Scandalize Me

Zoe told herself that was a good thing. Because it was. Of course it was.

“I want you to take a carriage ride through Central Park,” she announced early one morning at one of the coffee meetings she’d demanded.

Hunter glared at her, looking sleepy and cranky and ridiculously hot in jeans and a turtleneck sweater and that unshaven fighter’s jaw of his.

“Let me guess. I burst into song at the first lamppost and we all turn into animation that can go viral on YouTube.” He scowled at her, then at his coffee. “No, thank you.”

“It wouldn’t be a romantic date,” Zoe continued as if he hadn’t spoken. She sat across from him at a tiny wooden table that was too rickety and much too small. She pulled out her BlackBerry and made a show of looking at it, as if she wasn’t entirely too aware of how much of the space he took up in their little corner of the café, of how big he was. How shockingly attractive, even when he clearly wasn’t trying to be anything of the kind. Maybe especially then. She kept her tone bright. “You need to take your mother.”

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.”