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

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