The Dangerous Seduction Read online

  “Hey,” Joseph answers. “I think I might’ve persuaded him.”

  He forces out a grim smile. Of course. Of course his father would say yes to a complete stranger before he would to his own son. “That’s great news. Really,” he says, trying to sound happy.

  “Yeah, it is,” Joseph says slowly. “So, why’d you just sound like someone ran over your dog?”

  He bites his lip, lowers his head, watches the cigarette smolder in his right hand. “I just broke up with Daisy.”

  Joseph lets out a long, low whistle. “Whoa. Okay. I didn’t see that coming.”

  “I couldn’t keep lying to her, Joseph. I couldn’t do it.” For the first time that evening, he can feel the prick of tears behind his eyes, the burn at the back of his throat. He takes a drag on his cigarette.

  “You didn’t tell her about—”

  “Relax, I said nothing about you. She knows there’s someone else, but she has no idea who it is.”

  “Right,” Joseph says, but he sounds unconvinced.

  “Your precious reputation is fine.”

  On the other end of the line Joseph sighs, “Ryan—”

  “I need somewhere to stay,” he says, cutting him off. “I’m homeless right now and I don’t want to go to a hotel and I can’t think of anyone in Manhattan I can go to, which I know, is totally pathetic. But I’m standing outside your building and I’m wishing that you were here right now instead of in fucking Houston with my fucking parents so I can go on in there and fuck you and just… just forget about everything. Forget about this fucking horrible night and how I’ve just ruined my girlfriend’s life and how I’m a complete dick, and just… if I’m fucking you then none of it matters, it’s just you and me, and God, Joseph, I want that. You have no idea how much I need that right now.” He lets out a shaky, breathy laugh, and hangs his head. “Christ, I’m such a fucking mess right now.”

  “Ryan, listen to me; go into the building. Speak to Sergio downstairs. You know him; he’s the concierge, the one that always says hello. He’ll recognize you, he never forgets a face. Tell Sergio to call me on this number and I’ll speak to him and tell him to let you into my apartment. You can stay there tonight. And tomorrow, well, I’ll be back tomorrow and we’ll figure something else out.”

  “Okay, yeah, okay,” he says. He swallows over the lump in his throat. “Thanks. God, thanks, Joseph.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Joseph mutters. “Just go on in there and do what I say, okay? And Ryan, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Chapter 6

  “WHATEVER YOU do, don’t tell your parents about your engagement being over,” Joseph says as they wait outside the meeting room at the Houston St Regis. “Not until your dad signs his statement.”

  “Come again?” Ryan peers through the glass into the meeting room where his father is sitting. He’s reading through his statement with the same kind of concentration he used to give to fixing Ryan’s bike tires or coaching him at math or playing one of his beloved chess games.

  “I’m assuming that he’ll be angry. When he hears about the break-up?”

  Ryan nods, pressing his lips together. “Yeah, that’s a given.”

  He startles when Joseph clamps his hand down on his shoulder and squeezes gently. “It’ll be okay, Ryan. He’ll sign.”

  He wets his lips, glancing at Joseph’s face. For a moment there he thought Joseph wasn’t just talking about the case. He tries to swallow down any disappointment.

  “So far he likes me,” Joseph continues with one of his wide fake smiles. “So let’s make sure he doesn’t find out that I’m the one who destroyed his son’s marriage prospects, hey?”

  “It wasn’t you,” Ryan says, though he knows it’s a lie, or at least, it’s partly a lie. If he hadn’t met Joseph; if he hadn’t cracked his head on the bathroom tiles the last time they were at the Houston St Regis; if he hadn’t gone to Joseph’s room that night; if Joseph hadn’t made it so blatantly clear to him that he was attracted to him, and if he hadn’t felt the attraction right back, then maybe he’d still be engaged to Daisy right now. Just the thought of it makes something that feels a lot like relief well up inside him. He’d never truly realized before just how much he was dreading the idea of being married.

  Joseph looks unconvinced by his denial, but he squeezes his shoulder again and pats him on the back before he goes back into the room.

  They say good-bye at the airport. His father insists on driving them both to the airport, then actually accompanying them inside the terminal, even though he usually complains about the short-term parking fees. But his dad is seriously enamored with Joseph, clapping him on the back and shaking his hand and talking twice as much to him as he does to Ryan. Joseph disappears to buy snacks in the terminal, leaving Ryan alone with his father. Immediately his expression hardens, the smile dropping off his face.

  “We know about you and Daisy,” he says. “She called your sister.”

  Ryan nods, his heart sinking. Of course. Daisy has always gotten on well with Sierra. Of course she would be the one to tell his family.

  “I’m sorry. I know that you and Mom really liked her.”

  His father snorts. “Doesn’t matter what we think, Ryan. Though, I do want to know what is wrong with you, dumping a lovely girl like that! Your momma’s heartbroken.”

  “She’s not really staying with Aunt Carol right now, is she?”

  “No, she’s not. She’s very angry with you. She didn’t feel like she could come here. And to be honest with you, I wasn’t sure myself.”

  His mouth twists wryly. “Right.”

  “Yes, I had serious second thoughts about going through with this case when Sierra told us.”

  “What made you change your mind?”

  “Something Joseph said—that’s one persuasive boy—I can see why he’s been so successful. But he told us about that poor man who committed suicide. Phil Cartwright. I knew him. Well, I met him a couple of times, as you know. He was one of the people I met with back then.” He shakes his head. “He seemed to have it all, and then the company crashed. He lost his job, his savings, his pension. And now, his life. It just makes you think, you know.”

  He looks into his father’s face for a long while; then he nods. “Well, thanks, Dad.”

  There’s something else, something he’s hiding, he thinks. But his father is already looking down at his watch. “You should go, you don’t want to miss your flight.”

  “I think my dad’s hiding something,” he says to Joseph on the plane.

  Joseph looks up from his reading. “I think he is too.”

  “Oh. Well, do you think he’s doing it deliberately? That he’s lying to us?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Of course, whatever he’s not telling us might have nothing to do with the case.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” he says again. Beside him, Joseph goes back to his reading. Ryan sighs and leans back in his seat, letting his eyes fall closed. He should probably be doing some work too, following Joseph’s example like a model employee. But they’re going back to the office as soon as they land and he’s exhausted; a quick nap would be wonderful right now.

  Twenty-four hours ago he still had a fiancée and an apartment and a life planned out: marriage and children and a career. Now—he’s still got one of those things at least. Or at least for as long as this thing with Joseph lasts, because he can’t kid himself that he might be screwing up his career just as badly as he screwed up his relationship with Daisy. He thinks about the look on his father’s face at the airport, the disappointment in his voice when he explained the real reason why his mom hadn’t shown up. She’s very angry with you.

  He buries the thought away and opens his eyes again. Work, he should do some work. That will help; that will take his mind off things. He shuffles into a better sitting position, his knee knocking against Joseph’s. Joseph looks up and frowns at him.

  “Shit, sorry,” he murmurs.

  Joseph sighs and drops the file of papers
to his knees. “What is it, Ryan?”

  Ryan stares back at him for a moment; then he swallows and says, “Nothing, I was just wondering what you were doing tonight? After work, I mean. When we get done for the night?”

  Joseph blinks, then slowly his mouth starts to curl up, a small smile playing over his lips. “Are you asking me on a date?”

  “No. No, I just want to know if I need to find a hotel room for the night. With me being homeless and everything right now.”

  “I told you, you can stay at my place,” Joseph says matter-of-factly. “Until you figure out what you’re doing. I’m not even there that much, anyway.”

  “Okay, thanks,” he says awkwardly.

  “You’re welcome,” Joseph says with a shrug, and goes back to his reading.

  THE JUDGE grants them a two-month extension. McNeil’s counsel ships a truck-load of boxes to the office, which Joseph has put in one of the empty offices that previously belonged to Garth or Monica or Peter or one of the other attorneys Ryan has seen come and go in the four months he’s been working there.

  “It’s probably all a bunch of useless crap. In fact, I’m willing to bet my left kidney on that,” Joseph says during one of their typically tense weekly team meetings. “Just Frank Carson’s way of playing with me. But, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t go through it with a really fucking fine-tooth comb. After all, I only need the one kidney.”

  The team all titter dutifully, the usual high tension and nervousness in the whites of their eyes. In a perverse kind of way, it’s kind of amusing just how damn terrified everyone is of Joseph. Not that they don’t have good reason to be, not when Ryan thinks of all those empty offices. Joseph told him the previous evening that he regularly gets over a hundred résumés a week from people desperate to work for him, more than that when the graduating classes start looking for work. Ryan’s mind immediately jumped to Tim and he felt a slight pang of guilt. Only a slight pang, though; he’s not stupid enough to want Tim around now, not when things are as they are between him and Joseph. For someone who is 90 percent ego, Tim can be surprisingly perceptive in his own way, and Ryan knows that it wouldn’t take long before Tim figured out how the land really lay between his supposed best friend and the big boss.

  “Some of the résumés even come with pictures,” Joseph had told him with a smirk. “And I’m not talking about the passport photo kind.”

  Ryan made a face, rolling his eyes to mask his irritation. “That’s gross. Please tell me you’ve never hired anyone based on how they look.”

  Joseph gave him a long look before saying, “C’mon, why’d you think I hired you?”

  Ryan’s irritation immediately flipped into a hot prickle of unease, flickering up his spine and spidering across the nape of his neck. He thought about something he’d read somewhere, something some gay author had written, about how most guys never really understood that they could be objects of sexual desire to other guys in the way that most women understood instinctively that they were always objects of sexual desire to men. But the thought vanished as quickly as it had come, and then Joseph was grinning at him and saying, “Relax, I didn’t hire you because I wanted to fuck you, Ryan. Well, not entirely.”

  He thinks of that conversation as he watches everyone around the table deliver their updates, every one of them wilting under Joseph’s piercing stare. When it’s his turn, he meets Joseph’s eyes directly. He feels the flair of defiance and arousal in his blood, the thought beating incessantly in his mind: I know what you look like when you come. I know what you look like when you’re sucking my cock. His voice is sure, his gaze direct, and his cock is hard. Joseph doesn’t break eye contact the entire time Ryan speaks, as if he’s also egging him on, that flicker behind his eyes that’s a mirror of Ryan’s own: You look so good when you take my cock. You look so good with my come on your face, Ryan. By the time he’s done, he has no clue what he’s said. He just knows that he’s as hard as diamonds. His pulse is rocketing and he’s about this close to throwing Joseph down onto the table in front of everybody and crawling all over him.

  Joseph is as cool as ice, flicking his attention to the next person, and commanding them in terse tones to: “Tell me what you got for me.”

  I got something for you, Ryan thinks recklessly. He uncurls his fingers from their death grip on his pencil and slides his hand under the table, pressing his palm down over his erection.

  Joseph doesn’t look at him again until they all leave the room, and then Ryan lingers deliberately, hanging back and feeling Joseph’s eyes running up and down his body like a touch. He turns his head just as he reaches the door and looks back over his shoulder. Joseph is watching him unashamedly, his mouth slightly parted and eyes dark. Ryan heads to his office with a smile on his face.

  The smile immediately withers and dies when he sees Marie, sitting in the chair opposite his desk, an enormous suitcase between her legs.

  “Oh, hi. What are you doing here?” he asks. “I mean, who let you in?”

  She looks back at him for what feels like a really long time; then she shrugs nonchalantly. “You put me on your list of approved visitors, Ryan. Don’t you remember?”

  His heart sinks. Of course. He’d submitted a list of names to the building’s security during his first week there, Marie among them.

  “The receptionist left you a message,” she adds, still looking smug.

  “I was in a meeting,” he mutters.

  “I know. A nice lady called Fiona told me where to wait for you.” She makes an ostentatious show of looking around her. “Your own private office, huh?”

  He shuts the door and crosses to the other side of his desk, feeling her eyes following him the entire time. “So, why are you here?”

  “To bring you all this.” She kicks the suitcase with the side of her foot. “Obviously. And to tell you that Daisy never wants to see you again. Which if you had any fucking brain in your head instead of in your dick, you should already know. Oh, and also to tell you that I’m moving in, and we’re keeping the apartment and the cheap-ass fantastic rent or whatever you did to get it for such a low price. So you should make sure you fix that with your boss, or whoever arranged that for you.” She pauses and her gaze narrows on him. “It’s the least you can do.”

  He nods, silently breathing a sigh of relief. She’s right. It is the least he can do, considering how he’s treated Daisy. He pushes the thoughts away and meets her gaze. “Okay. That seems fair. And I’m pleased that she’s not there alone. That she’s got you, I mean.”

  “Oh please.” She rolls her eyes, curling her lip into a look of withering disdain that could rival Joseph’s. “Save it for whatever poor bitch you’re sticking it to now.” She pauses again, taking her time like she’s savoring what she’s about to say, and he has no doubt that she is. “I never liked you. I never thought you were good enough for Daisy. I used to pretend to for her sake because she really loved you. But you took advantage of her. You used her when you needed it. And now—” She waves her hand around her. “Now you have all this. Now you’re some big fat asshole lawyer with a big fat paycheck, and you think you can do better. You think you don’t need her anymore. I hope you crash and burn, Ryan. I hope it all explodes in your face.”

  She pushes back her chair, picks up the suitcase, and drops it flat side down onto the desk, on top of his keyboard and phone and files. Her eyes bore into his with a mocking shine as she yanks the zipper open and tosses back the lid. She grins in triumph, delves into the suitcase, and gathers up an armful of shredded fabric. She tosses all of it into the air, and it scatters down all over his desk and all over him.

  “Oh, it’s kinda clichéd, but it’s a classic,” she says, not even bothering to hide the delight in her eyes. She scoops up another handful of what Ryan is slowly and miserably recognizing as his own clothes, and throws them up into the air. The torn squares and rectangles of plaid, denim, silk, cotton, and—oh God—oh no—his vintage Star Wars T-shirt—his favorite shirt
ever, the one his parents got for him when he was fifteen—rain down around them. She heaves the suitcase into her arms and upends it, scattering and tossing the remains of his wardrobe over every square foot of his office. When she’s done, she tosses the suitcase to the floor, whirls around, and heaves the door open.

  He watches her in silent disbelief as she strides down the corridor to the break room, plants her hands on her hips, and turns to yell back at him, “Don’t ever come anywhere near her again, Ryan! You lying, cheating, scumbag piece of shit!”

  Immediately the entire building falls silent. He cringes, feels his legs start to shake as he puts his hand against the doorjamb to steady himself. His coworkers are lingering in the doorways of their offices, hanging outside the break room with mugs of coffee in their hands, enjoying the commotion.

  “I hope your new whore gives you VD and your scummy, disease-riddled prick falls off!” she yells. He watches her in silent horror, belatedly remembering that Marie used to be a drama major. Marie is the kind of girl who dances on the subway to her iPod. Marie is absolutely loving this chance to humiliate him, and the worst thing about it is that he can’t blame her.

  He sees Fiona come out of her office and stare bemusedly at the scene unfolding in front of them. Marie notices Fiona and points at her, then at Ryan. “You should know what he is—you should all know what he is—he’s a liar and a scumbag and a cheat!” She breaks off and laughs nastily, “Though I guess you all like that. All you fancy lawyers!” Her lip curls up in disgust.

  “You need to leave.”

  Ryan whips his head in the direction of Joseph’s office and sees Estelle rise imperiously from her desk and glide across the floor toward Marie.

  “I’ve called security. You need to leave now. Or I’ll have them escort you out of here—and they won’t be as polite as me.”