Jensen:: A Military Bad Boy Romance (The Bradford Brothers Book 1) by Juliana Conners

he’s procured from Kristin so that his dad would win the case and thank him. If anything had gone south he would have blamed it all on me. And if I refused to use the information, I’d get fired, which is what happened.
    Either way I’d get all the blame and none of the credit. And I’d be out of his hair, so that he would be free to live his lifetime of bliss with Kristin. She’d probably done the same thing at her firm. And whoever won would convince their firm to hire the other as the more worthy adversary— and then they could work together, because Brian couldn’t last two minutes without riding someone else’s coattails at work.
    “Riley, calm down, you don’t know what you’re talking about, and I’d be awfully careful swinging accusations around…”
    “I should be careful?” Now I explode, and I don’t even care who’s watching. “You’re the one who can face disciplinary board charges! You’re the one who would have had to trade information about our case and our client too in order to get such goodies from the other side, and how do you think it’s going to look when our client finds out just how loyal of an attorney you really are?”
    I’m up in his face now, practically spitting on him, and he lunges towards me.
    “You wouldn’t dare!”
    “Watch me!”
    I don’t back down, and I think this surprises Brian. He realizes how serious I am, and how I’m not going to just roll over and play nice like I always used to. He grabs me by my arms and shoves me down into the stool in front of the bar.
    This scares me. He’s never done anything like this to me before. He has my full attention now.
    “You listen here, Riley. You think you’re important, that you have some influence, but you don’t. Not anymore. You know who the big players are, and you’re not one of them.”
    “Brian, please.”
    He’s squeezing my arms, and it hurts. I try hard not to cry but I can feel the tears welling up in my eyes.
    “You don’t matter. You were just a lowly associate and now you’re nothing. You’re finished at Holt. Even if my dad wanted to take you back, I’ll tell him not do it. And if you run your mouth about this you’ll be blackballed from every firm in town and you know it.”
    “Just let me go.”
    I try to stand up and walk away from him but he pushes me back down onto the chair. He’s raising a fist at me and I wouldn’t put it past him to hit me. I never thought he’d do something like that, but then again I never thought he’d do anything like this.
    “Brian!” I cry out, feeling trapped and humiliated. But then I hear a loud popping sound, and the next thing I know he falls over onto the floor.
    I gasp, along with everyone else, as I realize who hit him.
    “Jensen! Thank you.”
    But I don’t think it’s victory or acknowledgment staring back at me through Jensen’s attractive brown eyes. More like disappointment, or pity.
    “Let’s get out of here,” he says, throwing money onto our table as we rush out of the bar.
     

Chapter 16

    Pop .
    There goes that little douchebag, falling down to the floor of the bar like the piece of crap that he is. I can’t believe I fell for a girl who’s still hung up on this loser.
    When I first noticed them fighting, I couldn’t believe it. Why would beautiful, successful Riley be with this obvious daddy’s boy? But then I heard her say that they’re engaged and that she still wanted to go back to the firm and I gave up trying to understand her. It didn’t mean I didn’t enjoy punching him though.
    It’s dark by the time we get outside, and chilly, too.
    “Thank you so much for doing that,” Riley starts to say, and tries to take my hand, but I don’t let her.
    “There’s no time to talk. Hurry up.”
    We walk back to her office, which isn’t far away. I want to tell her to have a nice life. But I look at her, shaking and crying, and realize that even though I’ve become completely disillusioned by her, I can’t just