LITMIR.BIZ

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Everyone expected you’d be crushed as a rookie, but instead, you dominated. You should be one of the great success stories of the age, an athlete with an Ivy League–trained mind. A role model for our time.” She eyed him, not making the slightest effort to hide her disdain. “A hero among men.”

      “Sadly,” Hunter said, and though his smile never wavered, she was sure that she saw something dark move over his face again before he hid it, “I’m only me. Though my wasted potential haunts me, I promise.”

      That wasn’t darkness, Zoe told herself firmly. That was emptiness. He was nothing but a pretty shell wrapped tight around nothing at all. Which was precisely why she’d chosen him to push the repulsive Jason Treffen where she wanted him, at last. She’d spent a few hellish years under Jason’s control, and she remembered three men in particular from that long-ago December night that had convinced her she had to save herself or die. Jason’s own son, Austin, now a lawyer like his evil father. Alex Diaz, now an investigative reporter. And Hunter, the rich and pretty football player, clearly not the brains of the trio. She’d decided that now she was finally ready to do what needed to be done, Hunter would be the easiest to manipulate. Obviously.

      “I doubt that very much,” she said now, her voice light, though her stare was anything but, and she was surprised he returned it so steadily. That he didn’t so much as flinch. “You’re more likely than not a complete and utter blank, straight through to your benighted soul. One shade up from sociopathic, if I had to guess. The good news is this makes you a perfect candidate for a high-profile corporate position, which I’m assuming has to be your next move. Or let me rephrase that. It should be, and I can help you achieve that.”

      “I’ll hand it to you...” She thought that smile of his sharpened, that there was more of that temper there, just behind the blue of his eyes as he leaned in closer as if he was sharing his secrets. “This is certainly a unique approach.”

      It was the age-old carrot-and-stick routine, in fact, and he shouldn’t seem so aware of it yet simultaneously unruffled by it. Zoe forged on.

      “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

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