“I don’t know.” She grabs a tray while Jill pours four cups of coffee. “Damien Stone showed up with his attorney and half a dozen affidavits that made the judge turn down our application. It was like they knew exactly what I had planned to do and spent the weekend collecting the evidence to refute my arguments.”

    “How could he know?” My forehead creases in a frown. “The only people you shared your plan with were Gerry, Jill, and me. Gerry isn’t about to let the cat out of the bag on his own case, and you know we wouldn’t talk.”

    Or did I?

    Things got pretty foggy for a while there when I was at Club Sin two nights ago, and what I do remember I don’t want to remember—restrained on the spanking bench, Jack’s hand on my ass, fire, pain, and arousal so fierce I thought I would die if I couldn’t come. I remember mumbled words as he took me off the bench. I remember being snuggled in his arms. And then it all went away, and suddenly I was a raging, horny beast begging him to make me come. Oh God.

    “You okay?”

    Amanda’s voice pulls me off the humiliation roundabout, and I am wrenched back into the moment. My pulse kicks up a notch. Did I say anything to him about the case when I was on the bench, floating on the pleasure train?

    “Penny?”

    “Sure. Yeah. Just…knackered today. And the hearing. Wow. What are we going to do?”

    “We have to calm Gerry down first,” she says. “Then we’ll come up with a new plan.”

    We file into the bright, airy boardroom with its cream leather chairs, polished oak table, and sea green carpet. With his blue-black hair, thick features, cruel slash of a mouth, and dark Armani suit, Gerry looks more mafia than real estate magnate, and he shares a similar disdain for the law. I had a bad feeling about him when he first walked in the door, and now that we’re up close and personal, my bad feeling gets worse. Gerry nods at Amanda and openly leers at Jill as she hands out the coffee. His dark gaze rakes over me from head to toe and zooms in on my chest. I lift my notebook, blocking his view as I sit beside Amanda. From the corner of my eye, I can see her lip curl, and I know she feels as disgusted as I do.

    “There were really only a few ways around the lease provisions.” Amanda forestalls Gerry, who has just opened his mouth, no doubt to rant at us. “They must have prepared for all the possibilities over the weekend so they were ready for us this afternoon. It’s a setback but not a disaster. I’m confident we can still get them out without having to wait the duration of the notice period. I mentioned before that mediation was an option—”

    “I got a plan.” Gerry gives us the kind of smile that sharks give before they chomp off your leg—all teeth. “A lot of high-profile people go to the club using a hidden entrance. Under the terms of the lease, I have access to the property to make improvements for security. I’m thinking of putting cameras on all the doors and then sending the tapes to Stone. I’ll tell him to get out or I’ll make them public and let the world see all the fucking celebrities who got a dirty secret.”

    “That’s not the kind of mediation I was thinking about,” Amanda says calmly. When Gerry first came to us, she’d pushed for mediation to avoid the high costs of litigation in a case ill-suited to the courts, but Gerry wouldn’t hear of it. He’d already talked to Damien Stone, he said, and they hadn’t been able to come to an agreement. So why waste time with more talking?

    “Blackmail is illegal,” she continues. “I can’t condone it as a course of action, and if you were to tell me that it was something you planned to do or had done, I would be forced to withdraw as your attorney. We do have other options available to us, however, and I’m happy to discuss them. Mediation would be much faster.”

    Gerry’s face tightens, and he pushes back his chair. “I need them out of that building now. I’ve got plans for that property, and I won’t let Stone and his fucking sex club get in my way. He was supposed to give in as soon as he got served with the papers. I never expected him to hire a fucking lawyer and go through with the damn court case.” He slams his fist on the table and stands so quickly his chair topples over. “You didn’t do your fucking job. You were supposed to scare him off.”

    “I’m a lawyer, not an enforcer,” she says as he storms out the door. “If there are any legal avenues you want to pursue, just give me a call.”

    “He’s a real piece of work,” I say after Jill follows Gerry out to make sure he doesn’t cause any trouble. “Do you think he really will try to blackmail Stone?”

    “I wouldn’t put it past him.” Amanda sighs. “I’ve been fighting him to keep everything legal ever since I took him on as a client. Personally, I don’t like trying to kick the club out early when there are notice provisions in the lease that would give them time to wind up the business, but I’ll still do my best for my client. I almost wish he’d do something illegal so I have an excuse to drop him. I only agreed to take the case as a favor to one of the guys at the gym because Gerry’s a distant relation. You know how it goes.”

    Not having many relatives and none in the U.S., I don’t know how it goes, but I nod and smile anyway and take a sip of my now-cold and bitter coffee.

    “You’d better type up a note of our meeting so we have on record that I advised him against blackmail and explained that it’s illegal,” Amanda says. “The last thing we need is to be dragged through the mud with him. I can’t afford to have the firm’s reputation tarnished when we’re just starting out.”

    Guilt spears me in the chest. I have to tell Amanda. She’s not just my boss, she’s my friend, and I wouldn’t want to do anything to hurt her or compromise her business. “Should we…warn the club about what he might do? I mean, if there are people there who don’t want to be outed, they should probably know.”

    Amanda pushes back her chair. “Morally, yes. Legally, no. He gave that information to us in confidence and under attorney–client privilege. He didn’t tell us outright that’s what he was going to do, so there is no crime for me to report. And I can’t call up Stone’s attorney to warn him about something that might just be an emotional reaction to what happened in court today because it could have a significant financial impact on Stone’s business. Basically, that means unless we have evidence or a serious reason to believe he would carry out his threat, we can’t say anything to anyone.” She moves to leave, and I hold out my hand.