Scandalize Me

She wanted to scream, to swing out at him, to burst—

“Come on,” he said quietly, using his chin to point the way, as if even the smallest touch would be corrosive. As if she was infectious. It was her worst nightmare come true, and this man had been inside her. She felt nauseated, and then furious at herself for expecting anything different. “They’re over here.”

Zoe would have said her heart had been ripped out such a long time ago that it couldn’t break any further. That it couldn’t possibly crack the way it did then, shattering into all those jagged pieces that cut at her every time she breathed in.

But she walked where he pointed her anyway, because it was better than falling apart. She’d have to save that for later, when this was over. When Hunter couldn’t see her do it. When she could make sure he’d never, ever know. That no one would.

Alex Diaz and Austin Treffen waited at a private table far in the corner, and both stood when she appeared, both as good-looking and obviously powerful as she’d expected. Zoe told herself they were like any other clients. Rich, accomplished and probably evil. It was always best to assume that from the start. Fewer surprises, she’d always found.

She supposed it said something about her that the thought soothed her.

“I don’t need an introduction,” she said, pulling her professional persona around her like a cloak and even forcing a smile, surprised when it came easily. As if nothing had changed, even if it felt as though everything had. “I know who you are.” She shook hands the way she always did, brisk and confident, as if she felt either. “Alex. Austin. I’m Zoe Brook.”

“The PR queen of New York,” Alex said, smiling in that intent way she assumed reporters always did, and she wasn’t at all surprised he was as successful as he was. “Of course. It’s nice to meet you in person, though your reputation precedes you.”

“Better than a florist, I guess,” Austin said. Bizarrely. But he was staring at Hunter. “Are you worried about your reputation, Hunter? Because I think that’s a lost cause.”

“Zoe has a particular affinity for Saint Jude, as a matter of fact,” Hunter said, and there was clearly something wrong with her that the reference warmed her. He thought she was toxic and she was getting soft over a throwaway line about a martyr. She wasn’t sure who she hated more just then, herself or him.

Him, she decided, when he maneuvered her so he was sitting in the booth with his buddies and she was on the outer edge. Was he afraid she’d spill her filth all over his friends? Get them as dirty as she was—as dirty as she’d made him?

Far inside her, something keened. A horrible, grieving sound, made of loss and regret, but she ignored it. There was no point to it. There was no fixing anything. There was only revenge, and no matter what she felt about Hunter beneath all of the shattered pieces and the poison and all the ways she’d been tainted by what she’d done, she believed what he’d said. That revenge would work better with Alex and Austin involved.

Assuming they were who he said they were.

“What are we doing here?” Austin asked. He looked at Zoe and smiled slightly. “If you’ll excuse my impatience.”

She smiled back, and was pleased on some level when Hunter tensed, as if he knew what was coming.

“I hate wasting time,” she said. “It’s a pet peeve of mine.”

“Zoe.”

That was Hunter, of course. But she’d clicked back into her professional mode, and it was a relief. She was bulletproof when she was this version of herself. Fully armor-plated. She could even relax against the booth as if this was a garden party and she was here to discuss nothing more dramatic than canapés. A friendly game of croquet. Whatever the rich and bored drawled about while wreathed in all their privilege.

“Your father is a pimp,” she told Austin coolly, and watched his eyes go blank with some mix of resignation and temper she didn’t know him well enough to decipher. She glanced over at Alex, who had gone very still himself. “And I remember both of you from the halcyon days of my time as a legal assistant at Treffen, Smith, and Howell back when your friend Sarah Michaels worked there, which, yes, means exactly what you think it does.”

She heard Hunter sigh from beside her, where he sat close but still not touching her. Zoe understood that he never would again, and she refused to mourn that. She’d wanted to use sex only to end the tension between them and make him more malleable. She should have been thrilled it had been a success.