Scandalize Me

by Caitlin Crews

  Zoe Brook stood there when he opened his eyes, much like one of the many apparitions he hadn’t been thinking about. She wore another impressively sleek dress today, this one in a gunmetal gray that skimmed over her lean curves and made his mouth go dry, with a long and complicated sweater over it. Her lips were red, her eyes were cool, and there was no reason at all she should be looking at him like that at eleven o’clock at night.

  “I think this confirms that you’re stalking me,” he said, instead of all the other things he wanted to say. “Do I need to call security?”

  “This isn’t stalking. This is persistence. I can understand why you’d be unfamiliar with the concept.”

  “Tomayto, tomahto,” he murmured.

  She smiled that wicked smile of hers, and he was glad the bubbles concealed the most unruly part of him from view. He stretched his arms out along the sides of the hot tub and smiled back.

  Suddenly, he was wide awake. Clearheaded, even. At last. More focused than he’d been in years.

  “I know you couldn’t possibly have missed your appointment today on purpose,” she said, in a bright and easy way at complete odds with the shrewd look she was giving him. “But I’m afraid that’s two strikes.”

  “I don’t respond well to baseball metaphors. It’s a football thing. Jets, Sharks. You know how it is.”

  “Let’s try it again, shall we? Ten o’clock on Thursday. Don’t make me come after you again.”

  “Or what?” he asked drily. “We’ll both get naked and wet?”

  A group of women walked by then, chatting idly while wrapped in towels from the locker room and completely unaware that they were interrupting something electric. Their conversation cut off abruptly when they saw Hunter lounging in the hot tub, then exploded into a frenzy of giggles when he smiled at them.

  They giggled louder, then disappeared into the sauna, where there was a sudden burst of high-pitched squealing as the door swung closed.

  “I think they recognized me,” he said.

  “Well,” Zoe said, in that prickly way of hers that made him grin. “You’re certainly recognizable.”

  He stood then, stretching his arms over his head and letting the hot water course over him, entirely too amused by the way her eyes widened at the sight of his naked torso, then dropped to the board shorts that were plastered to his thighs. He felt the way she swallowed, hard. Her blue-gray eyes traced over his skin, in a manner he was sure left fingerprints behind.

  He wanted her even more than he remembered he had in that strip club, where she’d stood out like a beacon and made him forget himself. He wanted to taste the elegant line of her neck, see what lay beneath those beautiful clothes. He wanted to see where that flush in her cheeks led, if it moved over the rest of her smooth skin and turned it that pretty blush color.

  God, the ways he wanted her. Here, now. Anywhere.

  “Why don’t we have this meeting of yours right now?” he asked, watching her narrowly. Willing her to close the distance between them, so he could touch her again. Feel that fire. She made him imagine he was alive again, and as much as he disliked what came along with that, he still found he liked the burn. “You’ve gone to the trouble to track me down in my gym in the middle of the night. You have my full attention.”

  But there were ghosts in her eyes when she dragged them back to his.

  “Not yet,” she said softly. Deliberately. “But I will. Ten o’clock on Thursday, Mr. Grant.”

  “Will I hear about this plan of yours?” he asked, somewhere between dry and amused, and his body didn’t care which, it just wanted her. Particularly when she let out that laugh. “Or will you continue to drop vague hints and not-so-veiled threats?”

  “Keep your appointment,” she suggested.

  “I like your style,” he said, swinging his leg over the side of the tub and climbing out, watching her eyes widen slightly before she controlled it. “Intrigue and drama over an appointment I didn’t make and don’t want. I appreciate the effort, Ms. Brook. I do.”

  “Just think how appreciative you’ll be on Thursday,” she said with a smile that made him think of sweet cream and oversatisfied cats.

  Hunter picked up his towel and swiped it over his face, and when he lowered it, she was gone. That shouldn’t have surprised him. Or made him laugh enough to hear the echo of it from the tile around him, reminding him of a man he barely recognized that had once been him.

  He got dressed quickly in the locker room, and then he started making some calls. He might have been a pariah, but that didn’t mean he was any less famous. People still took his calls—even in the middle of the night.

  Zoe Brook was the best, he found—just as she’d claimed. She could solve any image problem, make any kind of piggish behavior into a festival of silk purses, all without seeming to break a sweat. She was the real deal.

  “The only trouble,” Zair al Ruyi, his friend and the fourth roommate from their early Harvard days, told him from Washington, D.C., where he was currently serving as ambassador to the United States from his far-off, oil-rich sultanate, “is that she might very well chew you up and spit you out while she’s saving you from the jaws of the lion. It’s her specialty.”

  “Luckily,” Hunter said, “I make a pretty thin meal. Not much left to chew on.”

  Zair, keeper of his own dark secrets and certainly no stranger to trouble, diplomatic immunity or no, laughed.

  “She can solve any problem. Even one of yours.”

  “And you know this from personal experience?” Hunter asked, cradling his phone between his head and his shoulder as he walked out into the cold night. “Please tell me that for the first time in our entire history, you plan to share.”

  If there was anyone cagier or more private than Zair, Hunter had never met him. They’d been sophomores before Hunter had realized that when Zair made vague references to “home,” he’d meant a sultan’s palace. Or when he’d said “my brother,” he’d meant the Sultan of Ruyi.

  His old friend only laughed now, making Hunter wish things were different. That instead of chasing footballs across the past decade, he’d made more of an effort to stay connected to these first, best friends of his, more like brothers than his own, actual brother had ever been. But he’d lost that, too.

  “Whatever Zoe Brook wants with you, Hunter,” Zair said, not answering the question directly, not that Hunter would have known what to do if he had, “I’d give it to her. Because otherwise I suspect she’ll simply go ahead and take it.”

  * * *

  He met Zoe in the waiting room of her bold Columbus Circle office at precisely ten-fifteen on Thursday morning. Hunter lounged on one of the bright red leather couches as if he were in his own living room, a detail he saw her take in with a single amused glance. Her wicked brows rose at once, and he felt it like a blast of heat dancing all over his skin. Like the brush of her fingers against his sex.

  “Look at that.” She sounded faintly mocking. “You can find your way across the city. And all by yourself!”

  “Third time’s the charm,” he agreed in the same tone, aware that the receptionist was staring at him in something like awe. Or was it horror? “You could say I had a change of heart in the gym the other night.”

  “Men your age need to be careful,” she said as if agreeing, and he had to grin at the slap of it. Especially since he knew perfectly well she was all of a year younger than he was. “Your hearts aren’t what they were when you were young.”

  “I was visited by an apparition of annoying conversations past,” he said mildly. “She irritated me into coming here. It was that or sink into a coma of indifference.”

  Zoe smiled, slow and triumphant, and that was even hotter. It made him wish they were alone. It made him care less by the second about the fact they weren’t.

  “A coma might have be
en something of an improvement, Mr. Grant, all things considered,” she said, as if she could read his dirty mind. He hoped she could. He’d spent a significant amount of time imagining a different and far more satisfying ending to that hot tub encounter over the past few days. “Why don’t you follow me?”

  Hunter lost himself in the sway of her hips in that delectable skirt she wore as she turned and he followed. The sweet curve of her bottom. The way she walked—that confident swagger that made his whole body tighten—in those lickable shoes with the clever red soles that peeked at him with every step, like an invitation to the best kind of sin.

  He accepted. Happily.

  “You say you’re good at what you do,” Hunter said as she led him down the bright, airy hall toward her private office.

  “I don’t have to say it.” That razor-sharp curve of her lips, thrown over her shoulder, was the best thing he’d seen in years. It made even those great, dark spaces in him seem to sing with light. With heat. “My work speaks for itself, and usually on the nightly news. Or when I’m really good? Not at all. No news cycles. No whispers. Not even a speculative paragraph in the fringe tabloids, stuck in between UFO sightings. I make it disappear completely, as if it never happened at all.”

  “Like magic.”

  “Something like that. Just more expensive.”

  “I enjoyed that character assassination you treated me to in the strip club the other day,” Hunter drawled. “Is that how it usually works? Break the clients down into bite-size pieces so they’ll be grateful when you put them back together into your preferred image, whatever that might be?”

  “Don’t look behind the curtain, Mr. Grant,” she said, without looking at him this time, her voice filled with the laughter he couldn’t see. But he wanted to see it. He wanted to bathe in it. Again and again, as if it could finally wash him clean. “Just accept the wave of the PR wand. It’s as magical as you let it be.”

  “I’ve been on a few sports teams, Ms. Brook. I know you have to tear me down to build me back up. It’s Psychological Warfare 101.”

  “Then I expect you’ll be the model client, won’t you?”

  She waved him into her office and closed the door behind them. He looked around as she walked toward her desk, taking in the crispness of the white walls, the cold concrete floors with scattered area rugs in muted colors to cushion the chill. The frigidity was relieved only by the view of the city out her windows and the typical vanity wall of photographs featuring Zoe with various famous and/or powerful people. Happy clients, presumably.

  He recognized most of them, and noted that Zair was in the top left, his usual too-handsome, too-serious self, his unsmiling face on this particular wall another mystery that would likely never be solved. Her desk was scrupulously neat, made entirely of heavy sheets of metal and glass, and he suspected she knew exactly how formidable and untouchable she looked when she rested against the front of it, leaning back to regard him coolly.

  Trouble was, he didn’t respond to messages like that the way he should. The way he was no doubt intended to respond. He wanted to...mess her up a little. Make all of that chilly control bleed into something else, something at least as hot and as wild and as deeply foolish as the thing that hummed in him, demanding he go over there and lose his hands in that slick twist of her hair, take her wicked, argumentative mouth with his, pull those impossibly long legs around his waist and sink into her with those sexy red-soled shoes still on her feet.

  He wanted to know why she was targeting him, what she was after.

  What she thought she knew about Sarah.

  So he kept walking, over the cold floor that made his boots sound like drums, past the sitting area that was set up off to the right and was no doubt where she meant for him to go, to a low sofa that would put him at her knees.

  He didn’t think so.

  He moved closer and closer, watching the way she fought to keep from reacting, the way her fascinating face tightened and then smoothed out almost in the same instant, as if she’d had to order herself to stay so calm. He certainly hoped she did.

  And then he was looming over her. Wholly and unapologetically and inappropriately in her space. As if, should he crook his head just slightly, he might finally taste that smart mouth of hers. It would be that easy.

  She tilted her chin up to keep holding his gaze, but otherwise, showed him nothing but that cool wariness she wore like a shield. He wondered what it cost her.

  He didn’t know why he wanted to know, as if it was a desperate thing inside him, clawing its way out.

  “Perhaps,” she said, and though her voice was mild he could hear a darkness beneath it. A hint of something raw that shouldn’t have called to him, sung in him. “I should have been slightly more clear about what I meant by model client.”

  “Tell me why you came after me,” he said. “What you want.”

  There was nothing but a scant breath of space between their bodies, and he’d have bet his entire fortune that she wanted to stand up straight to regain a little bit of height, and her edge. But didn’t, because he’d know exactly why she was doing it. He imagined that was also the reason she didn’t tell him to back off. It would be too revealing.

  He smiled. He’d always been good at games like this. “Tell me, and I’ll behave.”

  “Is this an example of you behaving, Mr. Grant?” Her voice was light. Airy. Her gaze was not. “Because it feels a bit more like a crude attempt at intimidation.”

  “Not at all. I’m never crude.”

  The problem was, this close, he found it hard to concentrate on things like strategy. He could smell the faintest hint of lavender on her skin, and wanted to follow it. Taste it. Strip away her clothes and feast on the flesh beneath until they were both in pieces. On her desk, on the floor, wherever.

  He dropped his gaze to her mouth, which was fuller and more tempting this close. Like a beacon it hurt him to ignore. “This is the first step toward a bright and shiny new me. Just tell me what you want with me.”

  “Rehabilitation isn’t easy for anyone,” she said, her voice a little bit too even. He felt it like a victory, adrenaline and need coursing through him, drumming louder than his boots had against the hard floor. “It depends on the client, and clients tend to have difficulty with the most crucial part of it.” She waited until he dragged his gaze back up to hers, and held it for a beat or two. “For starters, you have to do what I say.”

  “What happens to clients who don’t?”

  “They all do, eventually.”

  “No one is entirely successful, Ms. Brook,” he pointed out, his voice lower than it should have been. A rasp against that pulse of need between them, that intense current. “It’s statistically impossible.”

  “The only failures I’ve ever had all share one thing in common,” she said, and the heat between them pulled taut. Grew hotter. Wilder. Pounded in him. He saw it move in her gaze, across her face. “Guess what that is?”

  “They didn’t do what you told them to do. To continue the theme.”

  “Look at that.” There was that flash in her gray gaze that he felt like the touch he craved, like a burst of fire deep in his gut. Did he move closer? Did she? He couldn’t tell any longer. “He can be taught.”

  Hunter could see the awareness and arousal on her face then, like a flashing sign. That faint hint of color high on her cheeks, that sheen in her eyes. That sudden, almost shocking hint of softness in her lips. It took every bit of willpower he had to keep from bending down and tasting it. Tasting her.

  Drinking her in and getting good and drunk on her heat. Making her feel that clench of fire that was driving him mad. Filling the hollow places inside him with the flames.

  Letting them both burn.

  He liked the way her chin tilted up, tough and cool despite the clamor and slap of the flames that danced
in the air all around them. He liked the fierce kick of his own desire, all of that feeling when he’d been so numb for so long. He wanted to test it against hers, see what it made of them. See if they survived. How long they’d burn before they broke. He wanted.

  “Do you want to play teacher?” he asked, drawing the words out, because he liked the way his voice worked in her, half tease, half promise. He could see it in the way she fought to hide it. He could feel it inside, hard and hot. “Because I have some ideas for the first lesson. I think you’ll like the exercises. But first you have to tell me why I’m here.”

  * * *

  For a moment, Zoe couldn’t remember.

  What they were talking about, what was happening, what she was—or wasn’t—doing. Hunter was like a wall before her, imposing and huge, and shockingly, irrepressibly male.

  And hot. So hot it almost hurt to be this close to him, burning alive when she’d worked so hard to stay icy through and through. So hot she was afraid she’d lose herself forever if she didn’t do something—anything—to keep from falling into the wildfire that seemed to rage in the tiny little space between their bodies.

  Think, she ordered herself the way she’d learned to do in far worse situations than this one. Don’t simply react. Think this through.

  But that was very hard to do when she was surrounded by a big, hard, beautiful man—who was looking at her as if he’d like to eat her whole. As if he already knew how she tasted. As if all she needed to do was give the slightest little bit of an inch, and she could find out herself.

  Not that she wanted something like that. Like him. Of course she didn’t.

  But right now, right here, it was difficult to remember why not.

  “Mr. Grant,” she said, her voice a cold blast of winter, folding her arms over her chest in a way that was obviously a defensive gesture—but it couldn’t be helped. She was only human. Even if Hunter Grant was, improbably, the first client who had ever made her feel like this. The first man who’d come close, in too many years to count. Maybe ever, and she didn’t want to think about the implications of that. “I think you have the wrong idea.”