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But Daniel was more than that. He was the first man she’d let herself trust—on any level—after escaping from Jason Treffen.
And one night in Park City, Utah, while managing a hotshot director’s post-cocaine addiction revival at the Sundance Film Festival, she’d let the fact she liked him and trusted him slip over a line she should have held fast.
That had been a year ago, and she’d paid for that mistake in a variety of ways ever since. Apparently, this afternoon would be another form of payment.
“I need you to be my associate, Daniel,” she said softly now, holding his gaze even though she didn’t particularly want to hold it. But she thought she owed him that much. “My coworker. Not a jealous boyfriend.”
“I’m not your boyfriend.” There was no disguising the bitterness then. It made his mouth look fierce and fragile all at once, and his whole lean, rangy body tensed. “It was one kiss. You ended it, not me—”
“And this is exactly why,” she bit out, an icy thrust of the knife, her aim true.
Daniel’s green eyes flared with temper, and something else she didn’t want to face, but then he looked away. He blew out a breath. Zoe dug her fingers harder into the side of her neck—half massage, half punishment—and let the fact she was such a liar swirl around her like a cape. Like shame, again.
Like that telltale burn, that mark on her thigh.
It wasn’t some sense of her responsibility as Daniel’s boss that had made her push him away that night at Sundance. It wasn’t any fear over what their working relationship might have become if she’d let that kiss go where he’d wanted it to go. She wished it had been. She’d let Daniel think it had been, because either of those things would have been better than the truth.
Which was this: she’d felt nothing.
She’d thought what had happened to her, what she’d done because she’d had to do it, had left her frigid. Unable to feel anything at all, even when an objectively good-looking man she liked, who she considered one of her few friends in this world, wanted her. When she’d thought she wanted that, wanted him, too.
Daniel adored her; she’d known that for years. He was good, kind. Perfect for her—and she’d felt nothing. She’d thought that was yet another part of the price she’d already spent so long paying, for the cardinal sin of being a naive idiot at the age of twenty-two.
She’d thought she was broken on a fundamental level. Beyond repair or salvation. Ruined straight through.
Until today.
Not everything is a joke, she’d thrown at Hunter back in her office, after he’d left her standing there, stunned, and had walked over to the couch and thrown himself down on it as if nothing had happened. When she’d been wrecked. In pieces.
He’d studied her for a moment, that gorgeous face of his somber. Not joking at all.
Tell me what you want from me, he’d said quietly. Or tell me what you’re afraid of. Your choice.
And Zoe still didn’t know how to handle that. The fact that Hunter Grant was the only person she’d met in years who saw the truth. Who saw what she hid beneath her tough-as-nails exterior. Hunter Grant, who could have pressed his advantage today, but hadn’t.
She didn’t understand that, either. And it certainly wasn’t something she could discuss with Daniel, who might love her, she knew, but had never seen her. Not the way Hunter had. Not all of her.
Zoe knew the storm had passed between them when Daniel let out a short laugh.
“Fine,” he muttered. “I get it.”
He looked at her then, that male awareness she didn’t want to see edged out by concern. Unlike Hunter in every possible way. Daniel might not see her, but he cared for her. Why couldn’t that be enough?
But she knew.
In a way, it even made sense. She was tarnished straight through, stained by the things she’d done, and she knew it. She’d accepted it a long time ago. It stood to reason, in an awful sort of way, that the only man who could make her feel anything had been crafted directly from a selection of her darkest fears. He was the kind of man she hated the most. The kind of man who would revel in that sort of power over her, she had no doubt. He’d already started.
That mark on her thigh seemed to glow, then ache.
“I don’t like this, Zoe,” Daniel said now, reminding her where she was, and with whom. “I think he’s dangerous.”
“Of course he’s dangerous,” she said lightly, and even laughed. Pretended it didn’t hurt. That none of it hurt. “That’s why it’s our job to make him into a cuddly little kitten.”
