by Maisey Yates
“I’ll stop fighting the inevitable,” he said now. “Just promise me it won’t be pastels.”
She twisted around to look at him.
“That’s not a bad idea,” she said, as if he’d been serious. “You’re not in purgatory anymore, Hunter. You didn’t die ten years ago. You deserve to live.”
His face was shadowed but she still felt the impact of that bright, blue stare. She felt his big hand clutch her shoulder briefly, then return to its lazy smoothing, up and down her back.
“So do you,” he said gruffly.
Zoe thought about what he’d said to her over and over again in these wild, beautiful days she still couldn’t quite believe were real. That they could replace dark memories with new and better fantasies. And it clicked into place then. Just like that. Maybe it had always been inevitable. Maybe she’d been waiting for this. This...happiness, if that was what this was. It was still new, but it didn’t feel fragile. She didn’t think the wrong word or moment or fight could dislodge it.
She wasn’t sure anything could. It felt right.
Hunter didn’t think she was an unpleasant duty the way her grandparents had. She knew he wouldn’t turn on her and abuse her, as Jason Treffen had. Hadn’t he proved it to her when she’d knelt down before him and he’d refused to accept that?
He didn’t want to own her. He wanted to love her.
And that changed everything. It set her free, in all the ways she hadn’t understood she wasn’t when she’d ousted Jason Treffen from that law firm. Because this time, the fear wouldn’t stop her. This time, she knew enough to let Hunter help her.
“I think I have to do it,” she said then, in a rush. She felt Hunter tense beneath her, and flattened her hands against his smooth, hard chest. “Not because anyone expects it of me, or because Alex thinks it’s a good idea to have one of the victims take part in the interview. But because I have to do it for me. Because I want to.”
He was quiet, but she knew he was as focused on her as when he was deep inside her, when all that mattered was the heat and that fire, that beautiful dance that was only theirs. More, perhaps.
“You don’t have to be a part of it,” she told him quickly. “I’ll understand if you don’t want—”
“Zoe.”
“It will probably get ugly,” she continued doggedly, because she still wanted to protect him. He’d started new relationships with his family. He was teaching those kids football. He really was a good man now, a new man, and she was still a scandal. Likely a big one, if Alex had his way. “I’ll be called a lot of names. So will you. People don’t like it when their heroes get pushed off of pedestals, especially not when the pusher can be dismissed as a grasping whore. And I will be.”
“Please shut up,” he said. “I’m not having this conversation. And I’m not going anywhere. I told you.” He took her chin in his hand, his thumb rubbing over her lips, possessive and hot and somehow deeply comforting, too. “I’ll never stop wanting you, Zoe. This is a done deal.”
After a moment, he let her go, and Zoe let herself breathe.
“In a few months, maybe three, I’m going to propose,” he told her in the quiet that surrounded them, and she could hear his smile in the dark. As good as a light. “I’m telling you now so you can start preparing yourself.”
“Propose what? Sexcapades? We already have those, don’t we?”
He smacked her on her bottom, hard enough to make her laugh.
“Marriage,” he said. “I figure you’ll turn me down at least three times. Fear, disbelief, some misbegotten notion that I shouldn’t tie myself down to someone like you. I’ll offer to come up with a binding prenuptial agreement, which will enrage you, and you’ll accept my loving proposal by doing something insane, like punching me, probably in public. I can’t wait.”
“Idiot,” she muttered, but she was grinning. She crawled up over his perfectly sculpted chest and kissed him, hard. Then again, the way, she thought, she planned to keep right on doing for the rest of their lives.
“Is it three months yet?” he asked when she pulled away.
“Not yet,” she said against his mouth. “You don’t want to say anything too crazy tonight, Hunter. It could ruin the whole thing. Scare me off.”
One of his hands came up and fisted in her hair, and she shivered, wanting him as desperately as she always did. More, because every day now, she trusted him more.
And the more she trusted him, the more she trusted herself, too.
“Then we better practice,” he murmured against her mouth, and that easily, she was needy. Hungry. “So we’re ready when the time comes.”
* * *
They went together.
“Do you want to go in alone?” he asked when they were outside the office where, Zoe knew, Alex waited for them. Where she would tell her story in all its sordid, uncompromising detail, and make herself a very pointed nail in Jason Treffen’s coffin.
She felt that panic again. She swallowed hard, searching his face.
“I don’t want—”
“I swear to God,” he said, his voice impatient but his blue eyes kind, so kind it made a lump swell in her throat, “if you say anything to me about the things you think I don’t want to hear—”
“You won’t want to hear them,” she said fiercely.
“No,” he said evenly, his gaze never wavering. “I won’t. Because I love you, Zoe, and I will marry you no matter how many times you freak out about it, and I’ll hate every second of this because I hate that you had to live through it. But you did. And look at you. You’re a wonder. The most amazing woman I’ve ever known. If you can sit and tell your story, if you can go on national television and accuse Jason to his face, then I can sit with you and hear that story. I can share the burden.” His beautiful mouth crooked. “Or try. I’d like to try.”
She was overwhelmed. Tears pricked at the back of her eyes and she didn’t care if they fell.
“I love you, too,” she whispered.
That grin of his deepened, went cocky. As if he’d always known it would end this way, that he’d win. But then again, maybe she had, too. Maybe they both had.
Maybe that was the point.
Hunter reached over and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, and then he waited.
Zoe looked at Alex’s door, and pulled in a deep, hard breath. To mark this momentous occasion, her outing as one of “Jason’s girls,” she’d worn white. Crisp white jeans and a flowing cream top. Virginal and pure. She’d seen Hunter’s smile when she’d emerged from her bedroom this morning, and she’d known the symbolism wasn’t lost on him.
Because she might be about to tell the hardest story she knew, to a man who would use it as a weapon to take down the monster who’d tortured her for over a decade, but she still knew PR. She could spin anything. Even this.
She’d always wanted revenge on Jason Treffen, but this was better. This would be justice.
“I’m ready,” she said.
Hunter stood beside her like a bodyguard. The wall between her and the world that she didn’t need to carry around inside herself any longer, because he’d do it instead. He’d be her shield, just as she’d be his.
They deserved a future free of the past. Free of ghosts. Free.
And there was only one way to do that.
“This might get a little bit crazy,” she warned him again, for the last time, and he only smiled, then reached over and took her hand, lacing his fingers through hers.
As if they were one unit, one thought. One.
“Bring it on,” he said, the way she’d known he would, like he was looking forward to a good fight.
It turned out she was, too.
And Zoe opened the door, but they walked through it together.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from EXPOSE ME by Kate Hewitt.
If you loved Scandalize Me by Caitlin Crews, be sure to catch the other two titles in the Fifth Avenue trilogy, featuring Av
enge Me (June 2014) by Maisey Yates and Expose Me (August 2014) by Kate Hewitt, only from Harlequin Presents!
Ten years ago one devastating night changed everything for Austin, Hunter and Alex. Now they must each play their part in the revenge against the one man who ruined it all.
Austin Treffen has the plan… Hunter has the money… Alex has the power!
Order your copies today in ebook format.
And don’t miss the Fifth Avenue prequel that started it all, Take Me, by Maisey Yates!
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SPECIAL EXCERPT FROM
Revenge and seduction intertwine…
Ten years ago, one devastating night changed everything for Austin, Hunter and Alex. Now they must each play their part in the revenge against the one man who ruined it all.
Read Kate Hewitt’s dazzling finale to the Fifth Avenue trilogy in:
EXPOSE ME
* * *
“You sound like you hate the man.”
“Hate isn’t the right word. But I’d like to see what he does with an interview. What you do with it.” He raised his beer bottle to his lips, his eyes hard.
She straightened, flashed him one of her glittering smiles. “Well, stay tuned, then. It airs live on March twentieth.” And without waiting for a response, she turned and walked away from him, her shoulders thrown back, her chin held high.
Alex watched her leave. For a moment there he’d considered telling her the truth about Jason Treffen, but then he’d thankfully thought better of it. It was hardly cocktail party chitchat, and he didn’t know her well enough to trust her with that particular powder keg. Not yet, anyway.
She was ambitious, he got that, and tough. He was pretty sure she had the balls to bring down Treffen on live television if she wanted to.
The question was, did she? Could he convince her? He possessed a savage need to see Treffen with his world crumbling around him while everyone else saw it, too. No longer would the man fool everyone into believing he was such a damned saint. They would know him not just as a sinner, but as a devil.
Austin had already exposed Treffen to his family with the help of Sarah’s sister, Katy. Hunter was working on ousting Treffen from his law firm. And Alex had been charged with showing the world what he really was: a monster who used the women he claimed to be saving. Who damned them to lives of shame, scandal and sin. Everything in Alex ached to see Jason publicly exposed—and he would do whatever it took to make it happen.
Including use Chelsea in whatever way he could. The woman was cold. He didn’t feel so much as a flicker of guilt for using her. But he did feel a certain amount of frustration. Sexual frustration. He wanted Chelsea Maxwell in bed, beneath him, those gray-green eyes turned to molten-silver with desire. He wanted her haughty little smile to become a desperate begging kiss, to turn her tinkling laugh into a breathy sigh of pleasure and need.
He wanted to be the one to do it. To shatter her icy control and make her melt. For him.
* * *
The third and final step to revenge in the Fifth Avenue trilogy.
Alex has the power…
August 2014
Copyright © 2014 by Harlequin Books S.A.
ISBN-13: 9781460334775
SCANDALIZE ME
Copyright © 2014 by Harlequin Books S.A.
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Caitlin Crews for her contribution to the Fifth Avenue trilogy.
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.
www.Harlequin.com
Ten years ago one devasting night changed everything for Austin, Hunter and Alex. Now they must each play their part in the revenge against the one man who ruined it all.
With ruthless determination, Alex Diaz has risen up from his deprived roots to become the head of a global media empire. But he has one last thing to achieve…avenge his friend by destroying the man responsible for her death, Jason Treffen. With stunning talk-show host Chelsea Maxwell about to interview Treffen live on TV, this is Alex’s chance.
He’ll use her show to exact a very public revenge—and seducing Chelsea, if needed, would certainly be no hardship. But he underestimates Chelsea and the attraction between them, and as their relationship deepens, Alex realizes that to annihilate Treffen could also shatter the life that Chelsea has built to protect herself….
All about the author…
Kate Hewitt
KATE HEWITT discovered her first Harlequin® romance novel on a trip to England when she was thirteen, and she’s continued to read them ever since. She wrote her first story at the age of five, simply because her older brother had written one and she thought she could do it, too. That story was one sentence long—fortunately, they’ve become a bit more detailed as she’s grown older.
She studied drama in college and shortly after graduation moved to New York City to pursue a career in theater. This was derailed by something far better—meeting the man of her dreams, who happened also to be her older brother’s childhood friend. Ten days after their wedding they moved to England, where Kate worked a variety of different jobs—drama teacher, editorial assistant, youth worker, secretary and, finally, mother.
When her oldest daughter was one year old, Kate sold her first short story to a British magazine. Since then she has sold many stories and serials, but writing romance remains her first love—of course!
Besides writing, she enjoys reading, traveling and learning to knit—it’s an ongoing process and she’s made a lot of scarves. After living in England for six years, she now resides in Connecticut with her husband, her three young children and, possibly one day, a dog.
Kate loves to hear from readers. You can contact her through her website, www.kate-hewitt.com.
* * *
“Hewitt’s couple shines in her intensely emotional tale, spiced with shamelessly funny dialogue and sensual, explosive love scenes.”
—RT Book Reviews on His Brand of Passion
“Hewitt’s heartwrenching Corretti drama is an all-encompassing second-chance romance that’s mired with loss and misery. It’s pure magic how she turns regret into hope and despair into everlasting love With breathtaking landscapes, over-the-top luxury and ultra-sensual and emotional lovemaking, this is a love story not to be missed.”
—RT Book Reviews on An Inheritance of Shame
“Hewitt’s excellent second-chance romance will thrill readers with its angst-filled dialogue, incredible characters and exquisite love scenes.”
—RT Book Reviews on The Husband S
he Never Knew
“Hewitt gives romance addicts everything they need for a fix, including an over-the-top storyline, memorable characters and a timeless romance set on a picturesque island.”
—RT Book Reviews on Santina’s Scandalous Princess
“Hewitt’s romance is touchingly haunting, and her realistic characters will humble readers with their acts of forgiveness and love in the face of loss.”
—RT Book Reviews on The Darkest of Secrets
The Fifth Avenue series
AVENGE ME Maisey Yates
SCANDALIZE ME Caitlin Crews
EXPOSE ME Kate Hewitt
Other titles by Kate Hewitt available in ebook:
A QUEEN FOR THE TAKING? (The Diomedi Heirs)
THE PRINCE SHE NEVER KNEW (The Diomedi Heirs)
AN INHERITANCE OF SHAME (Sicily’s Corretti Dynasty)
HIS BRAND OF PASSION (The Bryants: Powerful & Proud)
KATE HEWITT
Expose Me
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteeen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter One
Alex Diaz leaned forward in his seat as the limo pulled to the curb of Seventy-Second Street and West End Avenue. The luxury high-rise building was all soaring modernity and tinted glass, and exactly the sort of place he’d expect Chelsea Maxwell to live in.