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Legal Desire
Lisa Childs
Innocent until proved wickedHe'll need all his powers of seduction…Lawyer Trevor Sinclair knows that gorgeous ice-queen Allison McCann is sabotaging his firm. All he needs is proof, with a plan that involves a little deception…and a whole lot of sizzling seduction! But no one warned him that her chilly exterior hides a desire as hot as his own. Is it entrapment if they're both playing with fire?
Innocent until proved wicked
He’ll need all his powers of seduction...
Lawyer Trevor Sinclair knows that gorgeous ice queen Allison McCann is sabotaging his firm. All he needs is proof, with a plan that involves a little deception...and a whole lot of sizzling seduction! But no one warned him that her chilly exterior hides a desire as hot as his own. Is it entrapment if they’re both playing with fire?
“DARE is Harlequin’s hottest line yet. Every book should come with a free fan. I dare you to try them!”
—Tiffany Reisz, international bestselling author
Ever since LISA CHILDS read her first romance novel at the age of eleven—a Mills & Boon story, of course—all she wanted was to be a romance writer. With over forty novels published with Mills & Boon, Lisa is living her dream. She is an award-winning, bestselling romance author. Lisa loves to hear from readers, who can contact her on Facebook, through her website, lisachilds.com (http://www.lisachilds.com), or at her snail-mail address, PO Box 139, Marne, MI 49435, USA.
If you liked Legal Desire
look for the other books in Lisa Childs’s
Legal Lovers miniseries
Legal Seduction
Legal Attraction
Legal Passion
Legal Desire
Or why not try
Worth the Risk by Zara Cox
Wild Child by Christy McKellen
Getting Even by Avril Tremayne
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk).
Legal Desire
Lisa Childs
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07145-1
LEGAL DESIRE
© 2018 Lisa Childs
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
With love and appreciation to Andrew,
for all your love and support!
Contents
Cover (#ue468eb80-6f2b-50b9-9424-e01ffc856561)
Back Cover Text (#u3412fcb2-694e-59d7-b4a2-4688f07a369d)
About the Author (#ua5cf9d23-4b1c-59f4-b77b-e074793f9d2e)
Booklist (#u835f7a24-f408-5dae-b589-2f6ec383e37c)
Title Page (#ube622b94-9fa8-5510-9e3d-42f4cde70e17)
Copyright (#uca3f3d73-d36b-5c1a-a6d8-482213e0849b)
Dedication (#u97367f7e-ad2b-5702-8ee3-903573691912)
CHAPTER ONE (#uc5089dc9-40a0-5729-a6c2-b644003d1176)
CHAPTER TWO (#u12bd9c78-8645-56fe-8784-993afbf2fa9d)
CHAPTER THREE (#ua29c6742-724c-5264-8676-cd8bba41b4e6)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ued0d454b-958b-58ae-a90f-488204c868e4)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u63270bf8-e44f-5133-aeb8-a4a8e99408d0)
EXCITEMENT COURSED THROUGH Trevor Sinclair. He’d barely been able to wait out the weekend to tell his friends what he’d figured out. They were all in relationships now, so he’d forced himself to be patient even though it had nearly killed him to keep the news to himself.
Finally, he heard the ding of the elevator as the car arrived at the floor for Street Legal, the law practice he owned with his three best friends—guys with whom he’d survived living on the streets. The rumble of deep voices echoed off the high, open ceiling of the reception area. They were probably complaining about his calling this early Monday morning meeting.
Their usual business meeting was Tuesday morning. But this wasn’t business as usual, and it couldn’t wait any longer.
Along with the voices, he heard the tap of dress shoes against the hardwood floor: Simon. The heavy strike of boots: Stone. And the soft squeak of tennis shoes: Ronan.
They were all here. And within seconds they trudged into his office. Like Simon, who was the managing partner, Trev had a conference table in his. As a class-action-lawsuit attorney, he always had multiple clients. Sometimes even this voluminous space wasn’t big enough for those meetings.
But it was big enough for this one, for the four of them.
Ronan glared at him through narrowed dark eyes. “Why do you look so damn happy?”
“Maybe he finally got some,” Stone suggested. He was equally bleary-eyed.
Simon shook his blond head. “Nope. He would look as exhausted as we do if he was getting any.”
“You all do look like hell,” Trev agreed.
“Jealous?” Ronan said as he dropped onto one of the chairs around the conference table. Then he eagerly reached for the carafe of coffee sitting in the middle of the reclaimed wood table.
Trev felt a pang of something that could have been jealousy. But he dismissed the ridiculous thought. He had no reason—absolutely no reason—to be jealous of these guys. He could have sex any time he wanted. And love? He wanted no part of that mess.
“Disgusted,” he corrected Ronan, and he shook his head to emphasize his point. “How the mighty have fallen.” He made a tsking sound with his tongue against his teeth. How had it happened when they’d all sworn they would never risk their hearts?
Fools...
He really did pity them. Just pity.
Not envy.
“Yup, he’s jealous,” Stone said with a deep chuckle.
Trev snorted. “Yeah, right.”
“Did you call this meeting for dating advice?” Simon asked. Since Simon was the managing partner, he usually called the business meetings. “Do you want to find out if Bette or Muriel or Hillary have a friend that they can set you up with?”
He felt another pang, but he knew what this one was: his pride was stinging.
“I don’t need a setup,” he assured his friend. “I am the only one of us not thinking with his dick nowadays, which is probably why I’m the one who finally figured out who the hell the mole is.”
He had their attention now. Three pairs of eyes widened and focused on him as three jaws fell open in shock.
“You figured it out?” Simon asked. As managing partner, he had considered it his responsibility to find out who the hell the mole was that had been selling information from their case files or passing off forged or real information as coming from their case files.
It wasn’t that Trev hadn’t trusted Simon to find the mole. But he’d had a vested interest. Since Trev had been the first one the mole had hit—during his biggest class-action lawsuit yet—he’d taken it personally. And because he hadn’t been willing to risk the mole compromising his next case, he had put off taking another one until the damn mole was caught.
“Who is it?” Ronan asked.
Trev was surprised the rest of them hadn’t figured it out yet. Now that he knew, it seemed obvious. How had they not suspected her sooner?
“Who?” Stone asked.
All of them were impatient to hear the identity. Maybe they wouldn’t have minded if he had cut their weekends short for this.
“I don’t have proof,” he cautioned them. “Yet. But I’ll get it.” He had already put a plan in motion.
Simon arched a blond brow. “Are you really sure you know who it is? Remember that I once thought Bette was the mole.”
And instead, she’d turned out to be the first woman for whom Simon Kramer had ever fallen. That would not be the case for Trevor.
“Who is it?” Stone asked again, his voice gruff with impatience.
Trev shook his head as he had earlier—with pity—that they hadn’t figured it out like he had. “Allison McCann.”
“No...” Simon shook his head now but in protest. “That’s not possible.”
“It’s not just possible,” Trev replied, “it’s probable. She’s the one thing every one of those cases has in common. She and her public relations firm worked every one of them.” He gestured toward his door. “You’ve even given her an office to use on our floor with access to our computer system that has all our files.”
Simon’s face paled. He was the one who had set up the office for her—the one who’d hired her firm to ramp up their public image years ago, the one who encouraged them all to use her to help sway the public to their side of their cases. He shook his head again, but it wasn’t in protest. It was in self-disgust. He looked sick.
While Simon’s face had paled, Ronan’s flushed with anger, and he cursed.
But Stone was stubborn. He snorted. “C’mon, Trev. You just want to sleep with her, so you’re trying to convince yourself she’s the mole.”
Simon had tried to seduce Bette into admitting she was the mole. Instead, she had seduced him.
