The Dangerous Seduction Page 5

  Ryan looks away again. He can feel his heart thumping in his chest, his stupid fingers tingling. He feels unsteady, dizzy, and drunk. It occurs to him all of a sudden just how strange and unprofessional this entire evening has turned out to be. He’s actually watching his boss—Joseph Van Aardt, no less—making out with some girl he just picked up at a private charity event. And that’s before he tries to process all the revelations about Joseph’s sexual preferences and the blatant innuendos Joseph has been throwing him…. Unless he’s been imagining all that stuff, of course? Maybe what’s actually happening is that his overactive imagination sees something that isn’t there, but something that he secretly wants to be there. He’s not even sure anymore.

  He clears his throat, attempting to get their attention. He doesn’t want to be too obvious, but damn it, he really, really wants to go home.

  “I should go,” he says. “My fiancée will be worrying where I am.”

  Joseph pulls away from her slowly, turning his head and giving him an inscrutable sort of look. “Your fiancée? Of course. I forgot about that. Tell Dave to drive you home, Ryan. He’ll be out front.”

  Ryan hesitates, unsure whether or not Joseph is being serious about lending him his private chauffeur. He really hopes he is; it’ll definitely save a lot on the cab fare.

  “Well, go on, then,” Joseph says. “Don’t want to keep your girl waiting.”

  “Right, yeah. Okay, yeah. Well—thanks, thanks for the evening, and everything,” he says. Joseph is already turning his attention away from him, back to the girl who has her face buried in the crook of his neck. “Bye, then,” he says lamely.

  “Oh, hey, wait!”

  He spins around. Joseph pushes the kitschy award along the bar toward him. “Take that with you. Just give it to Estelle.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure,” he says. He picks up the award. It’s surprisingly heavy for something that looks so plastic. He jams it under his arm and strides out of the room as quickly as he can.

  “WHAT’S THIS?” Daisy asks the next day.

  She’s up before him, eating cereal at the kitchen table in her pajamas. The award is sitting on the table, not looking less plastic or kitschy in the cold light of day. Ryan pauses on his way to the shower and turns to look at her.

  “You win something and forget to tell me?” she says. She’s smiling at him, eyebrows raised in her quizzical look.

  He scratches his belly and pads toward her. He’s not feeling so good this morning. He’s tired, with a nagging headache and knots in his stomach. It’s mainly the hangover, but it’s also something else—that weird, out-of-place feeling from yesterday still lingering.

  “It’s Joseph’s,” he tells her.

  “Joseph? Like, Joseph Van Aardt? Your boss?”

  “Yes. It’s his outstanding achievement award. He asked me to take it home last night. I guess I’ll have to bring it into the office on Monday.”

  “Outstanding achievement—but the guy’s only—how old is he? Like, thirty-five?”

  “Thirty-four,” he corrects. “Yeah, I know, it’s kinda dumb. He said it was dumb, but it’s still an award, and it’s really prestigious. It’s from the Whitehall Foundation.” She looks at him blankly. “Private charitable organization. They’re kind of a big deal.”

  She raises her eyebrows again and mouths, “A big deal.” She pokes at the award with her spoon, making it turn around. “Couldn’t they have gotten better statuettes? It looks like crap.”

  Ryan snorts. “Yeah. That’s what Joseph said.”

  She spins around on her stool and clasps her hands together in her lap, watching him eagerly. “Sounds like you’re really getting on with Joseph. This is so great, babe. He must really like you.”

  He forces a shrug, doesn’t meet her gaze. “I guess.”

  “No, seriously! First he asks you out for dinner, then he gets you to attend some prestigious awards thing with him, and he just gives you a super-expensive tux. Are you sure he doesn’t have the hots for you?” She chuckles, like it’s too ludicrous to consider. “I’m kinda jealous.”

  He thinks of Joseph again, of how he looked watching Ryan across the room, that girl hanging off him, how his eyes ran over him after Alexandre had worked his magic, that look on his face when he’d told Ryan that he liked guys. The queasy, nauseated feeling in his gut tightens.

  “He left with a woman last night, so I think it’s doubtful,” he says, trying to make his tone as light as possible.

  Daisy just shrugs and goes back to munching on her cereal, the subject already forgotten.

  JOSEPH IS not in the office for the following week, and Ryan can’t help but feel disappointed. The office is different when Joseph is around; there’s more buzz, more intensity. Admittedly, everybody seems to be breathing a collective sigh of relief with Joseph absent, but Ryan is already addicted to the adrenaline and drama and that intense, unsettled feeling that Joseph’s presence seems to bring with it. The award is still sitting on the window ledge of his office. He knows he could hand it over to Estelle if he wanted, and he’s not exactly sure why he hasn’t done that. He doesn’t let himself think about it too much.

  With Joseph absent, people seem to be less openly hostile toward him, and in an effort not to burn all his bridges, he goes out with a group of other junior associates to a bar two blocks down from the office.

  “Are you fucking Joseph?” one of the first years, Krista, asks him. She’s just out of law school, fresh-faced and naïve in a way that doesn’t seem to match the rampant cynicism and back-stabbing Ryan has come up against so far at Chase Mackey Van Aardt. She’s been drinking steadily all night, margaritas and white wine, and she leans into him as she talks, her breath alcohol-sour as it ghosts across his face.

  “What?”

  “A lot of people are saying that. Like, that’s why he’s been favoring you so much.”

  “I’ve only been here a month!” he protests. He wants to laugh at the insinuation, but the laugh catches at the back of his throat and dies an immediate painful death. He knows this is what people have been saying, and hell, in a weird way it’s actually a relief to finally have someone say it out loud, but it’s also hitting really close to something. Something that makes his body feel hot and tight and prickly, something he’s definitely not willing to think too closely about, but something that he can’t stop dwelling on anyway.

  She shrugs clumsily, her shoulders dagger-thin in her cream silk shirt. “He doesn’t know who I am,” she says. She turns a big-eyed, almost Bambi-like gaze on him. She’s pretty in a wholesome, ingénue kind of way, and he wonders once again what the hell she’s doing in this place. She shuffles on her seat, pressing her body up against his side, and looks up at him plaintively.

  He gives her a strained smile, trying to pull away gently from her. “I have a fiancée. And I’m not gay, and I’m definitely not involved with Joseph.”

  She doesn’t look convinced, frowning at him in a way that makes her look even younger. In the end, he just laughs uncomfortably and quickly finishes his beer. He gives his excuses and heads back to the office, deciding that socializing with his coworkers is not such a good idea right now. At least he’s got work to distract him.

  He and Fiona go out to interview a couple of witnesses from McNeil’s former IT and Operations teams. They don’t learn anything new, but it’s nice to hear the witnesses reinforcing what they’ve already said in their statements. He’s worked on cases before where he’s gotten whiplash from the number of times a client’s changed their statement.

  Still, the interviews leave him feeling despondent, not about the case itself—he’s more determined than ever before to keep working the case—but the plaintiffs themselves trouble him. He’d wanted to get onto the McNeil case even before he joined Chase Mackey Van Aardt. It’s a huge case, one that regularly makes the business section of the papers, and even the main national news from time to time. It’s worth millions of dollars to whoever wins or loses, and it’s worth e
ven more than that in terms of reputation for Chase Mackey Van Aardt, especially for Joseph Van Aardt. Every litigation attorney in the business wants in on this case. But this isn’t just about Joseph’s or the firm’s reputation. It isn’t about column inches, or sticking it to The Man in the shape of Jack McNeil. It’s also about real human loss, and Ryan has been missing that—until now.

  Their clients are real people going through real shit. These are families and individuals who have lost everything. Not just their jobs, but the money they were going to spend on their kids’ education, the money they’d put by to support their elderly parents, the money they were going to spend on their own retirement—it’s all gone. Sure, he knew that in the same way he knew that there are people starving in Africa, but he’s seen it now. He’s heard it directly from these people, he’s seen the desperation and hope in their faces, and it’s left a really nasty and guilty taste in his mouth.

  He’s working later that evening, rereading and rewriting everything he’s done. He thinks about Daisy’s parents. Her father had been forced into early retirement the year before when his company went through a period of restructuring. They’d apologized over the phone to a tearful Daisy for not being able to contribute anything to the wedding, and her brother had admitted while drunk that he loaned them ten thousand dollars for emergency repairs to their roof after a storm ripped through the town where they lived. These clients are normal people, just like Daisy’s parents, just like his cousin Ben, who lost his job and then lost his house when he couldn’t make the mortgage payments and had to move back in with Aunt Carol and Uncle Steve. They’re real people who didn’t deserve what happened to them. Joseph is right; Jack McNeil is corrupt and he should pay.

  “Hey, still here?”

  He jumps halfway out of his seat, the sudden movement sending a sheaf of papers cascading to the floor and with them his coffee mug, falling onto the carpet with a soft thud.

  Joseph is standing in the doorway to Ryan’s office, and even more unexpectedly, he’s not wearing a suit, but designer jeans and a casual charcoal-gray button-down with the sleeves rolled up.

  “Oh shit, ah, I mean… yeah, yeah, I am. Obviously.” He slides off his chair and crouches down to pick up his mug and the scattered papers. Joseph doesn’t say anything about his clumsy ineptitude and verbal diarrhea but just moves forward and crouches down to help. Ryan hesitates, his gaze catching and fixing on Joseph’s bowed face, the way his eyelashes fan spider-thick over the hollow of his pale cheek, the delicate curve of his nose and bow of his lips. The breath catches in his throat and he’s unable to stop staring. The guy really is extraordinarily attractive, and the fact that Ryan can’t stop noticing it and reacting to it terrifies him, his gut knotting up with a hot, dark recognition that takes him back to those stifling afternoons in his teenage bedroom with Duke Grayson.

  With an effort, he forces himself to look away from Joseph. He gets to his feet, dumps the papers onto his desk, letting them spill haphazardly over his keyboard and books. Joseph places his sheaf of papers down into a more coherent pile on the edge of the desk.

  “So, what have you been working on so diligently? Show me,” Joseph says.

  “Seriously? You want to see?”

  “I wouldn’t have mentioned it if I didn’t, Ryan.”

  He fumbles through the papers, trying to locate his new drafts. He holds them out to Joseph, who takes them with a small smile.

  He tries to work as Joseph reads, self-consciously sorting through the pile of crumpled papers with clumsy fingers, Joseph looming in the corner of his vision. He can see the glint of golden-brown hairs on Joseph’s toned forearms where his sleeves are pushed up, the pale hint of skin at his open collar, and a couple of days’ stubble on his chin. He’s probably just flown in from wherever he’s been over the past few days, but he looks nothing like how Ryan looks after flying. Joseph’s hair is a little flatter than normal, the gel sweated out, but it suits him, making him look softer and more approachable. Ryan finds his mind wandering, picturing himself running his fingers through Joseph’s hair and touching his face, curling his fingers around his strong, muscled forearms and pressing their hips together.

  He gulps and tries to concentrate on his computer screen, the blinking cursor and blur of text staring back at him. He’s barely managed to write a sentence by the time Joseph finishes reading and drops the papers back onto the desk. Ryan looks up, and tries for a tentative smile, but Joseph’s expression is giving nothing away.

  “Was it okay?” he asks.

  “You’re trying too hard,” Joseph says.

  He swallows back the surge of frustration at the statement. What does that even mean? How can he try too hard? It’s the sort of banal, meaningless statement you’d hear from an American Idol judge and it’s never made any kind of sense to him. By definition it makes no sense. Surely it’s a good thing to try hard.

  “You’re grandstanding. You’re trying to make some political, social point. This isn’t class warfare, Ryan. This isn’t about what’s fair.”

  “But our clients, they lost everything, Joseph. And it isn’t fair. Not when people like Jack McNeil get away with it. The guy broke the law but he’s still sitting on a multibillion dollar fortune. He’s still got all these huge-ass mansions in Martha’s Vineyard and Palm Springs and Dallas and every other fancy-ass corner of the country. It was his fault that company failed, yet he hasn’t suffered at all!”

  “Well, I’m not sure I would go that far. All the bad press has got to hurt. Plus he’s being sued by me—that’s definitely not a good thing.” Joseph’s mouth twitches into that sharklike smile again, his eyes glinting with amusement.

  “I know that, but he’s still got the business in Texas and he’s still in charge of thousands of people’s futures and he’s not fit for it. He should’ve at least stepped down from the company. I don’t know why the board didn’t insist upon it. But no, he’s going about his daily business like nothing’s changed.”

  “Believe me, if McNeil is forced to step down, then he’ll push several people out with him. He won’t go easily. There’ll be job losses and the share price will fall even further and it won’t be pretty. Don’t forget that this guy has been a CEO for years. He’s got friends in high places. He’s best buds with the Texas governor. He’s an all-American success story.”

  “He’s a crook,” Ryan retorts.

  Joseph snorts and raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, don’t let anyone hear you say that out loud.”

  “Shit, yeah, sorry. I shouldn’t say that. I know. It’s just—” He sighs. “Man, I’m sorry. I can see what you mean.” He breaks off, glancing across the desk at Joseph. The guy’s watching him interestedly, giving him a look that’s impossible to interpret. “I can get a bit soapbox-y, I know that. Daisy’s always telling me that.”

  “Daisy?”

  “My fiancée.” He blushes and immediately hates himself for it.

  Joseph nods and taps a finger against the sheets of paper. “Rewrite it. The essence of it is good. Believe me, I’d be telling you otherwise if it wasn’t. But just dial it down a little.”

  Ryan nods slowly, swallowing back the disappointment. He knows that Joseph is right, but he still feels like he’s just been given a C+ on a term paper he’s busted his ass on.

  “And, Ryan, go home. You don’t have to prove anything to me by burning the midnight oil. You don’t win a bonus for putting in the most time at the office.”

  He doesn’t say anything, just thinks of the stack of e-mails in his in-box and the files of other cases Paul is still expecting responses on. And now he has to rewrite this report. He’s not trying to prove anything; he’s just trying to get through the day. But of course, he can’t say that to Joseph. That would be admitting to weaknesses that he can’t afford to show in front of his boss.

  He nods and gives Joseph a tired smile. “Okay.”

  “Okay,” Joseph repeats, getting up from the chair. He reaches over the desk, drops his
hand on Ryan’s shoulder, and squeezes gently. “And listen to me. You’ve got great potential. I’d never have hired you if you didn’t. You can be a great attorney. And I appreciate the work you’re putting in. Don’t think that I don’t notice, I always notice. But you’ve only been here a month, Ryan, don’t burn yourself out too quickly. I want to see great things from you.”

  He nods, feeling his cheeks start to burn, this time with pleasure. Joseph squeezes again, removes his hand, pats his arm a couple of times before he turns to leave.

  “Go home, Ryan!” he calls over his shoulder. “I am!”

  Ryan stares after his retreating back. His shoulder tingles where Joseph touched him and he drags his fingers self-consciously against the material of his shirt. He wonders if Joseph knew he was deliberately touching him in exactly the same place as he did on the night of the awards.

  “SO, HOW are things in Joseph Van Aardt country?” Tim puffs out as they come skidding to a halt under one of the huge oak trees in their favorite corner of the park.

  Ryan bends over, putting his hands on his hips, trying to catch his breath. He cranes his neck up and repeats, “Joseph Van Aardt country?”

  “Yeah. That’s where you live these days, man. A better, more exclusive country than where the rest of us poor schleps are forced to scrape out a living.”

  Ryan snorts and rolls his eyes at him. “Dude, dramatic much?”

  “Whatever.” Tim shrugs. He turns his back on Ryan and moves to brace himself against the tree, stretching out his calf muscle. Ryan watches him for a second, then goes to the other side of the tree to follow suit, savoring the burning stretch in his legs as he works one then the other.

  “So,” Tim says after they’ve cooled down and stretched out and started meandering back through the park, sipping from their bottles of water.