Caitlin Crews - Scandalise Me

Not that her quarry was making any attempt to hide.

Hunter Talbot Grant III, one-time golden boy, dumb jock extraordinaire and current professional fuckup, sprawled on a plush booth in the corner of the otherwise sparsely populated club, neck deep in mostly naked women. Zoe’s lips thinned as she took in the scene, which was as distasteful as she’d expected. The women giggled on each side of him, they shimmied in front of him, they writhed for his pleasure as if his table was its own stage and Zoe, dressed in her usual sleek sort of sheath dress and a tailored coat against the winter chill, was wearing more clothing than all of them put together.

“Good morning, Mr. Grant,” she said crisply, eying the man himself in all his sordid glory. “You seem to have forgotten our nine-thirty meeting today.”

It wasn’t exactly a surprise that someone who currently ranked as the Most Hated Celebrity in America was a pig. In fact, Zoe was counting on it. Hunter Grant was the disgraced sports figure du jour, wealthy beyond measure and disreputable by choice, and strip clubs such as this one were his natural habitat. Pig was redundant.

“And you seem to be wearing entirely too many clothes.”

His voice was a rough growl, deeply male and shot through with raw, velvet arrogance, which went with his very big, undeniably impressive body sprawled there in the booth, dripping with strippers. But he met her gaze as if they were alone and he was entirely sober, and there was suddenly a certain hum in the air, a kind of electric charge, that made her skin feel much too tight.

She ignored the odd sensation, keeping her gaze on him as if the shock of his intense physicality didn’t seem to suck the air from all around him like a vacuum. Or as if she simply didn’t notice it, because she shouldn’t. Because she couldn’t.

“It’s a terrible habit of mine.” She let her brows rise in challenge, because he was a man who’d played games for a living, and men like that lived for challenges of all kinds. They couldn’t help it. And that meant she could use it against him. “I can’t seem to break it.”

“I recommend quitting cold turkey,” he said with a dark gleam in his famously sky blue eyes, about which whole songs by pop princesses had been written over the years.

Zoe had dutifully downloaded every one of them over the past few weeks as part of her exhaustive research into the life and times and various offensive behaviors of Hunter Grant, the worst-behaved NFL quarterback in recent history. She needed to know every single thing about him if she was going to use him like her own, personal weapon.

And she was. He just didn’t know it yet.

“And what have you quit that makes you an expert on the subject?” she asked now. “Besides football, I mean.”

“I didn’t quit football. I was fired. With extreme prejudice. You can read about it in all the tabloids.”

“I’m thinking, then, that maybe you’re not the best person in the world to talk to about quitting things.”

Hunter’s mouth curved. “I don’t give a shit what you quit or don’t quit, honey. But I’d like you a whole lot better if you were naked.”

It was a pity he was even more attractive in person, Zoe thought then. It was that careless dark blond hair that never seemed to be fully tamed no matter how short he cut it. That gorgeous face of his, with eyes that should have been pretty and high cheekbones that should have been fey, but somehow worked with that pugnacious jaw of his to make him decidedly, almost alarmingly masculine, despite the offensive things he said.

Zoe knew every inch of his famous face, that well-documented smirk, and most of that much-photographed body of his, that today—or last night, more likely—he’d shoved into faded jeans and a tight gray Henley that hugged his rangy male form. He would have been a tabloid favorite anyway because of his wealthy family background, his all-American good looks and his penchant for vapid yet beautiful starlets—but it was his half brat, half thug behavior on the football field that had kept him plastered across every glossy magazine in existence for the rocky decade that had made up his football career.

He’s nothing but a frat boy, she thought, smiling at him as if she liked him. Pretty as a picture with malice and entitlement beneath, like all the rest of his kind. She knew. She’d been there a decade ago when he’d proved exactly what kind of man he was. She didn’t expect him to remember that, but then, she didn’t want him to remember her.

Not yet.

Not until he did what she needed him to do and helped her take down Jason Treffen.

“Looked your fill?”

His voice wasn’t friendly or polite, and he didn’t flash that absurdly charming smile she’d seen him wield throughout the series of insincere mea culpas he’d issued after each of his many scandals as a football star. He only watched her, in a curiously intent way that made her feel as if she ought to hold her breath.

“I’m not admiring you,” Zoe said coolly, and she wasn’t. Of course she wasn’t.

“Don’t you think you should?” His voice was as lazy as ever but still, she heard the challenge in it. The thrown gauntlet—because, as expected, he couldn’t resist. “I’m usually the object of intense and potentially life-altering admiration. It’s but one of my many burdens to bear.”

She was surprised that some part of her wanted to laugh at the way he said that, with that sardonic lash that suggested he was far more self-aware than she’d imagined. But she didn’t know what to do with that, so instead of exploring it, she got down to business. She dug into her bag, opened her wallet and handed her credit card to the nearest dancer, not looking away from Hunter until the other woman took it from her fingers.

“Take this. Take them. And don’t let anyone come back over here unless I say it’s okay,” she ordered her.

She stared at the dancer until the woman did as she was told with only a quick glance at Hunter, herding the pack of strippers out of Hunter’s booth with a single jerk of her head.

“It’s like you’re my fairy godmother,” he said when they were left alone, a hint of a drawl in his voice, reminding her he’d spent the past decade in Texas. If possible, he seemed even lazier than before now that there was only him in the booth. And, somehow, bigger. “But I’m all grown up now. I can pay for my own strippers.”

Zoe settled herself on the seat next to him so she could turn toward him, the better to quietly block him in where he sat. The gleam in his gaze told her he knew exactly what she was doing. That he let her do it. She ignored the gleam.

“Congratulations, Mr. Grant,” she said crisply. “This is your lucky day.”

“It felt a lot luckier five minutes ago, before you scared off all the half-naked women.”

“I set up an appointment through your manager, but it appears you prefer to operate through more casual channels these days.”

“If that’s a convoluted way of saying I told Harvey to go fuck himself, you are correct.”

Zoe smiled. Harvey Speer was a frothing bulldog of a sports agent, well-known for creating insurmountable barriers between his clients and the world, so she’d hardly weep salty tears if he wasn’t involved in Hunter’s life any longer. It made what she wanted to do with him that much easier.

“I’m Zoe Brook,” she told him now. “You really should know that already. I’m the best PR agent in New York City, if not the whole world, and I’m going to rehabilitate your image—which I think we can both agree is more than a little tarnished.”

He eyed her for a long moment, and she was sure she saw something hollow move through his gaze, stark and almost painful, completely at odds with the shallow, degenerate man she knew he’d been all his life. But then his mouth kicked up in one corner, his eyes shone blue and clear, and she was certain she’d imagined it.