Read The Dangerous Seduction for Free Online

to have influence. And to have influence you have to have money; the two of them pretty much go together. I want to have influence, to be able to change things.” He gives a self-conscious sort of a shrug. “To make a difference. Like with this case. Like with what you do. You make change.”
    Slowly, Joseph’s mouth curls up into a genuine, but not entirely nice, grin. Wolfish, Ryan thinks, like an animal circling his prey, like someone who can see inside you and know exactly what you’re thinking. “I want to learn from you, I want to be as good as you. I don’t know if I will be, but that’s what I want. Sure, acting’s got its own perks, if you’re any good at it. But the law is where it really matters.”
    Joseph nods; he looks almost impressed, and Ryan feels his face flush, not with embarrassment this time, but with genuine pleasure. “You surprise me,” he says. “Not many people are so honest.”
    “I don’t see any point in lying to you,” Ryan says.
    “You wouldn’t believe how many people try anyway.”
    “I’m not most people.”
    Joseph takes a long sip of his drink before he answers. “Yes, I’m beginning to see that.”

Chapter 2

     
     
    R YAN DOESN ’ T see Joseph over the next three days. He’s in court, winding up another case, an intellectual property lawsuit. The client, a young M IT graduate, is claiming his idea was ripped off. The defendant is running scared, or at least that’s what the gossip around the office says. Ryan is busy anyway: he’s finally gotten to work on the McNeil case, trawling through witness statements, timelines, and endless and exhausting e-mail trails from ex-employees of McNeil Industries. He’s been assigned all of the Corporate Operations team, and they’ve got a lot to say, most of it completely irre levant to the case.
    He spends the next three days going through the files, writing up lists of questions for the employees he’ll need to interview, noting points for clarification and contradictions in their statements. Not all of the Corporate Ops team are part of the lawsuit, and it’s one of his jobs to figure out why some of them don’t feel the same level of animosity toward their former boss as their coworkers.
    The news about him accompanying Joseph to the TV studio and for dinner afterward is all over the office already. It seems to have had a negative effect on most of his coworkers, who have made up their minds that he’s trying to sleep his way to the top, never mind that it was Joseph who asked him to help out in the first place.
    But whatever. They can gossip if they want to. He’s used to the bitchiness and backstabbing of the theater world, so a few whispered comments and dirty looks don’t mean anything to him. Besides, he’s too busy to stand around trading gossip over the water cooler. As far as he can see, the only real negative side of his current pariah status is that nobody’s shown him how to work the state-of-the-art Gaggia coffee machine in the break room yet. He’s sick of the weak shitty stuff from the regular vending machines.
    “Hey, look. Like this.”
    He steps back as Fiona, one of the few people who doesn’t seem to have decided he’s on a mission to fuck himself into a better job, steps forward and presses a couple of buttons. The machine immediately whirs into action and starts to dispense thick caramel-colored liquid into his cup.
    “Oh man, thanks,” he says. “Thanks so much. At my last place we just had vending machines, nothing like… this.” He waves a hand at the machine. “Whatever this is, it’s like something from the Space Age.”
    She laughs and he smiles in relief. Finally someone is not giving him the stink eye. She makes herself a cup and they take a seat at one of the chrome bistro tables in the break room. She’s working on the same assignment as he is, only she’s gotten the IT department. “I guess that means we’ll have to work together,” she says. “I think the COO had