Ruined (Ethan Frost 1)

Then he’s striding over to me, a smile on his face and a wicked gleam in those Pacific Ocean eyes of his. I stiffen, expecting him to sit next to me on the couch, but instead he takes the chair to my right. Despite the small distance, there’s an unmistakable intimacy in the air between us, one that makes me squirm even as it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up.

“Chloe. ” His voice is as warm and familiar as the smile on his face. “How was your day?”

It’s an innocent question, but it triggers all the anger and discomfort I’ve been feeling since the moment he walked into that conference room and spoke to my boss. I tell myself to chill, to temper my response, but the second I open my mouth everything just comes pouring out.

“How was my day? How was my day? How the hell do you think my day was when you deliberately sabotaged me?”

The smile disappears from his face, is replaced by a wariness that tells me he’s as intelligent as all the business and tech blogs give him credit for. He doesn’t make excuses, doesn’t blow me off. Instead, in a voice that says he’s taking me, and my words, very seriously, he says, “Explain. ”

“What’s there to explain? You basically painted a target on my back and gave them carte blanche to fire at will. ”

“Who?”

“What do you mean, who? Everyone. I’m a brand-new intern who’s just finished her second day with the company. It was bad enough that you walked into that meeting with me, but to take the most coveted research assignment away from the guy who’s been there the longest and give it to me for no reason—”

“There was a reason. ”

“Yeah, well, wanting to sleep with me isn’t actually a valid reason. Trust me, if I hadn’t known that already, it would have been hammered home today. ”

“What did they do?” The question is deceptively quiet, his face maintaining its placid lines. But there’s a fire in his eyes that tells me there’s a lot more going on under the surface than he wants me to know about.

“What they did isn’t the point. The point—”

“It’s the point to me. ” He leans forward, brushes one of my wayward curls out of my eyes. For the past few minutes they’ve been escaping the stranglehold I put them in earlier. Like the rest of my body, they have a tendency to spring out of my control whenever Ethan Frost gets a little too close.

But I refuse to be shaken by his touch or swayed from what I want to say. Not this time. “No, the point is you can’t just go around showing blatant favoritism. Especially when I’ve given you no encouragement. ”

“It’s not favoritism. I read your file yesterday, cover to cover. ”

“Why?”

“Because your skill at getting your point across impressed me in the cafeteria. ” He smiles at my disbelieving look. “What can I say? I like a woman who knows how to argue. ”

“What is it with you?” I’m completely exasperated at this point and don’t even attempt to hide it. I’ll treat him like my boss when he starts acting like it. Until then, he’s just another guy annoying the hell out of me. “Don’t you know getting involved with an intern is never a good idea? That’s got to be on the first page of CEOs for Dummies. ”

He laughs, not some polite little chuckle but a full-out belly laugh, and the sound is so sexy that it shoots right through me, making my knees tremble and putting the rest of me on alert despite my anger. And that isn’t even taking into account how the laugh changes the sharp and reserved planes of his face, warming everything up until he looks a million times more approachable.

It’s a good look for him, and one that my instinct tells me not many people get to see. Which is ridiculous when I think of how I’ve seen him interact with people over the last two days—the easy way he speaks to e

veryone from cafeteria workers and security guards to Maryanne, who is an executive in the legal department.

“I think you have CEOs for Dummies confused with Politics for Dummies. ”

“Is there a difference?”

“Politicians are the married idiots who keep getting in trouble for sleeping with the interns when they should be running the country. I’m not married and I don’t want to run anything but Frost Industries. ”

“Tell that to someone who believes it. You put me on the Trifecta merger, the biggest merger in this company’s history. You want to run a lot more than just Frost Industries. ”

“Touché. But when they’re absorbed by us, they’ll become part of my company and I will have spoken nothing but the truth. ”

“That’s a nice loophole. You sure you haven’t been reading Politics for Dummies in your spare time?”

He laughs again. “I like you. ”

“Well, that’s a shame, since I can’t stand you. ”

He leans in even closer, and I have to fight not to swallow my tongue. Which, I know, is anatomically impossible, and yet feels like a totally reasonable description of what happens when he comes within centimeters of brushing against me.