Scandalize Me

If there was anyone cagier or more private than Zair, Hunter had never met him. They’d been sophomores before Hunter had realized that when Zair made vague references to “home,” he’d meant a sultan’s palace. Or when he’d said “my brother,” he’d meant the Sultan of Ruyi.

His old friend only laughed now, making Hunter wish things were different. That instead of chasing footballs across the past decade, he’d made more of an effort to stay connected to these first, best friends of his, more like brothers than his own, actual brother had ever been. But he’d lost that, too.

“Whatever Zoe Brook wants with you, Hunter,” Zair said, not answering the question directly, not that Hunter would have known what to do if he had, “I’d give it to her. Because otherwise I suspect she’ll simply go ahead and take it.”

* * *

He met Zoe in the waiting room of her bold Columbus Circle office at precisely ten-fifteen on Thursday morning. Hunter lounged on one of the bright red leather couches as if he were in his own living room, a detail he saw her take in with a single amused glance. Her wicked brows rose at once, and he felt it like a blast of heat dancing all over his skin. Like the brush of her fingers against his sex.

“Look at that.” She sounded faintly mocking. “You can find your way across the city. And all by yourself!”

“Third time’s the charm,” he agreed in the same tone, aware that the receptionist was staring at him in something like awe. Or was it horror? “You could say I had a change of heart in the gym the other night.”

“Men your age need to be careful,” she said as if agreeing, and he had to grin at the slap of it. Especially since he knew perfectly well she was all of a year younger than he was. “Your hearts aren’t what they were when you were young.”

“I was visited by an apparition of annoying conversations past,” he said mildly. “She irritated me into coming here. It was that or sink into a coma of indifference.”

Zoe smiled, slow and triumphant, and that was even hotter. It made him wish they were alone. It made him care less by the second about the fact they weren’t.

“A coma might have been something of an improvement, Mr. Grant, all things considered,” she said, as if she could read his dirty mind. He hoped she could. He’d spent a significant amount of time imagining a different and far more satisfying ending to that hot tub encounter over the past few days. “Why don’t you follow me?”

Hunter lost himself in the sway of her hips in that delectable skirt she wore as she turned and he followed. The sweet curve of her bottom. The way she walked—that confident swagger that made his whole body tighten—in those lickable shoes with the clever red soles that peeked at him with every step, like an invitation to the best kind of sin.

He accepted. Happily.

“You say you’re good at what you do,” Hunter said as she led him down the bright, airy hall toward her private office.

“I don’t have to say it.” That razor-sharp curve of her lips, thrown over her shoulder, was the best thing he’d seen in years. It made even those great, dark spaces in him seem to sing with light. With heat. “My work speaks for itself, and usually on the nightly news. Or when I’m really good? Not at all. No news cycles. No whispers. Not even a speculative paragraph in the fringe tabloids, stuck in between UFO sightings. I make it disappear completely, as if it never happened at all.”

“Like magic.”

“Something like that. Just more expensive.”

“I enjoyed that character assassination you treated me to in the strip club the other day,” Hunter drawled. “Is that how it usually works? Break the clients down into bite-size pieces so they’ll be grateful when you put them back together into your preferred image, whatever that might be?”

“Don’t look behind the curtain, Mr. Grant,” she said, without looking at him this time, her voice filled with the laughter he couldn’t see. But he wanted to see it. He wanted to bathe in it. Again and again, as if it could finally wash him clean. “Just accept the wave of the PR wand. It’s as magical as you let it be.”

“I’ve been on a few sports teams, Ms. Brook. I know you have to tear me down to build me back up. It’s Psychological Warfare 101.”

“Then I expect you’ll be the model client, won’t you?”

She waved him into her office and closed the door behind them. He looked around as she walked toward her desk, taking in the crispness of the white walls, the cold concrete floors with scattered area rugs in muted colors to cushion the chill. The frigidity was relieved only by the view of the city out her windows and the typical vanity wall of photographs featuring Zoe with various famous and/or powerful people. Happy clients, presumably.