shaft and crumple like an aluminum can under a car tire.
“Are you okay?” Ronan’s voice, even deeper with concern, asked the question now.
She glanced up at his face to find his eyes open as he studied her. She shrugged, then gasped as the car creaked. Ronan’s strong arms slid around her, holding her still—or maybe she had already tensed because he’d touched her. Either way, she was frozen with fear—of falling and of how he was making her feel.
“Don’t move,” he said, his voice dropping so low that it was a deep rumble in his chest.
She had no intention of moving, but she couldn’t control the frantic beating of her heart. It was pounding so hard that she felt her whole body shaking with the force of it. Hers wasn’t the only one. His heart hammered in time with hers. Her breasts were crushed against his muscular chest.
“Can I breathe?” she asked, her lungs aching as she tried to control the panic making her want to pant for air.
“I don’t know if we should...” he murmured, but his breath stirred her hair as he whispered the words.
A strand tangled in her lashes, but she didn’t dare reach up for it. But that meant her hands stayed where they were, and she only just realized exactly where they were and what she was touching. Instinctively she’d extended them to break her fall, and since she’d fallen on him, her hands were on him. One was against his biceps while the other was braced on his thigh. Both muscles rippled beneath her touch, as if he’d just realized where she was touching him, too.
And his body, which had already been taut with tension, grew harder yet. Against her abdomen, she felt his erection straining the fly of his dress pants.
He must have come right from the office to see Bette, since he was still wearing a suit. In the pictures she’d seen of him in his downtime, he’d had on jeans and a T-shirt. Not that she’d seen that many pictures of him in his downtime. If he and his partners in the Street Legal law practice hadn’t been as notorious as they were in Manhattan, he probably wouldn’t have been photographed at all. But he and the others were infamous for being ruthless litigators and lovers. When they were photographed outside the courtroom, they were usually with a famous female—an actress or model or fashion designer...
She tried to shift her hips, so her mound wouldn’t press so tightly against his cock. But he groaned. And one of his arms slid around her back as his hand grasped her hip.
Through gritted teeth, he warned her, “Do. Not. Move.”
The elevator had stopped dropping. It had even stopped making those ominous creaking noises. “I don’t think it’s going to fall,” she said.
“I’m not worried about the elevator,” he replied.
“Then why are we lying on the floor afraid to move?” she asked.
He groaned again and his fingers tightened their hold. But she doubted that he was in any real pain—because his mouth curved into a slight, naughty
