Triple Jeopardy (Lawyers Behaving Badly Book 2) (3 page)

“Don’t tilt it,” she said, handing it to Maisie.

Maisie slid her fingers under the handle, then followed Mrs. Donahue back out to her desk, where the older woman wrote down an address.

“There’s only one shop Raphael trusts with the clocks, but ever since the owner’s stroke, he doesn’t make house calls, so we’ve got to go to him. Straight there, then straight back, Maisie. No dawdling.” She held out the paper, but when Maisie tried to take it, she wouldn’t let go. “You’re on thin ice.”

“I’ve been getting my work done,” Maisie said, flustered.

“Incorrect. You’ve been doing a
portion
of your work, and I’ve been taking up the slack.”

“That’s because the other assistants keep giving me reports to write,” Maisie said.

“Learn to say no. You’re still new, but you’re falling behind. If you don’t turn things around by the end of the week, I’ll have to find someone more capable.”

3

T
he watchmaker was a fifteen-minute walk from the office, even in stilettos.

Despite Mrs. Donahue’s ominous words echoing in Maisie’s mind, the mild wind and warm sun felt tantalizingly good.

But not as good as Trent’s fingers sliding underneath her skirt. She wondered if Trent was annoyed that she’d teased him and then disappeared.

Maybe it would do her bosses good to be the ones waiting every so often.

Smiling, she threaded her way through the crowds. Snatches of conversation drifted by. The wind gusted, carrying the aroma of fresh bread, but also cigarette smoke.

She wondered about the night Ethan had saved Petra’s life. Maybe Jayne Torrabadella, one of the third-year associates, would have some extra insight at lunch. Jayne had promised to give Maisie career advice, but something always came up and Jayne had canceled three times so far, so Maisie didn’t have much hope. If she had to ambush Jayne in the bathroom, she would.

She wondered again what Trent was thinking.

The way he’d been hung up on, he might have thought she was being funny.
I’m so horny, I can’t even wait for you to complete the sentence.

But by now, he’d have figured out she wasn’t coming. What if he was annoyed? Trent was laid-back overall, but there was an exacting, demanding side of him. Maisie had encountered it a few times, like on the first day of her job, when she’d accidentally dropped a sugar cube. He’d kicked it under the desk, then made her crawl on the floor to fetch it.

Mrs. Donahue had warned Maisie that Trent would be the most demanding of the partners. Mrs. Donahue, who had sent her on this pointless errand as punishment for talking on the phone.

“Sixty-nine more reasons to hate her,” Maisie muttered.

The shop was little more than a hole in the wall, tucked at the bottom of a rare dead-end street in the bustling downtown part of the city. Inside, Maisie relinquished the box to the woman working there and drummed her fingers on the glass counter while she waited.

Shuffling footsteps approached, and a stoop-shouldered man edged into view. “It looks like my son-in-law sold the necessary part to someone else just yesterday,” he said. “I’ll track down another. Come back in a few days and I’ll have this working.”

Of course.
And Mrs. Donahue would blame Maisie for that, too.

“See you in a week,” she said with a smile, then went outside. Too bad it wasn’t the weekend; it would have been the perfect day to sit in the park with a book and a sandwich.

She merged with the other pedestrians on the street corner. The light had just changed, so she tilted her face back to let the sun caress her skin.

“Maisie Novau?”

The voice jarred Maisie right out of her happy place. She felt her shoulders creeping toward her ears even as the reflex to smile kicked in.

It couldn’t possibly be… No, the world wasn’t that cruel. Her fingers reached uselessly for the chain she wasn’t wearing.

Turning, she raised her eyebrows and the pitch of her voice. “Heather!” she squealed, hoping she was mistaken.

But it was indeed Heather Plithen, the awful woman who had stolen Maisie’s college internship and derailed her career. The last time she’d seen Heather, Maisie had been so ashamed about her lack of professional progress that she’d changed jobs.

Heather gave her air kisses on either cheek, leaving behind a lingering cloud of sharp, expensive perfume. It was probably quite pleasant, but Maisie’s hatred was instant and absolute.

“Maisie, you look wonderful. Did you lose weight?”

Somehow, the smile remained cemented to Maisie’s face. “Nope,” she said cheerily. Heather had once told her that if she lost fifteen pounds, she’d be hot—to a certain type of man.

“Well, you look great.”

Heather was clearly fishing for a compliment. A well-deserved one, in fact. She looked fantastic: five-nine of cover girl perfection. Her blonde hair and caramel eyes, in addition to her D-sized bust on a stick-figure frame, had made her a minor celebrity in college. Or maybe it had just seemed that way because they’d had so many classes together. What was certain was that the guys in all those classes had openly lusted over her. Maisie didn’t think Heather was more attractive than she was, but Heather was maybe stereotypically what men wanted.

Porny. Like the bored trophy wife who whips off her cashmere sweater for the big-jawed pizza delivery guy.

Mercifully, the light changed.

“Nice to see you, but I need to get back to work,” Maisie said.

Heather fell into step beside her. “I’m heading this way. I thought you worked in the Northeast?”

“Oh, I changed jobs. Now I’m at LB&B. It’s a—”

“Law firm.” Heather’s eyes were wide. “Which office?”

“Fortune Tower.” Owned by Ethan, apparently.

“Nice.” Heather nodded. “And what are you doing there? Paralegal?”

“Executive support for one of the partners,” Maisie answered quickly, lest her hesitation be rightfully taken for embarrassment.

“Good on you,” Heather said. “I bet you’re great at it. My assistant is the worst. Such a slacker. If you decide you don’t like LB&B, maybe I’ll steal you away.” She winked.

Maisie’s fists clenched. She suspected that the smile she was forcing to her face looked more like a snarl. Heather didn’t seem to notice, because she said, “You know what’s great? You’re downtown! How ah-maz-ing is that? Let’s do happy hour.”

“Oh, I can’t today. I work late.”

“They must really rely on you.”

Maisie nodded, but she no longer felt good about her new position. Yeah, so she worked in the nicest building downtown, for the premier law firm.

So what? She was still just an assistant, and even if some of what she did was important, she was still charged with clearing away dirty glasses and picking up dry cleaning.

She wasn’t the one winning court cases and saving innocent people from prison. Or billing guilty people exorbitant sums, which seemed more representative of the firm’s daily business.

Maybe if she hadn’t been running an errand that a child could have handled, she wouldn’t have felt so worthless.

“Well, I’m heading off this way,” Heather said as they reached the other side of the street. “Maisie, I’m not going to allow you to do that grumpy, antisocial thing.”

“What grumpy, antisocial thing?”

Heather ignored the question. Her caramel eyes brimmed with sincerity, or maybe something else that started with S. “It’s been really hard for me to make friends. Men only want one thing, and women are jealous of my success.”

Maisie’s eyes twitched with the urge to roll hard. “I’m sure you’ll be fine. I need to get going.” If she didn’t return soon, Mrs. Donahue would flip.

“But you knew me before I was making two-fifty a year.”

Maisie’s jaw dropped; she couldn’t help herself. “Lotani pays their managers two-fifty?” Once she was a permanent employee, Maisie would be getting a nice pay raise… but she’d still be making less than half of that and she’d be working sixty or seventy hours a week.

At the moment, she was getting peanuts. Trial period, trial salary. Fucking bullshit.

Heather smiled and nodded. “Yeah. That’s with bonuses, of course. So, happy hour? I’ll buy. I can afford it.”

“Fine,” Maisie said, just to end the conversation. “Drinks are on you. But not this week. Take care.”

Heather grabbed her arm, preventing Maisie from walking away. “I’ll message you.”

Maisie made a mental note to check that all her social media pages were set to private. She’d made them public while she was looking for work; companies didn’t trust people who hid their profiles.

Heather assaulted Maisie with more reeking air kisses, then scampered off.

Heather always had to have the last word, always had to be the one walking away.

In a perfect world, Heather would have been the one working for Mrs. Donahue. The two of them deserved each other.

But as she continued back to the office, Maisie felt like she’d been drained. In a way, she had. By an emotional vampire.

A few minutes later, she slumped off the elevator.

Seeing Heather always made her feel like shit. It had been like that all through college, and even worse the couple of times they’d run into each other since graduation.

How the hell were you supposed to build defenses against people like that? Heather was a sociopath. After she’d tanked their project and stolen the internship, she’d shown up at Maisie’s dorm room, fake-crying. “Maisie, I’m so sorry about what happened. I didn’t mean to blame you. I was trying to save our project.”

Let it go
, Maisie told herself.

But as she pulled out her chair, she glanced to her right and got an eyeful of Mrs. Donahue’s judgmental little face. It was tough to let it go when every day of her life, Maisie suffered because of what Heather had done.

Though now, technically, Maisie’s suffering was self-inflicted; no one was forcing her to dwell on the past.

That was the thing about people like Heather; they fucked you over, then made
you
feel responsible. Maisie could see what Heather was doing—she wasn’t that smooth, really—but she was still helpless against it.

Which only made her feel even shittier.

What a fucking mess.

Mrs. Donahue had picked up the phone, her eyes still trained on Maisie. Maisie shrugged it off and sat at her desk. If Jayne didn’t cancel lunch again, Maisie planned to have a big old glass of wine.

Jayne, despite being the most beautiful woman Maisie had ever seen, never actively made Maisie feel bad about herself. Maisie
did
feel kinda inferior, but Jayne was on a whole higher level, so maybe that was fine.

Plus, Jayne had the delightful habit of dropping juicy tidbits of information.

Brisk footsteps came down the hall, and Maisie looked up in time to see Trent materialize in front of her.

Fury darkened his brown eyes, and his tall, muscular body was tense. “In my office,” he snapped. “I want to see yesterday’s discovery request as well as the PDF scans.”

He disappeared back the way he’d come.

Shaken, Maisie rose to her feet.

Her fingers had gone numb, which made it difficult to dig through the folders. Trent hadn’t been pretending. She must have fucked something up, and fucked up bad.

“How many times have I told you to be careful?” Mrs. Donahue said from beside her. “I tried to calm him down while you were gone.” She shoved her hand into the pile and pulled out the folder Maisie was looking for.

“Thanks,” Maisie said. “It has to be a mix-up—”

“There’s no mix-up.”

Maisie had expected to see pleasure in Mrs. Donahue’s eyes, but she actually seemed disappointed. Like she’d secretly been rooting for Maisie to succeed.

The coldness in Maisie’s hands spread.

If Trent was about to fire her…

“You’d better go,” Mrs. Donahue said. “He hates to be kept waiting and was furious that you weren’t here.”

4

M
aisie’s stomach pitched and heaved as she walked down the hallway to Trent’s office. Even the gleaming sun streaming in through the skylights didn’t soothe her.

The case Trent was asking about wasn’t a big one. Maisie had followed the checklist of instructions precisely.

If she’d screwed something up, it had to have been minor, something easily fixed long before it could harm the client.

Knowing all that didn’t do a damned thing to stop the sweat that was beading on her upper lip. She wiped the back of her hand over her mouth.

“Go right in.” Gladys opened her drawer and pulled out her purse. “I’m heading off to an early lunch.”

Maisie nodded. The assistants had to stagger their lunches. Maisie wasn’t part of the rotation, not completely, because she hadn’t been there long enough to handle that much on her own.

Gladys didn’t seem particularly nervous. Maisie dared to hope…

But as she walked into Trent’s office, that hope evaporated.

He was standing at his desk, his suit jacket unbuttoned. Under different circumstances, Maisie would have been mentally undressing him. Trent’s body was pure, masculine power, and he worked it like a magician.

His expression was serious. “Get the door,” he said.

Limbs heavy as lead, Maisie closed the door. She felt very pale, very woozy.

When she turned, Trent was next to her. He pulled the folder out of her hand and tossed it to the side.

Maisie tracked its progress and saw it land intact on the floor, not far from the seating area of his office.

“Where the hell were you?” Trent growled. Strong jaw, angular cheekbones and full lips—she tried to ignore how hot he was.

She swallowed hard. “On an errand for Raphael.”

“Excuse me?”

Maisie’s eyes jerked to his. He looked so furious that she was actually afraid of him. Not that he’d hurt her, but that he might…

Reject her.

Tell her that because she’d screwed up, there wouldn’t be any more stolen minutes in his office, under his desk, across his lap.

And dear god, she loved squirming on his lap while he spanked her ass. Especially when he yanked her panties high on her hips to better access the skin of her buttocks. She loved his impatience, his demanding nature.