Devil's Advocate Read online

Caitlyn raised her chin and channeled the most cool, calm, and collected person she could think of. Which, somewhat annoyingly, happened to be Ashley Tanner.

  Whether or not it worked, Caitlyn couldn’t tell. Ash’s gaze was already off her, drifting far away. And for all the nights Caitlyn had obsessed over this woman and what might have been, there wasn’t so much as a hint of recognition on her face.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “You haven’t gone to the break room yet?” Jenna set a heaping plate of food on top of a pile of folders on Ash’s desk. “You’re missing out.”

  “Traitor!” Ash hissed. She eyed the offering as if the paralegal had tossed a bag of garbage at her. “I can’t believe you went to the welcome reception for my nemesis.”

  “Look, Ash. We’re friends and all, but I have two words for you. Free food.” Jenna snatched a cracker from Ash’s untouched plate and popped it into her mouth. “I loaded up another one just like this back at my desk. That’s lunch for the rest of the week. You might be the only person in the office who hates free food. And it’s good free food too. See that cheese? It’s gouda. None of that white cheddar shit. This is from Europe.”

  “Cheddar’s from Europe too. Well, the UK, anyway.” Ash ran a hand through her hair, giving it a slight yank to stop herself from launching into an explanation of why the UK wasn’t part of Europe anymore. Jenna didn’t care about geopolitics. She was too obsessed with free cheese. “I thought management was cutting back. They can’t buy you Starbucks anymore, but there’s money to throw a party for some princess from New York?”

  Jenna glared at Ash and grabbed a red grape. “This is fucking delicious. Why do you have to ruin it?”

  With a sigh, Ash reached for a cube of cheese, but Jenna slapped her hand away. “Get your own!”

  Ash’s brow furrowed. “I thought this was for me.”

  “Yeah, well, I changed my mind.” Jenna scooped up the plate in both hands. “If you want a snack, you’re going to have to go in there like everyone else and make nice with the new girl.”

  Ash shifted her gaze from the plate, focusing instead on a spot in the corner of her office and wishing she had the power to shoot lasers from her eyes. How many times in her life would that have come in handy? Like if she’d fired eye lasers at Caitlyn Brewster six years ago, before they’d had a chance to kiss, imagine how much better the world would be. She and Jenna wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Nobody bought party platters for a pile of cinders on the sidewalk.

  “I guess I’ll have to buy my own cheese. The last thing I want to do is make friends with the one person in the office I have to destroy.”

  Jenna started to laugh, but it came out as more of a crumb-filled snort. “You’ve already reached that stage, I see.”

  A memory flashed through Ash’s mind of Caitlyn’s lips on hers, lush, velvety, and inviting.

  Shit.

  Her throat had gone dry and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. Now that she’d opened the door to remembering that night, there would be no shutting it off. It wasn’t only Jenna who was the problem. Ash’s own brain was being just as traitorous.

  “What stage?” Ash stared at the red Swingline stapler on her desk and fought the urge to staple her hand to the desktop as punishment.

  “Destruction,” Jenna replied. As if reading Ash’s mind, the paralegal shifted the stapler out of Ash’s reach. “You do this exact thing every time there’s a new hire in the office.”

  “I never tried to destroy you when you started working here,” Ash argued. She was pretty certain it was true.

  “I’m not a threat,” Jenna explained with a tone like she was talking to a child. “You don’t destroy paralegals. You bribe us.”

  “I’m supposed to bribe you?” Ash was taken aback.

  “Yes, and I’m glad you finally asked about it, because it was getting super awkward. Ralph supplies me with my morning donuts. James brings me a daily medium regular from Dunks—”

  “Every day?” Ash squeaked. She could almost visualize the dollars adding up. How much was this going to cost her?

  “Of course every day.” Jenna stroked her chin, deep in thought. “By my calculation, you owe me 643 whiskey shooters to go with my afternoon coffee.”

  Ash grabbed a pencil and a scrap of paper. “You’ve been working here three years, so I think your number is off by… let’s see, there are 260 work days in a calendar year, so that’s a grand total of 780.”

  “You work every day. I want—what’s 365 times three?”

  “One thousand and ninety-five.”

  Jenna tapped her fingertips to her lips with a look of pure glee. “It’s going to be a banner year.”

  Did Jenna have to be touching her lips? Try as she might, Ash couldn’t get her mind off those stupid things. Not Jenna’s lips. The other woman’s. Ash slammed her hand onto her stapler to make the thoughts go away.

  “Geez.” Jenna eyed the stapler. “I’m only kidding about the whiskey shooters.”

  “You mean Ralph and James don’t really bribe you?” Ash picked up the stapler, opening it to check if it was full. It was.

  “They do,” Jenna admitted with a shrug, “but that’s because I don’t like them, and they know it. For some insane reason, I do like you, even without being bribed.”

  “I have that effect on people,” Ash deadpanned. She closed the stapler and set it back down, not sure why she kept fiddling with the thing except that it gave her something to do with her hands other than wring them, an impulse she’d barely been able to control since Caitlyn Brewster had walked through the elevator door.

  “Oh, honey.” Jenna burst into a fit of laughter. “I think I might be the only person in this office who doesn’t mind hanging out with you.”

  “Harsh!” Ash swiped a cookie from Jenna’s plate in retaliation, even though she knew it was most likely true. “Do you really think no one likes me?”

  “The equity partners love you,” Jenna assured her. “No one else can deliver on those sweet, sweet billable hours the way you do. But as for the others… Let’s just say if I’m not the one bringing you the plate of food, I’d caution you not to eat it.”

  “Maybe this is why I’m not as big a fan of the break room food fests as you are,” Ash grumbled. Though she did nothing to endear herself to her colleagues and couldn’t name anyone besides Jenna she actually cared much for anyway, it still kind of stung to have it implied most of the people she shared an office with would be just as happy to poison her with a celebratory cupcake.

  It wasn’t that Ash was incapable of making friends. She simply didn’t see the point.

  “By the way”—Jenna licked crumbs from her fingers—“in case you’re wondering, she’s still wearing the cocktail dress.”

  “Who is?” Ash rested her hand on top of her stapler again. She knew exactly who Jenna meant and the image of the fabulous body snug in said dress was seared into her mind forever.

  Jenna took a step back, taking the plate with her while keeping a wary eye on the stapler. “The woman you want to destroy. What’s her name again?”

  “Caitlyn Brewster.”

  “That’s right. Wait… how do you know that? You weren’t there when she was introduced.”

  “You told me, remember?” Ash lifted her hand from the Swingline to tap the side of her head. “Memory like a steel trap.”

  As if to prove her point, her memory treated her to a graphic play-by-play of the feel of Caitlyn’s arm pulling her close as they kissed under the light of the full moon.

  Ash smashed her fist onto the stapler, sending a tiny, twisted piece of metal flying into the air.

  Jenna handed over the plate. “You know what? Keep this. You’re getting hangry.”

  Ash glared at her as she put one hand on the plate and pulled it closer. “How last-minute was this hiring, by the way? Usually we know days ahead of time before any free food is going to be on offer. The boys—excuse me, men—in the office like to train th
eir stomachs like they’re Joey Chestnut.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Are you pulling my leg?” Ash gave Jenna a look of genuine surprise. “You don’t know who he is?”

  The paralegal shook her head.

  Ash tossed her hands in the air, hardly able to believe she possessed a piece of pop culture trivia someone else didn’t already know. “He’s the world hot dog eating champion. Everyone knows that.”

  “Trust me when I say this. That is not the case.” Jenna was looking at her like she’d sprouted an extra head. “Who the hell watches eating contests?”

  “Plenty of people. I saw it on ESPN,” Ash said defensively. Jenna was always telling her she needed to do more “normal person” things, and yet as soon as she did, all she got for her efforts was grief. “That’s a channel normal people watch, right?”

  “They had hot dog eating on ESPN?” Jenna’s tone was incredulous.

  “It might have been ESPN2. It was late at night,” Ash admitted as she watched her tally of “normal person” points tick lower with every word. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “So you tuned in to a sports channel to watch hot dog eating. I thought you hated sports.”

  “I like some sports,” Ash grumbled. Why was she friends with Jenna again? Oh right. Because everyone else in the office hated her for being too competitive and wanted to see her dead.

  Yay.

  Jenna eyed Ash like she didn’t know what to make of the turn their conversation had taken. “You’ve never once joined the office Super Bowl squares.”

  Football? Ash’s nose wrinkled, showing her true thoughts on the matter before she could stop herself. “I’m not into teams.”

  “Shocker.”

  “I prefer individual sports.” Ash placed three grapes in her mouth and bit down. She would never admit it, but they tasted amazing. Damn Jenna and her traitorous free food.

  “Look, you don’t have to indulge in public snack munching, but if you know what’s best for you, I suggest marching your bee-hind into the conference room and playing nice with the new arrival. If you don’t, people will notice. You might not like teams, but you do need to be a team player if you want to get ahead.”

  “I was already planning on it.” Ash took a deep breath, hoping to strengthen herself for the task ahead. “I’m not that much of a moron.”

  Jenna tossed an extremely doubtful look in her direction, though a hint of teasing shone through. “You didn’t know that bribing your paralegal was a thing. Just sayin’.” With that, Jenna swanned back to her desk, probably dreaming of all the whiskey shooters in her future.

  Ash contemplated her poor abused stapler, her mind stuck in the past. Six years ago, everything had been on the line. The mock trial competition had been her one shot at making the big time. That summer associate position paid more than Ash could earn in a year of fast food jobs and housekeeping gigs, enough to finally go to school full time. Not to mention it was the only way to get herself on the radar of a top firm like McGill and Harding.

  Caitlyn Brewster and her trickery had nearly ruined it all. The more Ash had thought about it over the years—which was way more than she would admit to a living soul—the more she was convinced that was exactly what it had been. Caitlyn hadn’t been into her. She’d been playing games, doing anything to win. She’d been a helluva competitor too. In the end, only a rookie mistake in the woman’s closing argument had allowed Ash to clinch the victory. And now she was back just in time to take away the partnership Ash had worked so hard for.

  This time, Ash was well aware of the woman’s ploys. Caitlyn was the type who would do anything to get what she wanted. Like kissing an opponent just to throw her off her game. Or showing up on her first day of work dressed like a stripper in an office where seventy-five percent of the equity partners were male.

  The woman had no scruples.

  Ash hoisted herself out of her chair, wishing she had a plausible excuse that would prevent her from walking all the way down the hall to the conference room. Maybe a broken leg. No one would expect a woman on crutches to hobble all that way for a meet and greet. Not even people who didn’t like her, which apparently was everyone in the office.

  Lacking crutches and not thinking she could pull off a good fake limp on short notice, Ash forced herself to make the trek toward the conference room. The space was nearly empty, the free food vultures having already descended, leaving only a few broken crackers and sad-looking baby carrots behind.

  “There you are.” The space was not as empty as Ash had hoped, as evidenced by Frank Lamont, another of the equity partners, flagging her down the instant she’d crossed the threshold. “Come over and meet Caitlyn Brewster.”

  He steered Ash by the shoulder, depositing her in front of the last woman on earth she wanted to talk to, and then disappeared into the hallway before she could utter a single word. So much for hoping Frank might carry the bulk of the conversation weight.

  “It’s nice to see you again,” Caitlyn said, offering what anyone else no doubt would mistake for a genuine smile. She was taller than Ash remembered, probably because of the four-inch heels. Shinier, too.

  Red really was an excellent color on her.

  Ash narrowed her eyes, wishing there was a stapler nearby to which she could give a good whack. “Have we met before?”

  A flash of disappointment stabbed at the corners of Caitlyn’s eyes before she relaxed her facial muscles. “My mistake. I could have sworn we had.”

  Score one point for me! Ash thought. And here Jenna had claimed Ash didn’t like sports. Although, Ash had always assumed there would be more sweetness to a victory against her old nemesis. Instead, it tasted a little flat, like a can of soda left open in the refrigerator overnight. Regret for lashing out in such an immature way made her stomach turn sour. Maybe she shouldn’t have acted so cold. It couldn’t be fun being the new person in an office of strangers, after all.

  Caitlyn studied Ash’s face in a way that brought goosebumps to her skin, reminding her of all the reasons she’d been taken in by the woman’s charms six years before. “I know what it is. You remind me of one of my nannies.”

  Charms? Ha!

  And the score was tied one to one.

  Had this conniving weasel managed to call Ash old and also insult her social class with one sentence? The dig landed like a physical blow. It was a much-needed reminder of exactly what Ash was up against. Even so, if Caitlyn hadn’t been gunning for the same promotion, Ash might have admired her skill at putting a competitor in her place.

  Before Ash had a chance to respond, Caitlyn left the room. A hundred scorching zingers raced through Ash’s head, all the things she could’ve said in reply to really chastise the new associate, and there was no one to say them to. What a tease.

  Since the conference room was empty and no one could see her do it, Ash paused to pick through the pathetic carrots to find a few decent ones. She grabbed those and the last two chunks of cheese to tide her over till dinner. It was shaping up to be another late night, during which she doubted she’d have time to order any food.

  Just as it had been when they’d faced off six years before, only one of them would remain standing when the partner announcement rolled around. Ash would work twenty-four hours a day if she had to, but that promotion was hers.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Caitlyn glanced at the clock on the bottom of her laptop screen. A quarter to five on Friday afternoon. Somewhere in the world there were probably people looking at the time and thinking about ducking home early to start the weekend, but Caitlyn wasn’t one of them.

  What she was, though, was running late.

  She was in no danger of missing the meeting, which didn’t start until five on the dot, but given that it was her first week, she needed to grab the best seat at the table to establish dominance in the office pecking order. Caitlyn lived by three rules: show up early, stay late, and never end up in the standing room only section for a company meeting.

/>   Any idiot could set an alarm for fifteen minutes before they had to be somewhere. That was why Caitlyn usually went for seventeen minutes, to give herself an extra edge. She hadn’t meant to blow past her deadline, but she’d been waiting on a contract from a new client. It had arrived, which was excellent news. Even so, she hoped no one else at the office was as diligent at arriving early for meetings as she was. So far, Caitlyn could only think of one person who would be.

  Ashley Tanner.

  In the five days since Caitlyn had started this job, she had done as much digging as she could into the woman. Topping her list of discoveries was that Ash hated Caitlyn with the fury of a thousand suns. Nobody had told Caitlyn this. They didn’t have to. Ash made it obvious with every breath, from the way she pretended not to remember who Caitlyn was to the way she found so many tiny but annoying ways to get under Caitlyn’s skin.

  In short, Ash was playing mind games, and Caitlyn was here for it.

  Mind games, it seemed, were Ash’s specialty. As were the same long hours and insane work ethic Caitlyn prided herself on. But unlike Caitlyn, who had perfected the art of getting on everyone’s good side, even the complete morons—and there were way more of those working in law offices than people might think—Ash wasn’t winning any popularity contests. Not a single associate in the office had a good thing to say about her.

  Caitlyn had no trouble understanding that. The woman was meaner than a rabid dog.

  To think she’d once felt bad for Ash, concerned the woman’s humble beginnings would keep her from the greatness she seemed to deserve. Caitlyn had felt it so keenly that she’d—

  No. Caitlyn had promised herself she wouldn’t think about that anymore. It was in the past. What was done was done. Suffice to say, if Ash expected Caitlyn to roll over this time and let her sail into a partnership promotion without breaking a sweat, she was in for a rude awakening. Caitlyn didn’t even want the job, but that didn’t matter. It was the principle of the matter.

  She didn’t want Ash to get something she didn’t win fair and square. Not again. Not if Caitlyn could do something about it.