He let out a short, startled sort of laugh.
“Alison Blodgett Grant would no more ride around in a hired carriage like a common tourist than she would turn naked cartwheels down Broadway,” Hunter said derisively. “Besides, she no longer takes my calls. She diverts them to her secretary, who vets them for potential upset before passing any messages along.”
Zoe stopped pretending she was interested in her BlackBerry.
“Your mother has a secretary? I didn’t think she worked.”
“She has a social secretary and no, she doesn’t work. Not the way you mean.”
“But surely she—”
“Zoe.” She’d never heard that tone of voice from him. It made her sit a little bit straighter—and go quiet. “My mother wanted a senator. Prestige and power and all those centuries of upper-crust breeding put to good use. She thinks sports are for children, not grown men. And she’s appalled that any child of hers has appeared in the tabloids, much less as many times as I have. To say nothing of the many embarrassing scandals that landed me there, every one of which she views as a personal slap in the face.” The smile that cracked over his lips then made Zoe’s heart seem to squeeze tight. “She isn’t going to race down to New York to save me from myself. I promise.”
There was absolutely no reason in the world she should have to fight off the powerful urge to comfort him then. To put her hands on his, to touch him, to do something about the way he sat there, alone and resigned and not even aware, she thought, that he looked so terribly sad.
Get a hold of yourself, she snapped inside her head. This is his act. It’s all an act.
But she didn’t believe that.
“Your sister, then,” she said instead, clearing her throat.
“Nora?”
“Do you have more than one?” She knew he didn’t.
“Nora has better things to do.” He frowned down at his coffee, and it took him a long while to look up at her again. “Or so I assume. She’s a very busy little socialite.”
“She runs a fairly impressive art charity in SoHo, in fact,” Zoe said. She frowned when he looked blank. “Did you not know that?”
“I knew it.” He rubbed a hand over his sexily unshaven jaw, and it was insane that Zoe wanted to do that herself. That her palms actually itched to do it. She grabbed her too-hot mug of coffee, as punishment, and didn’t let go when it hurt. “She’s practically an infant.”
“She’s twenty-four.”
“Exactly.”
Zoe sighed. “You do realize that all those strippers you had flocking to you that morning were your sister’s age? If not younger? Does it hurt to have such an extreme double standard, Mr. Grant?”
He took a long pull from his coffee then set it down, too carefully. And when his gaze swung to meet hers, it was fierce with temper and she shouldn’t have cared.
“Leave my sister out of it,” he said shortly. “She has enough to deal with as the living, breathing repository for all my mother’s dynastic fantasies. And as for those strippers...” He leaned forward and Zoe found she was holding her breath. “For someone who spends the bulk of her time manipulating perception to serve her clients, you sure do believe what you see pretty easily.” His voice was as dark and harsh as the way he looked at her. “It’s a good thing you’re hot, Zoe. Or you’d be nothing but a pain in the ass.”
She concentrated on that last part—the offensive part—because she didn’t want to know what he meant. She didn’t want to feel anything but vague pity and rather more pointed disgust when she looked at him.
But she hadn’t felt either of those things in a while. And it took exactly one phone call that afternoon to find out that Hunter hadn’t been partying well into the morning the day she’d tracked him to that strip club. His very famously married ex-teammate had been the one out for an all-night party. Hunter had been called in by the wife when the man was still going strong the next morning, according to the club manager. He’d gathered up his friend, poured him into a car and then had paid for everything—including the strippers’ time. With a very generous tip.
Almost as if he wasn’t who she thought he was.
Daniel, of course, vehemently disagreed.
The rest of the team found their meetings with Hunter—which Zoe stopped attending after that last coffee, because she couldn’t allow herself to lose sight of her goals, and all of that time with him seemed to lead straight to blindness—no more or less outrageous than the ones they had with the rest of their wealthy, entitled client base.
But not Daniel.
“He’s a pig,” Daniel snarled. He stood in front of her desk in a fury, so angry Zoe didn’t dare voice her confusing little thought—that she’d thought he was a pig when she’d met him, but hadn’t in some time.
And didn’t really like hearing him called that now, if she was honest.
“He’s a client,” she said instead. Daniel didn’t need to know that Hunter hadn’t sought her out and therefore wouldn’t be paying for their services. No one needed to know that. “A very rich client. What does it matter if he’s a pig?”
“You can tell your client that if he calls me weak and breakable again in that he-man way of his, I’ll quit.”
It was important that she not laugh, Zoe understood. That she keep her face absolutely clear of any amusement.
“Why did Hunter call you weak and breakable?” she asked, very carefully. “Was he threatening you?”
“He’s a bully,” Daniel snapped. “That’s what bullies do. And the fact he’s managed to snow you doesn’t mean it works on anyone else, Zoe. He’s a disaster waiting to happen. Why can’t you see that?”
“I know what I’m doing, Daniel,” she retorted, with a little more heat than she should have. Daniel looked as if she’d slapped him, and Zoe didn’t feel as guilty about that as she should have, either. “Listen,” she said in a much calmer tone. “You have to trust me. You always have before.”
“I trust you,” he muttered, though she could see he was still angry.
But the trouble was, she wasn’t sure she trusted herself.
Because when she was with Hunter, she sometimes forgot that the purpose of all of this was revenge.
* * *
Hunter rang the bell of the latter-day speakeasy in Chelsea that night, at precisely nine-thirty as ordered, and let the staff member lead him through the lush interior. It was a plush and sexy expanse of velvet and wood, debonair comfort accented by ambitious cocktails and mood lighting. He was delivered to a private seating area surrounded by gauzy, romantic curtains, through which he could glimpse only the faintest suggestion of the person he assumed was Zoe.
“When you demanded I meet you here I didn’t realize it was a bordello,” he said as he pushed his way through the shimmering barrier like the bull in a china shop he was. “I would have dressed more appropriately. In my belly dancing costume, for example. You may not know this about me, Zoe, but I do a mean dance of the seven veils.”
And then Hunter stopped in his tracks, taking his first really good look at the rest of her without those filmy curtains in the way. It was like getting decisively and comprehensively sacked by an entire, and very large, defensive line.
“Don’t get too excited,” Zoe said coolly, her chin rising.
He couldn’t help himself. It was that slick parody of a dress in one of the dark gray shades she favored, clinging to every curve and hollow, plane and stretch of her perfectly toned figure. It made his mouth go dry and his head swim around in loopy circles, all the blood in his body surging toward the most irreverent and unmanageable part of him.
“I don’t get excited,” he drawled, in an approximation of his usual careless self, the guy who was bored by everything. He remembered that guy. He’d been him all of five seconds ago. “Did you forget? I’m rich, handso
me and notorious. People are generally excited to see me.”
“If you say so,” she replied, predictably dismissive, which, also predictably, made him want her all the more. “Positive attention isn’t the same thing as negative attention, you know. Unless you’re an attention whore.”
“I’m whatever kind of whore you want me to be, Zoe,” he said, grinning when her lips thinned. “Have you reconsidered your position on a good, dirty, head-clearing hate fuck? Because I haven’t. For the record.”
That cool gray gaze of hers was reproachful, but he imagined he saw the hint of heat in the depths of it.
“I had an earlier meeting that required more formal attire. I didn’t dress for you.” She looked marginally agitated, and he congratulated himself on even so small a crack in the Zoe Brook armor. “You’re looking at me as if we’re on a date. We’re not.”
“You’re a destroyer of dreams, Zoe. A killjoy of the highest order. Does it give you pleasure to ruin everything you touch?”
“Besides,” she continued, eyeing him in that regal way of hers, a look only slightly marred by the faintest twitch of her lips, “it would serve no practical or strategic purpose for you to be seen on a date with me. We need to find you a social worker. Maybe a kindergarten teacher. Someone sweet and wholesome and good.”
“That sounds thrilling. Truly.”
“Her virtuous love will make you a better man.”
“I doubt that very much.”
“That’s the point of virtue. It can be harnessed and utilized. Everyone believes that love—especially saintly and wholesome love—inspires change. So does religion, but that’s a harder sell, and it requires you carry on about God in public places. Squeaky-clean, rehabilitating love it is.”
“I didn’t realize you ran a dating service.” He kept his own voice mild. “Don’t I get to fill out a detailed questionnaire discussing my various sexual preferences? To start, I like my women obedient and adventurous.”
“Do those things usually go hand in hand?”
“Want me to show you?” He smiled when she only rolled her eyes. “That’s a pity. But I’m sure there are some wild and horny preschool teachers out there, aren’t there, stuffed full of their own virtue and gagging to take a little direction from a man like me?”
But Hunter wasn’t thinking too hard about the secret, naughty lives of teachers, because he was caught in the epic expanse of Zoe’s gloriously sculpted legs, in the way she shifted against the banquette seat, crossing those perfect legs at the knee and making him forget his own name. All that skin, daringly bared to the winter elements outside, a rich ivory cream all the way down to another pair of impossible shoes, those brash ankle boots that made him think of punk rock and the kind of edgy, demanding sex that wrecked whole lives.
The kind he would have with her, sooner or later. Or he might die from wanting her like this.
And then there was the rest of her hot, trim body in that scandalous lick of smoke, with only a single, almost poignant diamond at her throat, her black hair piled high in something that looked complicated and graceful, and made him want to sink his hands and his teeth deep into it—into her—
Maybe she wasn’t beautiful. Maybe she was something far more intense that that. Maybe beautiful was insipid next to Zoe Brook and what she could do with a simple strapless sheath of a dress.
What she was doing to him. Right now.
“Sit down, Mr. Grant,” she ordered him, her frown looking more annoyed than truly bothered, which was, he understood, yet another slap meant to put him in his place. He liked it.
“Stop calling me that,” he said. “It makes me want to demonstrate that we’re on far less formal footing, or should be. Is that what you want?”
Her lips pressed together and if he wasn’t mistaken, that was a glimmer of amusement in her blue-gray gaze. She only nodded slightly, after a moment, awarding him the point.
But a win was a win. And the victory, however minor, washed through him like heat. Like whiskey.
Like sex.
“Say it,” he ordered her.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Say it,” he said again, and rougher. “My name.”
He couldn’t read the expression he saw on her face then. The glitter in her wild, dangerous eyes. But he could feel the tension in his own body and knew this was much more important to him than it should have been. Very much like this—like she—was more than merely a scorching-hot woman in a scandalous dress.
Like she was the only thing keeping him alive. The only thing that could.
He didn’t want to think about that. He wanted his name in her mouth. He wanted to hear it.
“If I say your name, will you stop hovering over me?” She sounded cross, exasperated, but he could see something else in those stormy winter eyes. Maybe what he wanted to see. Maybe the truth. “You’re making me anxious.”
“If you say my name, I’ll give you anything you want.”
“Fine.” But she held out another beat, then another. She swallowed. Then surrendered. “Hunter.”
“Was that so hard?” he asked, amused. “You didn’t fall apart. It’s only a name.”
He took his time sitting down, savoring this moment. First he shrugged out of his coat, tossing it aside carelessly, not taking his eyes off her. Then he settled himself down much too close to her, almost on top of her, grinning when she hissed in an annoyed breath. She went stiff and straight, and he relaxed, stretching his arm out on the high back, a single, easy crook of his elbow away from holding her in his embrace.
“You really enjoy invading the personal space of others, don’t you?” she asked frostily. But she didn’t move away.
“I’m a big guy.” He breathed in the sleek and expensive scent she wore, which wasn’t half as alluring as that hint of lavender he’d smelled on her skin before. “I can’t help it if I take up a lot of space.”
“You use your body as a weapon,” she retorted.
He took his time looking her over. Memorizing her, as if he wasn’t sure he’d get to be this close to her again. To that perfect, clever arch of her dark brows. To that stubborn, too-smart mouth, glossy tonight in the dim, flickering light. He could see her pulse catapult against the soft skin at her neck, telling him exactly what it cost her to sit this close to him. And yet she made no attempt to pull away, not even when his gaze moved even lower, until he nearly forgot himself completely in the tempting hollow between her breasts.
He wanted to taste her again more than he wanted his next breath. He had no idea how he held himself back—except he wanted her to want him, too. He wanted her to feel as outside her own skin as he did. As undone by this attraction.
This...thing that was gradually taking him over. What was left of him.
He nodded toward that smoky sin of a dress.
“Pot,” he said, then he indicated himself with a jerk of his hand. “Kettle.”
She regarded him for a long moment, that heady mix of awareness and wariness in her gaze. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“It’s a coincidence, then, that you happen to be wearing a dress that may in fact be painted directly on to your skin tonight. For your ‘meeting’ in this notably noncorporate environment, with a client you blackmailed into working with you. A client who knows what your inner thighs feel like beneath his hands. Not to mention how you taste.” He laughed. “I’m sure the fact you look edible played no part at all in your decision to wear it tonight.”
“It isn’t for you.” Her voice was lofty.
“You can’t use your body the way you do, Zoe, and then cry foul if others do the same.”
“I’m not an oversize man, all bulky muscles and caveman strength, lumbering through the world like a flat-footed thug.”
“Neither am I,” Hunter said, surprised to fin
d he was grinning. “My feet have an adorable arch. Everybody says so. Want to see?”
“You’re impossible,” she muttered, but he imagined he saw the slightest quirk in the corner of her mouth, like a laugh bitten back before it betrayed her. “And I don’t want to talk about your innumerable body flaws. I want to talk about your behavior toward my associates.”
“I’m suddenly significantly less interested in this conversation.”
“You can’t antagonize Daniel,” Zoe told him sternly. “You may not realize it, but you need him. Calling him names isn’t smart.”
“David is a punk,” Hunter said dismissively.
“His name is Daniel.”
“I don’t care what his name is.” Though he knew it, of course. He eyed her. “He’s in love with you.”
She didn’t deny it. “That’s one more thing that’s absolutely none of your business.”
“You’re not dating him, or you’d defend him. You’d tell me to go fuck myself.”
“I might tell you that anyway,” she retorted. “No matter who I’m dating.” She showed him that little smirk, and he felt it in his groin, as if she’d leaned over and licked the length of him there and then. He felt himself go hard like stone. Hot. But she was still talking. “I don’t know what it is about you that brings out the intense desire to do you harm. But then, I’m sure you get that all the time.”
“I’m an acquired taste,” he agreed.
“That most people spit out?” That arched brow, that clever twist of her mouth.
“I prefer it when they swallow,” he said, his gaze hot on those glossy, glossy lips of hers. “But I’m not going to lie, Zoe. I’m not very picky.”
She tilted back her head—to throw something else at him, he was certain, and he found himself readying for it, all the adrenaline and focus he’d used on the field trained on her instead—but, impossibly, she giggled.
Then jerked against the seat as if electrified, clapping her hands over her mouth as if she wanted to stuff that incongruously girlish sound straight back in it, her eyes snapping to his in a mix of astonishment and horror.
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