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Many people try to stop Hunter and engage him in conversation and he ignores every single one of them.
It’s so rude, so embarrassing and so hot and I wonder when he became this person he is now because surely this kind of arrogance doesn’t come with the job. It’s almost as if he was born to disregard humanity.
By the time we reach the impressive ballroom, he stops to take a breath and leans down and whispers, “One hour, I promise. Then we can make our excuses and leave.”
Before I can answer, I see a man bearing down on us with a steely glint in his eye, and Hunter sighs. “Oliver.”
“Hunter.” The man nods to me and then says icily, “You haven’t returned my calls.”
“There was no need.”
I want to curl up and die as the man turns a brighter shade of pink and says angrily, “We had a deal.”
“Yes, we had a deal, and both played our parts. Move on, Oliver, I know I have.”
“But…”
“Good evening, Hunter.”
Before we can leave however, an extremely glamorous woman appears by Oliver’s side and sweeps a derogatory gaze over me, dismissing me as unworthy before turning her attention to Hunter and giving him the look that women throw a guy’s way when they are open to any offer at all.
“Hunter, I thought we had an arrangement. What happened?”
“Amber.” Hearing her name, I recall Hunter’s mom mentioning her and look at the woman who stood where I am now only a few days ago.
“As I was explaining to your father, we had no deal, no arrangement, no nothing. I escorted you to an extremely tedious event to help raise your profile as a favor to your father. In return, he pushed some business into a project that needs investment and everyone got what they wanted. End of story, have a nice life.”
I feel like curling up into a ball as Oliver hisses, “You bastard, you’ve made a laughingstock of Amber with this…”
He sweeps his hand in my general direction and sneers, making me feel like a useless piece of trash that blew in off the sidewalk. Hunter merely fixes him with a dark look and says bluntly, “I have standards, Oliver. Amber comes nowhere near them. Lexi exceeds them. Now as I said before, good evening, our business is concluded.”
He walks past and if looks could kill, we would both be ten feet under right now and I almost have to run to keep up with him. “Slow down, what’s the hurry?”
He sighs heavily and pushes me behind a pillar, obscuring us from view, and growls, “I am hating every minute of this. Those people are like my mother, manipulating, disgusting human beings who can’t see past their greed and desire to succeed. They don’t work for it in the usual way, they rely on contacts and favors. That has never worked with me and they hate every minute of it.”
He pulls me close and inhales sharply, whispering, “You are like a rare bloom in a field of weeds. You stand tall among them and I am so proud to be by your side.”
For some reason his words cause rare emotion to show and my eyes fill with tears as I feel the pain of my past remind me not to listen to him. “What’s this?” He wipes my tears away with his thumb, and I shake my head. “It’s nothing.”
Lowering his lips to mine, they cling together as if we need them to survive. I feel my walls crumbling as if hit by a natural disaster, and as they fall around my feet, I reveal the frightened girl inside. For some reason, his kindness, his gentleness toward me when he is so brutal to others, undoes me in a way I never thought possible for me. I never let a man take charge in my life, control me, strip away the façade I have spent a lifetime erecting. But he only has to tap and they shatter at my feet. It’s almost too much and as he pulls me close, I cling to him as if I never want to let go.
What’s happening to me?
