Page 10 of Reckless Temptation

“What case would you be able to sit in on if you got this internship?” she asked.

I cringed, knowing this would only further prove her point that Lorsen & Spengler wasn’t representative of the kind of law I was interested in. “Defending a CEO from embezzlement charges.”

She huffed. “And you would want to live with yourself for assisting in that?” Shaking her head, she got her bag on and studied me. “You’re more suited to be a DA, Sabrina. Fightforthe people. Get the scumbags in jail. Not the other way around.”

“I don’t want that either. I want to fight for other injustices,” I reminded her. Civil law was more up my alley. Not criminal.

“I’m just saying,” she said a few moments later as we parted ways. “It’s something to think about.”

As I walked toward my next class, I sighed. This internship was all that I was thinking about. It was big news. It would be a huge opportunity. But it didn’t mean I’d be selling myself short or compromising my integrity. If I got the intern spot, it would be an exercise. A lesson. An experience to learn, not “change my colors” or anything drastic like that.

It’s not like I would want to stay on after the internship. Just get it on my résumé and?—

So lost in my thoughts, I failed to pay attention to my surroundings.

Someone ran up alongside me as I went down the path toward the lecture hall. And they came too close, knocking into me and sending me into the fountain beside me.

I gasped as I was tilted off my axis. Too quickly, I was falling, careening into the shallow water. Before I could get a shout out, anything more than that sharp intake of air, I went down hard and fast.

My knee bumped into the concrete rim of the large fountain, and that was probably the only reason that my laptop didn’t drop into the water with me. The bag strap slipped down my arm as I plummeted, and it smacked onto the ledge where students usually sat.

They got up, startled by my being shoved into the pool of water. Laughter rang out as I splashed all the way in. Students and bystanders stood and pointed, cracking up that I was now sitting in the foot of water.

It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s not deep. It’s not the ocean. It’s not?—

Forcing myself to breathe and not hyperventilate at the fear of drowning, I sat up to wipe off my face.

I was soaked. My clothes, my shoes, my bag with notebooks. It was all dripping wet. Still, the only thing I could let into my mind was that I wasn’t drowning, not in this shallow amount of water. Iwouldbe fine, if humiliated and having to dry out my things now.

Blinking quickly and hating this long-held phobia of bodies of water, I gazed at the laughing and smirking faces of my enemies.

Tiffany and Rachel smiled with glee, watching me spit out water and climb from the fountain.

“Whoops,” Rachel’s boyfriend said. “Didn’t see you there.”

“Because she’s just a nobody,” Tiffany said.

Refusing to cry or cave to their cruel antics, I stared her down and hoped she could see how wrong she was. How wrong she would be.

No matter how much I didn’t agree with what that law firm stood behind and no matter how faintly their ethics could match mine, I would do everything I could to get that internship.

I’d be the somebody to win that coveted spot.

Not her.

That was how I’d fight back. I’d show her. I’d show them all.

Nothing, and no one, would stop me.

4

NICK

Iwasn’t sure why I bothered to come to class anymore.

When I started college, I had above-average grades, my professors liked me, and I was on a fast track to making my parents proud. The day my father started to decline marked the slow kamikaze downfall of my drive to succeed. At least in the engineering path I’d taken.

Over the years, with all the losses and hardships, I let my studies fall to the back burner. They weren’t even a priority at all anymore.

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