Hollywood's Baddest (4 page)

Her mouth fell full open and her eyes narrowed into slits. She was being forced to take on the worst case of her career and the man she was going to have to defend couldn’t even find time in his schedule to see her. It was beyond arrogant.

“Mr. Paul, he needs to come in and see me as soon as possible. I need to get as much relevant information from him as possible so I can defend him properly when we get to court. There is no way this is not going to a trial unless he pleads guilty. In any event, he’s going to have to meet with me so I can go over his defense strategy.

It seems to me that whatever else he has going on his life right now, and no matter how busy he may be, this case must take precedence, and everything else will fall in line behind it. Now, when is the soonest that he can come in to the office to meet me, please?” she tried her best not to sound too irritated with him. It was astounding to her that a man with priorities so far gone was handling the life and career of someone so influential.

“Yes… of course. Well, I guess the earliest we could come would probably be around nine or ten tonight.” He said it nonchalantly as if it was no big thing at all.

Alexis covered her eyes with her free hand. Nine at night. He was going to make her come back to the office and work late just to see him, because he was too busy with his movie star life to come in to see his own attorney in an attempt to defend himself against drug charges, and he couldn’t fit it in until nine at night.

She sighed and dropped her hand down onto the desk. “Fine. Nine it is. Please ask him to be here right at nine. Does he need the address?” she asked, hoping that he would at the very least have that.

“Oh, we’ll both be coming in to see you. No, he doesn’t need the address,” he answered lightly. “Nine it is, then. We’ll see you then, Miss Harper.” He answered in a lower tone, and then bid her goodbye and they ended the phone call.

She was livid that she was going to have to go into the office so late, but she knew that there was likely no way around having to do that.

Her day seemed to both drag by and fly by simultaneously, bringing her ever nearer to the meeting she wished with everything in her wasn’t going to happen at all. The only saving grace was that there would be a break between when she was officially off of work that day and her appointment that night at nine, and in that small window of time, she would be able to go have drinks with her sister and vent a little bit about the circumstances she had found herself in.

Five o’clock finally rolled around and she drove to the little bar on the beach where she and Abby had agreed to meet. Abby had beat her there and was waiting for her at a table that sat in the sand under an umbrella, facing the sea.

Alexis sank down into the sea adjacent to her sister and sighed, closing her eyes for a long moment before she turned her gaze toward Abby.

“Long day?” Abby asked sympathetically.

“You could say that. Yes,” Alexis answered dryly. “Before I get into anything, though, I have to thank you for something I didn’t think I’d be thanking you for at all.”

Abby looked at her in surprise. “Yeah? What’s that?” she asked curiously.

Alexis rolled her eyes, looking away a moment, and then turned her gaze toward her sister and gave her as much of a half-smile as she could manage to muster.

“I need to thank you for calling me this morning to let me know what happened with Lucas Ryan.” She admitted with the barest hint of a sour note in her tone.

Abby was surprised and smiled back at her sister. “….you’re thanking me? What are you thanking me for?”

“For letting me in on the biggest news scoop of the day. Normally it wouldn’t have been on the top of my list, but when I got to work this morning, it turned out to be pretty important, and I would have looked like a fool if I hadn’t already known it. So, I owe you one. Thank you for telling me about what happened to him.”  Alexis frowned slightly and lifted her glass of wine to her lips to sip it.

Abby’s mouth turned in a half-frown and a half-smile of confusion. “Well sure! Glad to help. Um… how did it come up at work? Was everyone talking about it?” she asked interestedly. “Because everyone, everywhere else, is talking about it!” she giggled in excitement and eyed her sister.

Alexis groaned. “I’m sure they are.” She sighed. “No… it wasn’t office gossip. It was much worse.”

“Worse?” Abby lowered a brow and frowned fully. “What do you mean worse?”

Sighing in resignation, Alexis looked at her sister and in a low voice, she told her what she wished wasn’t truth.

“His manager contacted the firm this morning because he needs legal representation now, of course, and Anderson Nolan talked to him about who should defend Lucas, and they both decided that it ought to be me. I got called into Nolan’s office, and he pretty much forced me to take the case.

It was, as he put it, either I take the case and I win it and possibly get the promotion that I’m after, or I don’t take the case and I find myself a job at another firm.” She tipped her wine glass back and took a long drink from it, and then swallowed and looked back at her sister, who was staring at her, agape.

“You’re looking at Lucas Ryan’s new attorney.” There was a heavy note in her voice.

Abby’s face lit up brighter than the strip in Las Vegas, and she squealed, clapping her hands together as if she had just heard the most exciting news she’d ever heard in her whole life. “Oh my god! You’re kidding! You’re…. are you kidding? Are you teasing me with this? Because… if you are, I just want you to know that that’s truly cruel. Don’t you dare lie to me! Are you serious?” she rushed through every word and tumbled over the next as she tried to comprehend something so surreal.

Alexis nodded slowly and pressed her lips together. “Yes. Unfortunately, I am serious. I wish it was different. I wish they had gotten someone else. Anyone else. I don’t want this case, Abby. I don’t want anything to do with it for about a thousand reasons. He’s too high profile, there will be a mass of media involved, I have so many other really important cases on my desk just waiting for me right now…. Ugh. There are so many reasons why I don’t want it, and I told Anderson that I don’t want it, and that was when he put me in the crunch and forced me to take it.”

She furrowed her brow thoughtfully. “It’s so strange that he’d make me do it. He knows how busy I am right now, he knows how many other cases I’m working on. He could have had anyone do it, but they decided that it had to be me, and so now I’m stuck with it.”

Abby was still riding high on her excitement, and gushing as she spoke. “Oh my gosh, it’s so exciting! I’m going to tell everyone I know that my big sister is his legal counsel. It’s incredible!”

Then her eyes grew wider and she leaned close to her sister. “Oh! Do you think there would be any way that I could get to meet him? Can I do that? Or is that like… a breach of something?”

Sighing, Alexis shrugged. “I don’t know if you can or not. I would guess not. I talked to his manager today and I almost thought that I wasn’t even going to meet with him; apparently he’s much too busy to meet with his attorney in person; he’s got far too many other more important things to do since he was bailed out of jail this morning, and meeting with his attorney was not a priority on his list.

Luckily, the two of them were able to squeeze me in at nine o’clock tonight, so… I’ll have to go back to the office and meet them when I should be getting ready for bed.” She glared off into the view of the horizon as she thought about it.

Abby smiled and shrugged. “Well, it’s not too bad, I mean, at least you get to meet him!”

Alexis turned to look at her almost impatiently. “He’s just a big shot who got caught using drugs! I don’t want to meet him or defend him; the man should probably be behind bars anyway!”

Her sister sighed dreamily and emptied the last of her cosmopolitan. “Still though… that’s pretty cool.”

“I’ll try to look at it that way while I’m meeting him practically in the middle of the night tonight.” Alexis grumbled. She sighed then and looked at her sister sympathetically. “I’m sorry, I know you’re excited and it seems like a really amazing thing to you, and maybe it would be amazing to a lot of other people… it’s just… I have other things; other cases that I could be working on. Things that are really important that need my attention! I’ve got one right now that is an environmental disaster and I am working so hard to nail the corporation responsible for polluting the main water source for a whole town… now that is an important case! That’s one that I wish I was working on night and day! That’s one that deserves media and hype and attention… that’s one that everyone should be talking about and be concerned with…. But is it? No. Not even a little bit.

"What does everyone get into a frenzy about? An actor on drugs who got caught. Like that’s news… I feel like a good chunk of the whole entertainment industry in Los Angeles is on one drug or another, and it’s just a matter of time before they get caught or hurt or die from it. The only reason why this one is such news is because he’s such a big name actor. It’s ridiculous. It will be a media circus, and that’s just not my speed. That’s nothing at all that I want to be a part of.” She frowned and stared down at her nearly empty glass of wine.

Abby looked at her with a meaningful smile and gave her sister a nudge with her elbow. “Just because I know you don’t keep up on these kinds of things, I’ll show you just what a big media circus this thing with him already is.”

“What do you mean?” Alexis asked, tipping her head and looking as Abby held out her smartphone for Alexis to see.

“Well, social media has been blowing up about it all day. Everyone has an opinion, and everyone is talking about it, and practically nothing else. Look…” she showed a few brightly lit screens to Alexis.

“There are two hashtags going around now, and everyone is either on one team or the other,” Abby said as her finger moved over the screen.

“Team?” Alexis asked in confusion.

Abby pointed at the hashtags. “Yeah… #GuiltyLucas and #InnocentLucas. Everyone is taking sides, and it has gone viral. It’s all over the world. There are people in countries I’ve never even heard of who are declaring their position on it. It’s like the whole world just split right down the middle. See these articles? They’re everywhere. America’s favorite bad boy gets caught, Hollywood hunk gone bad, Lucas Ryan; framed or guilty, Oscar winner loses big, Lucas Ryan; highs and lows ….I could go on. There’s no end to them.”

“I’m sure there isn’t.” Alexis said in a low voice. “I’m sorry to see all that. I knew my hands were going to be full with him, but that… wow. I think it’s going to be worse than I ever imagined. She sighed and finished her wine. “Great. Just what I wanted to do with my legal career.”

“It all started this morning when he was released on bail; he went straight to social media and declared himself innocent, and it caught fire. Within hours it was all over the place, and the battle lines were drawn!” Abby smiled at her sister.

Alexis looked at her and raised one brow. “He started all of this? Wonderful. I’m going to have to figure out a way to keep him off social media.”

“Good luck with that. He’s on it all the time. It’s how he stays connected to his fans.” Abby went to one of his pages and pointed out a few of the replies he had made to those tagging him and hash tagging about him. “See? Here he is thanking them… he is grateful for their support…. He feels sure he will win it because he’s innocent… it just goes on and on. I don’t know how you plan on keeping him off of any of the social media outlets that he’s on. His fans are going to demand updates.”

Alexis narrowed her dark brown eyes. “His fans aren’t trying to defend him in court. I’m glad you showed me this, too. It’s something I wouldn’t have thought of, and I’ll definitely have to address it when I talk with him tonight.” She looked at Abby thoughtfully. “Actually, you’ve already been a big help about this. Do me a favor please? If you hear of anything coming up about this that I might not know of, let me know… I guess, kind of keep me in the loop about it? Thanks.”

Abby nodded happily. “I get to help you! Yes! I am so excited! I’ll be on top of all of it for you. Anything I hear that I think might be helpful for you, I will let you know about.”

“Thanks, Ab,” Alexis said with the first smile she’d had all day. “You’re the best.”

They talked about other things then, and ordered dinner. Alexis was feeling better about having her sister’s support for the case, but not at all about having to take the case, and that bitterness stayed with her right up to the meeting that was scheduled at nine that evening.

Chapter2

Alexis told herself that she shouldn’t have a chip on her shoulder as she prepared for her meeting that night, she told herself that whether she thought it was stupid and superfluous herself, it was obviously very important to Lucas Ryan, or at least it ought to be, and that he would be relying on her to help him. She decided to go with that perspective of it, because maybe if she had a better attitude about it, perhaps it might be easier to get through. If she had to do it, she didn’t want to hate it all the way through and make herself miserable.

The clock on the wall read nine and she sat in one of the cushioned chairs in the lobby on her floor. Everyone else in the office was gone for the night, so she wanted to wait near the elevator for the men to arrive. She thought about how she needed to be professional with them and take the case seriously. She thought about how she would have to try to find a way to prove his innocence, which seemed like it might be an impossibility, considering the fact that the drugs were found on him and in his house when he was arrested. She knew that the police couldn’t have gone in and arrested him without a search warrant, and she wondered how they had gotten it and what they knew when they went in. There were so many questions to find the answers to if she was ever going to get to truth. She kept feeling like it was a monumental waste of time, and that even if she did get him off of the charges against him, he’d probably go right back to it and be arrested again in no time.

She looked up at the clock on the wall and saw that it was a quarter past nine. She frowned and rubbed her fingers over her forehead with one hand, tapping the manicured nails of her other hand against the seat she was sitting in. She thought about getting witnesses from the party to testify on his behalf, and wondered if that would be enough or if there would be more that she could do to prove his innocence. The biggest problem with that was she didn’t believe that he was innocent. She believed that he was guilty as hell, but she was on the wrong side of the case for that opinion, and if she was going to have any hope at all of convincing a jury that he was innocent, she was going to have to believe it herself somehow, and she knew she’d have to convince them, because if she didn’t, it was going to be her job on the line.

The clock on the wall showed half an hour past nine. She groaned and stood up, pacing around the floor with her hands on her hips. She had thought about calling Warren to find out where they were, and she had just about made up her mind to do it when the elevator light came on and the doors slid open. Turning to face the two men who walked out of it, she was struck with a sense of surrealism for the briefest of moments. There in front of her was a man she had seen on the screen so many times. She wasn’t necessarily a fan of his, but it was a little off-putting to her to see him standing in front of her, looking at her.

The other man, who looked totally unfamiliar to her, walked over to her first and shook her hand. He was dressed in an expensive suit that seemed to hang on his thin, wiry body. Everything about him seemed thin, from his thinning hair to his thin fingers and the narrow line of his half-hearted smile.

“I’m Warren Paul.” He announced in a thin voice. “We spoke on the phone earlier today.” His eyes met hers and she was certain that there were more layers to the man she was looking at, than any other man she had ever known.

“Hello, Warren. Thank you for coming in. I believe our appointment was at nine, however.” She said, looking intentionally at the clock on the wall and then back at him.

He shrugged as if it was nothing. “This was the soonest we could be here.” He said coolly. Irritation burned in her stomach and she bit her tongue, stopping herself from saying anything that might be rude or uncalled for, but she was certainly thinking it.

Turning toward the man beside him, she held her hand out and he took it. His grasp was firm, and he looked her directly in the eyes as he introduced himself. “Hello, I’m Lucas Paul. I’m sorry we’re late. It’s been a busy day for us.” He seemed polite, though she sensed a bit of indifference in him as well.

Lucas Paul was often called the most beautiful man in the world, or the sexiest, or the most handsome, depending on the publication that was featuring him. He was six and a half feet tall, built with a solid body of muscle; toned, tan, and sculpted as if he had been carved out of marble by Michelangelo. He had sky blue eyes that were framed by long thick black eyelashes and set just under a dark and level brow.

His black hair usually looked tousled and a little unkempt, but on him it was a fashion statement, and in the opinion of most, a truly sexy one at that. His jaw was squared, his nose aquiline straight, and his lips were full and round. Kissable, was what most people said. He stood upright and his good posture gave him an air of confidence and ease all at once. She thought it was strange that it was something she noticed about him right away. One of the other things that struck her immediately was that he did not look like he was on drugs of any kind, and that surprised her.

Alexis shook his hand as firmly as he grasped hers. “I’m Alexis Harper. It looks like I will be your legal counsel. Please, come with me. We need to get started right away.” She turned and walked away from him, annoyed that they had been more than half an hour late and that they had both been so nonchalant about it.

If she had been half an hour late for anything, she would have been mortified, explaining herself to no end, and begging for forgiveness from anyone who had to wait for her; or at least, that’s how she imagined she might be in her mind. She was never late for anything, so she had no idea how she would really react to it.

She walked them down the hallway toward her office, which was the only one in the long dark hall with a light on. They sat down at her desk and she sat facing them, her legal pad ready, her tablet on and glowing, and a barrage of questions hovering near the edge of her mouth. She offered them something to drink, and left to get it. When she came back, she saw Lucas’ gaze drifting slowly over her from head to toe, pausing on her curves, until his blue eyes reached hers and he gave her what she was sure was probably his sexiest smile. Her stomach turned and she felt the hardened ball of irritation in her grow.

It wasn’t enough of an insult
, she thought to herself,
that she had to take his case to begin with, but to add to that the fact that he was checking her out and flirting with her, was almost more than she could stand.

She set their drinks down on her desk and sat down across from them, taking her pen in her hand and doing her best to focus on the questions she had for him. He seemed laid back and casual to her, resting comfortably in the chair he occupied. He crossed his leg and let his eyes wander over every fine feature of her face, and then drop to the top button of her blouse which was undone, just above her cleavage.

She could feel his eyes on the swell of her breasts, and it fired the irritation in her to a point of anger. She knew then that there was nothing she was going to like about him. Nothing at all, and defending him was not going to be something she could do with a fair and open mind. She pushed the biting thoughts out of her mind and tried her hardest to remember that her career was riding on the line with his case, which was just enough incentive for her to remain civil to him, though he wasn’t deserving of it at all.

“So, Lucas, could you tell me please what happened at your house?” she asked, clearing her throat and looking him dead in the eye. She had hoped that by keeping his gaze on her eyes, it might keep his eyes off of her body. It didn’t. He looked at her as he spoke, but he glanced at almost every part of her as they talked, and she felt as if she might as well not even have bothered to dress, because she was fairly certain that in his mind, she was sitting there without her clothes on. That only served to make her even angrier about having to defend him.

He shrugged. “There was a party and I was drinking quite a bit, of course; I was celebrating. I went into my office to meet a couple of guys and I met them…” he hesitated then, thinking back as well as he could about the events that night, “…and… I… well… I met them, and we toasted my Oscar win… and then… I really can’t remember anything after that. I guess I must have blacked out. The next thing I remember was waking up in a squad car on my way to the police station. I was booked and tossed in jail.” Anger colored his face. “Then I guess Warren came and got me bailed out.”

Warren sat quietly and Alexis wrote down everything he said. She frowned and looked back up at him. “Do you know who the men were that you met?”

He shook his head. “No, I’d never met them before. There were a lot of people at the party who I didn’t know.”

Alexis looked at the notes she had made and knew she was going to have to ask him the obvious question. “Were you using any drugs?” she looked at him directly with a completely stoic face. She was a master at keeping her opinions and feelings to herself when she needed to; it was one of the things that made her a good attorney.

Frustration colored his face he sat up in the chair and glared at her. “No! I wasn’t on any drugs! I said I was innocent and I am! I don’t know where the drugs came from!”

She watched his reaction and wondered whether or not he was telling the truth. “Where were the drugs?”

He sat back against the chair and sighed heavily. “The cops said they found them in my desk and in my pockets, but I didn’t have any drugs on me, or in my house before that night. I don’t know where the drugs came from. They weren’t mine. I don’t do drugs.”

She made herself keep a straight face. “If you didn’t have any drugs in the house before the night of the party, and you don’t do drugs, then how did the police officers get a warrant to search the house and find drugs?”

He shook his head. “They didn’t have a search warrant. They had an arrest warrant, and they came in and arrested me.”

“On what charge?” she asked pointedly, looking him directly in his blue eyes. There was a fire there that hadn’t been there earlier when she’d met him. She saw that his emotion was getting to him.

“Possession of an illegal substance.” He answered in a low tone. “I don’t know how they got that. Somewhere along the line this was fixed, because I don’t do drugs and I didn’t have drugs.” He stated flatly.

She leveled her gaze at him. “Except you did have drugs; they were on you when you were arrested, and they were found in and on your desk. So, that isn’t exactly circumstantial evidence. That’s just… evidence. The drugs were on you. You can say they weren’t yours all you want to, and you can say that you weren’t doing them, but in the end, that’s what the law is going to look at. Possession. That’s going to be hard to get out of.”

He frowned and leaned forward, looking her keenly in the eye as he tilted his head slightly. “You don’t think I’m innocent do you!” it was a statement, not a question.

She pursed her lips a moment and then shook her head. “No, I’ll be honest with you. I really don’t.”

Lucas glared hotly at her and furrowed his brow. “Is that so? And just how do you expect to convince anyone else that I’m innocent if you don’t even think I’m innocent? This was a setup, I’m telling you! I was framed! They weren’t my drugs!”

“We have to prove that!” she snapped at him, leaning forward and looking him straight in the eye. “You have put the burden on us to prove that you were innocent when the drugs were on you and in your home, and the only defense you have right now is to say that they weren’t yours and you didn’t use them! That’s nothing!” she leaned back in her chair and rubbed her hand on her forehead.

“We are going to have so much work ahead of us trying to prove you were innocent, when everything about this case proves that you are not!” She lowered her hand and leaned forward again, composing herself. “Is there anything you might not have told me yet? Anything that stands out to you; no matter how small or insignificant, that you can think of that I should know?”

He shook his head. “No. Just that they weren’t mine. I don’t know where they came from.”

“You said that already. Where were the drugs when they were found on you?” she asked with a sigh.

“In my pockets. Two of my pockets. I had a jacket on… a black tuxedo jacket, and when the cops arrested me they said the drugs were in the pockets,” he replied in a low voice as he rubbed his fingers over one temple and closed his eyes.

She wrote down more notes and looked back up at him. “When was the last time you had your hands in your pockets?”

He opened his eyes and looked at her, shrugging. “I didn’t have my hands in my pockets all night. I don’t use my pockets. I never use my jacket pockets. I only use my pants pockets. I think it looks tacky to have anything in front jacket pockets.”

She nodded, writing more notes. “This is your jacket, correct? You didn’t wear anyone else’s jacket or rent it or borrow it?”

He looked at her in surprise and blinked. “No… why would I do that? It’s my jacket.”

Pressing her full lips together into a firm line, she shook her head. “So, it’s your jacket and you never use the pockets and the drugs were found in the pockets. Did you take it off at any point? Give it to a coat check clerk or anything?”

Lucas shook his head. “No, I wore it all night. I never took it off.”

Alexis sighed. “This isn’t looking good.” Did you see the drugs in your pockets, or were you aware of them being there at any point in the evening?”