Legal Heat by Sarah Castille Page B

interrogated at the bar—Hunter style.
    “That little kitty needs to be tamed.” Steele tucked his phone into his pocket. “What do you know about her?”
    Mark shrugged, feigning disinterest. If Steele found out she had been at Carpe Noctem, he wouldn’t hesitate to use that information against her, even if her visit had been perfectly innocent. Or, at least, had started out that way.
    “She’s new to the case.”
    “Find out everything you can about her. Hire an investigator. I want to know all her secrets. Then run the case into the ground. I want it off my desk by the end of the month.”
    Mark frowned. Although his firm needed the business, he wasn’t prepared to sacrifice his career to get it. “I can’t do it. Investigating opposing counsel would be considered professional misconduct.”
    Steele snorted his disgust. “Sometimes you have to take a risk. Break the rules. That’s how you get what you really want.”
    “That’s not why you hiredme.” Mark tried and failed to hide his disdain. “If you want to break the rules, you have Gordon.”
    Steele needed Mark’s by-the-book approach to legal practice to keep Hi-Tech clear of the regulators. For everything else, he had Gordon Stanton, Hi-Tech’s in-house counsel and resident bully who had no qualms about straying from the right side of the law.
    “You’re too uptight,” Steele scoffed. “You need to relax. Let go. Get your head out of the law books and spice up your life. You haven’t been to one of my parties in years.”
    Mark gritted his teeth and bit back his resentment in the name of client relations. “Thanks for the advice.”
    As usual, Steele didn’t take the hint. “You need a woman, Mark. It’s been years since your girlfriend died. You need to move on. Find someone new.”
    Mark bristled at the oblique reference to Claire. Steele had some nerve mentioning her. He knew Claire only from the few occasions Mark had let her accompany him to Steele’s extravagant parties. Not well enough to even begin to understand the depth of Mark’s guilt over her death.
    Steele pulled out his cell phone and flipped to a picture of a doe-eyed blonde. “Melody. We’ve been together for over a year now.”
    Mark nodded at the picture. “Pretty.”
    “She reminds me of her…Claire.”
    Mark couldn’t stifle his grunt of irritation. He tapped his pen on the table and willed the break to end.
    “Melody’s my longest relationship,” Steele said. “Too long, actually. Men aren’t designed to be monogamous. That’s why kitty caught my eye. I couldn’t hold out the way you do.”
    “I don’t have time to even look after myself, much less put in the time to build a relationship.” Nor did he have the inclination to open himself up again. His heart had been rubbed raw once before and he had no intention of repeating the experience.
    Steele’s gaze drifted across the table to Katy’s jacket hanging on her seat. “She’s a pretty little kitty, probably a wildcat in bed, but she needs to be tamed by someone with the “steel” to handle her.” He laughed at his own joke.
    Mine.
    A wave of possessiveness surged through Mark’s body. Unexpected. Unwanted. Undeniable. He balled his hands into fists and concentrated on keeping them down by his sides.
    Although Steele didn’t know it yet, for the first time ever, he wasn’t going to get what he wanted.
    And unless Mark could resolve the potential conflict, neither would he.
     
     
    “You were amazing.” Martha hugged herself as they walked down the hallway. “I’ve never heard anyone speak to him like that. He’s Darkon Steele. He has ministers and regulators eating out of his hand and women falling at his feet. Boy was Jimmy right when he recommended your firm.”
    Katy cringed. She just wanted to erase the last stressful hour from her memory. How could Fate be so cruel? If she’d had any thoughts about seeing Mark again, she could just lay them to rest. No way would she risk her