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But Hunter had only smiled.
And Zoe had to live with that, because making the scene she wanted to make would expose her too completely and she suspected Hunter knew it. She had to take it home with her to an apartment that had always seemed perfectly comfortable before, and now felt empty.
As if he’d left holes behind when she’d left him. In everything.
And then Daniel, who knew nothing about Jason Treffen or the deliberate way they’d been keeping Hunter’s reimagined image under wraps to force him into the corner where they wanted him, went ahead and treated Hunter like any other client.
Which meant Zoe suddenly saw him everywhere. In the tabloids, which screamed about his romantic assignation in a horse-drawn buggy through Central Park, only to shamefacedly announce that no, in fact, the new woman in Hunter Grant’s life was his little sister, Nora. In the papers, which showed him at art events and charity functions, smiling and almost avoiding the cameras.
He was doing every single thing she’d told him he should do, but she refused to let that ignite within her like hope. He was doing it because she was good at her job, and what she’d suggested worked. That was all.
She told herself it couldn’t possibly be anything else. That she didn’t want it to be anything else.
“I thought you hated Hunter Grant,” Zoe said after she and Daniel had gone over a few figures one afternoon and he didn’t rage about Hunter even once. Not even the smallest bitter aside. “Yet you seem to be working past that.”
“It turns out he’s not that bad,” Daniel said, and he even smiled. “I’m as surprised as anyone, but I kind of like the guy.”
It was beneath her, Zoe told herself after he left her office, to view that as some kind of personal betrayal.
Daniel chose a very popular comedy show that focused on the news for Hunter’s first brand-new-image interview, letting Hunter go on the show to allow them to make fun of him. A lot of fun of him. Merciless fun of him, as was their trademark.
Hunter even joined in.
And then at one point he grinned as if he was embarrassed and rubbed a hand over his head, saying almost bashfully that it was actually his honor to see if he could teach his new students a little love of the game—and, God willing, better manners—
“So, you’re a ‘do as you say, not as you do’ kind of guy?” the host asked. Hunter shrugged, and then laughed. At himself.
“I think I’m more of a ‘if you can’t be a good example then you’ll serve as a horrible warning’ kind of a guy,” he said. “And I think I’ve made it pretty clear that being any kind of a good example is off the table. Making me six feet and then some of a harsh warning.”
The way he laughed then, long and deep, like a shower of light that bathed her in brightness where she sat all alone in her bedroom, told Zoe she’d made the absolute right decision to walk away from him, for all the reasons she’d told him and the ones she hadn’t told him, too.
But it was killing her.
And Zoe told herself that she’d been dead long enough. It was time to live, no matter what it cost. To stop hiding the way she’d promised herself she would, no matter the collateral damage.
To do something, because she didn’t think she could spend another moment pretending she was fine when she doubted she’d be anything like fine again, as long as she drew breath.
As long as he did.
* * *
Zoe didn’t let herself think too much once she’d decided what she’d do.
It was easy to find out Hunter’s schedule from Daniel’s calendar, and easier still to sweep past the usual gatekeepers into the benefit event held in a cavernous art gallery in SoHo.
What was difficult was walking up to Hunter when she saw him standing near the bar in a loose group of well-dressed beautiful people, among them his sister and Zair, her former client, the only one of her clients whose nondisclosure agreements had stumped her own lawyer.
If she could take down Jason Treffen in the very same office where he’d destroyed her so long ago, she told herself as she eyed that gleaming little knot of people, Hunter the brightest by far among them, she could do this.
But he looked up and saw her from across the room, his gaze searing into her as if he’d been expecting her, and it was the longest, hardest walk of her life.
“Zoe,” Zair murmured when she approached, in his cultured, British-tinged voice that was as dark and as dangerous as he was. “What a pleasure.”
Austin greeted her with a smile, his arm around a pretty girl who looked familiar. Alex grinned, as if they were all friends. When Zoe thought that really, they were Hunter’s friends the way they were meant to be, and she was just...a problem she should have kept away from this. From him.
