“It’s the transition from football-field temper tantrum to corporate dominance that needs to be refined,” she continued, still sounding so airy and easy, despite the fact this wasn’t going quite how she’d imagined it would. “What you need to learn is how to hide your true face better.”
“I don’t hide my true face at all,” he said, and there was something quietly devastating in the way he said it. It struck Zoe like a blow, low and hard, and she didn’t know why. “What would be the point? Everyone’s already seen it.”
Zoe crossed her legs, settling back against her seat as if she, too, was completely relaxed, here in this tawdry place, in the company of a man who should have disgusted her—who had disgusted her, and thoroughly, before she’d started talking to him. She ignored that odd pang inside her at the dark look on his face, the leftover echo of that strange blow.
“I find it’s better to beware rich and powerful men who are also renowned for their good looks, because they tend to believe their own bullshit and usually don’t even know they’re lying. And they’re always lying, especially when they claim to be telling the truth.”
He held one hand to his chest, covering the place his heart should have been, had he possessed one. She was skeptical. His mouth curled in one corner, mocking them both. “It’s like you know me.”
He shifted in his seat then, and she imagined for a moment he was uncomfortable, though there was nothing on his face to suggest it. Just that fierce maleness that was uniquely his, and an odd intensity she couldn’t quite place. A strange kind of quiver hummed in her, low and deep, like the echo of a far-off earthquake, stirring up uneasy memories of her dusty, sun-drunk California childhood.
“You’re staring at me,” he pointed out. “Are you sure you’re not a fan? I ask because generally, that’s exactly what fans do.”
Zoe smiled, and she could feel the sharp edge of it, like the knife it was. She could only hope he did, too.
“I’m calculating the extent of your dissipation,” she told him. “There are only so many miracles I can be expected to perform, you understand. Some prospective clients require a few weeks or months in what we euphemistically call a health spa before we can even begin to have a sensible conversation about overhauling a tarnished public persona. And yours...” She let the blade of her smile cut deep, then waved a hand between them to indicate their surroundings. “Well. You’re rather more rusted through than most, aren’t you?”
“I like to think there’s no actual structural damage.”
His mouth crooked again, though his gaze stayed level on hers, and she knew better, somehow, than to believe him.
“I imagine that depends on what the structure was originally. Or what it was meant to be before all the years of dissolution and decay.”
There was the flicker of something unsettling in his too-blue gaze, still oddly intent on hers.
“And here I thought you were the best PR person money could buy,” he said softly. “According to your own sales pitch not five minutes ago. Capable of turning any rusted thing into a gleaming, squeaky-clean pillar of the community if you choose.”
There was no false modesty in her when she answered simply, “I am.”
“That’s hard to believe, if this is how you talk to your potential clients. All of whom can’t possibly be as laid-back and jovial as me.”
“You haven’t yet agreed to be my client, Mr. Grant.” She let him see the steel behind her smile, her gaze. “But I should warn you that I’m not talking about miracles, here. No one’s going to confuse you with the Dalai Lama no matter how brilliant a campaign we run. I’m a PR specialist, not the patron saint of lost causes.”
“That would be Saint Jude.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Saint Jude. Martyred with an ax a very long time ago, which had to have hurt, or it isn’t really martyrdom, is it? And since then, the patron saint of lost causes.”
“I wouldn’t have pegged you as the religious sort. More the blasphemous, deliberately profane sort, if your personal history and laundry list of paternity suits is any kind of guide.”
“Dismissed paternity suits,” he corrected her, a faintly chiding note in his voice. “And the fact I know the names of a few saints doesn’t make me a believer.”
Something hollow moved over his face then, but when Zoe blinked, it was gone, and he looked the way she assumed he always did. Vaguely challenging. Mocking. Arrogant and lazy, as if she’d only imagined he could be anything else, though she hadn’t the slightest idea why she seemed to want to do that.
“Doesn’t it?” she asked, but she was losing her grip on this conversation the more he watched her, as if she was edible and he was suddenly famished.
“It only makes me widely read.” He shrugged. “The more sacred cows you’re aware of, I find, the more fun it is to tip them over. One after the next.”
“And by ‘widely read,’ I assume you mean, what? Playboy magazine? I hate to break this to you, but I don’t think anyone’s likely to believe you’re in it for the articles.”
“I’m more of a doer than a reader, I’ll admit.” His expression shifted into dark amusement. “Want a demonstration?”
There was a crackle of something then, a kind of sharp, hot pang of awareness, and Zoe reminded herself that she wasn’t here to banter with this man. She had a very specific agenda. A plan, and he was nothing more than the perfect tool to execute it. There was no room for anything else. It didn’t matter that he was significantly more clever and far less drunk than she’d anticipated.
And besides, she knew exactly what he was. She knew what he’d done. Why was that so difficult to keep in mind now that she was this close to him?
“Do you imagine that I’ll be so easily seduced?” she asked, trying to keep her voice more arch than accusatory. “Is that how it normally works for you? You roll out a halfhearted sexual innuendo and they fling themselves at your feet?”
“I hadn’t imagined anything of the kind,” he said, and he was laughing at her, if only with those unnervingly clear eyes. “But I am now.”
“You’re not my type,” she said, sharp and smooth. “I prefer brains over brawn, for a start.”
“I beg your pardon.” But he wasn’t even remotely offended, she saw. If anything, he looked genuinely amused. It made his gorgeous face lighten, made those eyes of his very nearly shine. “I went to Harvard.”
“As did almost every single relative and ancestor you have, stretching back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1600s.” She kept her voice dry. “It’s somewhat less impressive to be a legacy times twenty. It would only be noteworthy if you didn’t go to Harvard.”
“I didn’t merely get into Harvard,” he pointed out, that gleam in his gaze never fading. If anything, it intensified, as if he really was imagining her at his feet, spread out before him like—she stopped herself right there. “I also graduated. That’s harder, even for someone with so much Crimson in his bloodstream.” He grinned. “Brains and brawn.”
Zoe shrugged. “I also don’t like sports. Especially football. Pointless and brutal little war games dressed up in silly costumes and pretending to be important.” She smiled. Sweetly. “No offense, of course. Just my opinion.”
“I pride myself on never taking offense at the unsolicited opinions of strangers,” Hunter said.
He shifted in his seat again, moving his strong legs beneath the table, making Zoe aware of how close they were sitting. How intimate it really was to be practically cuddled up in a private booth with this man. This terrible man. It took everything she had not to jerk back to a safe distance—but then, this was the game. This was what she had to do to win it. And she would win it.
“I was fired from the war games,” he confided after a moment. “If that helps.”
“And I don’t really like WASP-y Sons of the
Revolution, either,” she said almost sadly. “With blood so blue it practically weeps, who still think the world is their own, personal fiefdom. It’s a strange character flaw of mine, I’m sure.”
That made him grin. “Given the research you’ve clearly done, you must know that I’m the black sheep of my WASP-y, Sons and Daughters of the Revolution family. They sigh heavily whenever they see me, which isn’t very often. I’m terribly scandalous.”
“Or maybe it’s just you, Mr. Grant. I can’t say I particularly like you.”
“And yet here you are,” Hunter said, something about that tone making it clear she’d be a fool to underestimate him, though he still grinned with every appearance of pretty-boy ease. “Giving me your sales pitch in a strip club at ten-thirty on a Tuesday morning. Do you know who does things like that, Ms. Brook?” There was something about her name in his mouth, that famously dissipated mouth, that worked inside her, making her feel looser than she should, as if he could melt all the ice and iron within her that easily. She told herself she was horrified at the thought. “Fans and stalkers.”
“I promise you, I’m neither.”
“Then why on earth would you take on the Herculean task of attempting to restore my good name?” He laughed. “It can’t be done.”
“I have my reasons. All you have to do is benefit from them.”
“Let me guess. The goodness of your heart?”
“I don’t have a heart, Mr. Grant. I have a plan. You figure prominently in it, that’s all.”
That intensity that spiked the air around him tightened then, like an implacable fist. And then he smiled, sending a shot of something silken and ominous down the length of her spine. It occurred to her that she didn’t understand this man at all. That her research hadn’t prepared her for this, whatever this was. For him.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” he said in a velvet whisper, the way another man might talk of sex and desire, and it shivered inside Zoe like a touch, “but I’m committed to my downward spiral, and that leaves no room for anything else. Certainly not a mysterious woman and her ‘plan.’”
He rose to his feet then, in a kind of powerfully sinuous way that reminded her that he’d made his living for most of his life with that steel-hewn body of his. She didn’t know why that made her throat go dry, but it did. It bordered on painful.
What was happening to her?
“Feel free to stay and enjoy the show,” he said, smirking down at her. “The dancers here are very talented. Don’t forget to tip.”
Then he started to move past her, headed for the door, dismissing her that easily.
“Wait.”
Zoe rose and reached out for him as she spoke, but he saw her and shifted, throwing out one of his remarkable hands—widely held to be miracles in their own right, or so she’d read—to clasp hers in midair. As if they’d choreographed it.
And sensation poured into her, a white, wild heat, turning her to stone where she stood. Turning her body against her. She felt that simple touch like a hammer. It coursed through her, and before she could think better of it, before she could think, she jerked her startled gaze from their hands to his face—
And everything sizzled. Bright. Hot. Painful.
Impossible.
Hunter’s gaze narrowed. Turned dark.
Hungry.
It took every single bit of hard-won pride and determination Zoe had not to rip her hand out from his much bigger one, to reclaim it, to shut off this insane thing that lit her up in the worst possible places, from the hollow of her belly to the secret places below. Behind her knees. The curve of her neck. The suddenly taut and aching crests of her breasts, thankfully hidden behind the thick wool of her dress.
But she didn’t kid herself. He knew.
And she hated that she could react like this to a man like him. That her body didn’t seem to care what she knew about him. That she’d learned nothing from all these long, hard years. That she simply burned.
“I prefer not to be manhandled, thank you,” she said, her voice even and precise, as cold as the winter winds in the concrete canyons of the city outside this club, and he would never know what that cost her. “Particularly by strange men renowned for their long years of compulsive promiscuity and generally loutish behavior.”
He dropped his hand, but there was still that new light in his eyes, intense and certain, focused on her as if he saw all the things she’d hidden, her secrets and her scars. As if he knew she wore a mask. As if he could see it—and therefore, her—when no one else ever had.
That shook her, hard, but she fought to keep it from her face. Her eyes. Her rigid body that wanted things she’d never wanted, that she didn’t know how to want.
“I’m renowned for other things, too,” he pointed out, almost gently.
And she’d read about that, of course. His supposed sexual prowess. And she hated the fact that she could imagine it, too vividly now. Insistent. As if she was like other women, and could yearn—
Enough.
Zoe made a small noise that was too scornful to be laughter.
“Rich, bored men are remarkably predictable, Mr. Grant. I can assure you, I’ve seen every possible permutation of human perversity, and what has to be almost every last ‘dungeon’ on the island of Manhattan. Whips, chains, spanking benches, it’s all so tiresome.” She smiled, big and fake. “And though I’m sure your particular kinks are fascinating, I’ll just take your word for it.”
He laughed then, abruptly. And she didn’t understand why she imagined she heard something there in that sound, something more and deeper than the tawdry, tedious legend of Hunter Grant, professional asshole. Something that suggested he was more than that when she knew, firsthand, that he wasn’t.
He was the key to her revenge. That was all he was. And nothing else mattered. She wouldn’t let it.
“There’s only one way you’re going to learn about my particular kinks,” Hunter was saying, his voice shifting into something smoother, darker, connecting directly to that thing still too bright and too dangerous inside her, making her painfully aware that it was her own hunger. An impossible, alarming hunger for the very things she refused to let herself want. That she didn’t want. He waited until she was looking at him again. “But you’ll have to ask nicely.”
She told herself she felt nothing then. No lick of fire. No kick of need.
Nothing, damn it. Not for a man like this.
“There is absolutely no chance of that ever happening.” Her voice was flat. Cold.
He shook his head, though his blue eyes gleamed, and it was still like a shower of sparks inside her—and would terrify her, she was sure, if she let herself think about it.
“If you say so, Ms. Brook.” But he smiled, confident and sure despite that darkness she sensed in him. Or maybe because of it. “Yet I find I’m suddenly much more interested in your...services.”
It was time to remember who she was, who she’d become. What she’d been through. She wasn’t sure why being near this man made her forget. She arched a brow.
“I don’t ask nicely, Mr. Grant. I’m the one who’s asked. And honestly? I prefer to be begged.” She smiled then, the way he had. “You can start on your knees.”
This time, he really did laugh, and yet he still didn’t look anything but hungry as he regarded her from far too close, like some kind of ravenous wolf. Zoe couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt like this. Daring, off-balance. Something other than in complete and total control.
When she knew perfectly well she would die before she’d let that happen. Never, ever again.
“I don’t need any PR,” he said, very softly, as if it was an endearment. “If that’s really what you’re offering.”
She didn’t know why she couldn’t seem to pull in a full breath, why her eyes felt too brigh
t, why the way he was looking at her then made her feel as if she was turned inside out. Exposed and vulnerable. How was that possible?
“It is.”
“That’s too bad.” He was so big and entirely too beautiful, and she’d never been aware of another man the way she was of him—of every single part of him, especially that heated way he looked down at her. “Because if you wanted to see for yourself what the fuss was all about? Regarding my particular, predictable rich-man kinks? That, I could probably do.”
It wasn’t the first time a man had propositioned her. But it was the first time she’d felt a burst of flame lick over her when he did, and she was terribly afraid he knew that, too. That he felt the same slap of heat.
She couldn’t let that happen, it was impossible, so she shoved it aside.
“Is that caveman code for ‘sleep with me so I can put you back in your proper place?’” she asked, cool and challenging and back on familiar ground, because she knew this routine. She could handle this. Jason Treffen had taught her well, one painful lesson at a time. “Because you should know before you try, dragging me off by my hair somewhere won’t end the way you think it will. I can promise you that.”
Hunter looked intrigued and his head canted slightly to one side, but that wolfish regard of his never wavered—bright and hot and knowing. Reaching much too far inside her, deep into her bones, like an ache.
It was that last part that made her wonder exactly how much control she was clinging to, after all.
“I don’t want to drag you off somewhere by your hair and have my way with you, Ms. Brook.”
The smile on her lips turned mocking, but she was more concerned with the sudden long, slow thump of her heart and the heavy, wet heat low in her belly. “Because you’re not that kind of guy?”
There was something more than predatory in his eyes then, hard and hot, a dark knowing in the curve of his mouth that connected with that deep drumroll inside her, making it her pulse, her breath, her worst fear come true.
“I’m absolutely that kind of guy. But I told you. You have to ask me nicely.”
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