Triple Jeopardy (Lawyers Behaving Badly Book 2) Read Free Page A

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