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Chapter Two

Alex watched Chelsea Maxwell walk away and shook his head slowly. The woman was incredible, and he wasn’t sure he meant that in a good way.

Although maybe he did. A certain part of his anatomy certainly did, because when she’d brushed against him with her fingers he’d had to resist the urge to grab her by the arms and push her against the wall, kiss her until they both were senseless. And more.

Which didn’t make him all that different from Bates, who was still bent over and wheezing from Chelsea’s smiling squeeze of his balls.

The woman was no victim. No Sarah, used and abused by men with power, and the thought gave him a strange, savage satisfaction because that was the kind of woman he needed.

But first he had to get her to agree.

His gaze narrowed as he saw her heading for the elevator. Was she leaving the party already? For a moment he considered following her, but then decided against it. He’d laid the groundwork tonight; he needed to think about the best way to handle Chelsea Maxwell before he spoke with her again. And he also needed to get a handle on the obvious attraction he felt for her. He didn’t like feeling out of control, especially not when it came to sex. Men started making stupid decisions when they let themselves be led by their dicks.

And Alex had no intention of letting that happen. If he slept with Chelsea, it would be on his terms, because it served a purpose.

Even if he suspected it would be incredibly enjoyable.

The elevator doors opened and she stepped inside, head held high, her chin tilted at an almost defiant angle. She looked haughty and magnificent, the ultimate ice queen—and then Alex noticed one hand clenched in the folds of her gown. That little, telling action surprised him, and he wondered just what it revealed. Was she angry with the drunken idiot who had come onto her? She’d seemed no more than coldly amused when Bates had stumbled up to her.

From behind him Alex heard Paul Bates mutter a wheezy curse.

“What a bitch,” he mumbled and Alex glanced at him in derision.

“You’re just saying that because she got you in the balls.”

“Like I said—”

“And you deserved it.” Alex shook his head, taking in the man’s golden good looks that were now on the wrong side of forty, with broken veins and bloodshot eyes—not to mention a sizeable paunch—revealing a lifetime of reckless living.

“You know she’s Agnello’s tart, don’t you?” Bates demanded, and Alex just shrugged.

“She’s not yours, at any rate,” he said with deliberate mildness, and walked away with Bates still gasping behind him.

* * *

The next morning he headed to his office on Hudson Street, scanning the headlines on his smartphone as he took the elevator up to his penthouse office.

He stepped into the soaring room of glass and steel, glanced again at his phone as he powered up his computer, and wondered whether to call Chelsea now. He needed to think carefully about his next move, and yet he couldn’t deny he was looking forward to sparring with her again, craving the little buzz conversation with her had given him. There weren’t many women like Chelsea, he mused: ruthless, ambitious, and sexually confident.

Yes, she would definitely be a match for him in bed. And no matter what happened with Treffen, he decided, he was going to find a way to get her there.

But first he needed to think about Treffen. That little curl of anticipation he’d felt low in his belly now soured into a churning mix of regret and resolve.

Jason Treffen was lauded far and wide as an advocate for the downtrodden and oppressed, especially those who were women. He’d gained a reputation for mentoring smart, driven young women who’d gone to the Ivy League schools on scholarship—with no one knowing that he was actually coercing them into committing the most sordid of acts.

His gut roiled as he remembered what Austin, Jason’s son and one of Alex’s best friends, had discovered from Sarah’s sister Katy just before Christmas. All those years ago after Sarah’s death they’d assumed it had been a sadly simple case of sexual harassment. Then they’d learned the truth in all of its incredible horror when Katy had approached Austin with the information that Treffen hadn’t just been coming onto his young female employees, he’d been roping them into a high-end prostitution ring.

Sarah hadn’t just been harassed by Jason, she’d been forced into servicing his clients. The thought still had the power to bring bile to Alex’s throat. Since that night, the tenth anniversary of Sarah’s death, when Austin had lobbed that grenade into their usual desultory chat about work and women, they’d discovered more of the grim truth. Not only had Jason run a prostitution ring, he’d blackmailed the clients, men of power and position who got off on having a desperate and upwardly mobile young woman on her knees.

Austin had revealed the truth to his family, alienating his father from his wife and children. Together he and Hunter, along with Katy’s help, had begun the process of ousting Jason as partner in his law firm.

So far Treffen had managed to retain his public image. His separation from his wife had simply and sorrowfully been explained as being caused by stress from his high-powered job. Austin’s mother had been too ashamed to admit the truth.

Hunter was working on getting Treffen to step down from his law practice, but so far the man was clinging to his credentials. To his saintly reputation. Alex wouldn’t be satisfied, and neither would Austin or Hunter or now Katy Michaels, until Jason Treffen was completely and publicly ruined. Until the truth was known, and Sarah’s memory avenged.

And the perfect way to do that was on Chelsea’s live television show, watched by thirty million people.

Yet after talking to her last night, Alex wasn’t ready to trust Chelsea with the truth. I’m not interested in shock value.

What Treffen had done was the ultimate in shocking.

He just had to convince Chelsea of it—and of the need to take the man down.

Alex reached for his phone.

He dialed American Media Industries, Chelsea’s network, and within a few seconds was connected to her assistant, who told him that Chelsea was in a meeting and would call him back.

Alex wondered if she really was. Chelsea definitely seemed the type who would keep him waiting just because she could. His mouth thinned into a hard line. She might think she had all the control, but he looked forward to proving her wrong. To taking it away from her...both in bed and out of it.

Impatiently he drummed his fingers against the polished teak of his desk. He might look forward to stripping away Chelsea Maxwell’s arrogant certainties—as well as a few other things—but right now she was the one who was calling the shots. All he could do was get on with his work and wait for her to call.

Eight hours later he’d left his office and headed uptown to meet his friend Jaiven Rodriguez for a beer. He and Jaiven had known each since childhood in a Dominican-dominated neighborhood in the Bronx; while Alex had escaped on a scholarship to Walkerton Prep, an exclusive boarding school in Connecticut, Jaiven had stayed in the Bronx and had earned his way out by his sweat and his fists.

The first time Alex had come back from Connecticut, Jaiven had punched him in the face.

Alex still smiled to remember the belligerent look on his friend’s face, and his own slack-jawed shock at his split lip and swelling eye.

“If you’re going to turn into some preppy asshole,” Jaiven had said, “don’t bother coming back here.”

The words had gone deep. He’d been putting on airs, Alex had realized, without even being aware that he was doing it. Collar up on his polo shirt. Rolling his eyes when Jaiven had started talking about their old friends. Dropping names of rich, entitled boys who went to his school, boys who’d relished humiliating the half-Dominican scholarship kid from the Bronx, who wore secondhand uniforms and came to school not in a chauffeured Rolls but on the public bus. And he’d been pretending to Jaiven that they were his friends.

Even now he felt the burn of shame at how quickly he’d lost the sense of himself, even if he’d only been fourteen. How he’d wanted to fit in rather than claim who he was.

Never again. He never would forget his roots, never wanted to pretend he hadn’t worked hard and earned everything he had. It hadn’t been given to him on a silver platter, the way it had for just about everyone else at Walkerton, and then later, Harvard.

That had been what had initially drawn him to Sarah; they’d shared a freshman business class and he’d seen the same hungry ambition and hard-won hope in her that he’d felt in himself. They’d been best friends, even after Sarah had started dating Hunter, a football quarterback and, along with Austin and Zair, his freshman roommate. He’d had no time for what he saw as three over-privileged trust fund babies until Sarah had softened him, shown him that rich kids were real people, too. After college Zair had gone back to his home country in the Middle East, and he, Austin and Hunter, and Sarah, too, had been damn near inseparable until her death.

After she’d died he’d focused solely on work, on building a news network that promised honesty. He was known throughout the industry for telling it straight.

So maybe he should tell it straight to Chelsea.

He hesitated, let that thought roll around in his mind for a little while. No, not yet. He might have founded his career on honesty, but revenge, revenge on Treffen, was something else entirely. If the end had ever justified the means, it was now.

Now he stepped into the bar in the Bronx that was one step down from a dive and looked for Jaiven. His friend was parked in a booth of ripped vinyl in the back, a beer bottle already in front of him. “Hey.” Alex slid in across from his friend and hailed the waitress for his own beer.

“You look like shit,” Jaiven remarked.

“Thanks very much.” With a murmured thanks Alex took the bottle from the waitress. “As it happens, I didn’t sleep much last night.”

Jaiven cocked an eyebrow. “Good reason for that?”

“Not the one you’re thinking.” Alex thought, briefly, of Chelsea. Chelsea naked, that silver dress slithering off her like a snakeskin. Her hair down, long, wavy, mussed. Her mouth parted, lips rosy and swollen—

Damn it. He was getting a hard-on just thinking about her. Alex shifted in his seat, forced his gaze back to Jaiven who chuckled knowingly, the sound rich and deep. “What, the great Alex Diaz didn’t get lucky? Unbelievable.”

Alex smiled coolly and shook his head. “I wasn’t trying.”

“Sure you weren’t.” Jaiven stretched out in the booth and drained half his beer. “So were you out at some swanky media thing?”

“A birthday party.”

Jaiven just shrugged and took another swig of his beer. Although Jaiven’s fortune rivaled Alex’s own, his friend steadfastly refused to rub elbows with the people he still considered snobs and he never attended any society parties or events.

He’d quit school at sixteen and started his own shipping business with nothing more than with a strong back and a beat-up van with expired plates, and in the fifteen years since then he’d built it up into a multimillion-dollar shipping enterprise. In all that time he’d never left the Bronx behind.

He still lived there, admittedly in a much nicer place, and he was proud of where he’d come from, who he was and always would be. He often told Alex he’d punch him in the face any time he started acting like an ass again, and Alex took him at his word.

“But there is a woman, right?” he asked now, and Alex lifted one shoulder in a shrugging answer.

“There might be.”

“What, she’s playing hard to get?”

“Not exactly.”

Jaiven shook his head, let out another laugh. “Whoever it is, she’s got you by the balls, my friend. You’re looking like you need to get laid.”

Alex smiled grimly. “Maybe I do.” He and Jaiven had always shared the same approach to sex and love: one-night stands, the occasional week-long fling, and absolutely no expectations of anything else. He was honest about that as he was about everything else; he made sure a woman knew the rules before he’d so much as got her bra off.

Except he doubted Chelsea Maxwell was looking for a relationship. No, he was pretty sure she’d view sex the same way he did. Mutually enjoyable for an evening, and no more.

He felt his insides clench with anticipation. That would be plenty.

* * *

Chelsea stared at the little pink slip with Alex Diaz’s name scrawled on it and wondered again just what the man wanted.

He’d called two hours ago, and she wasn’t about to trip all over herself to call him back. No, let him wait. Let him wonder. She tucked the slip in her purse—no need for anyone to know Alex Diaz was calling her—and reached for her laptop.

“Chelsea? Do you have a minute?”

She looked up to see Michael Agnello entering her office. “Of course.” She shut her laptop, pushed her chair away from her desk and crossed her legs. “Just answering some emails.”

“I wanted to talk about the Treffen interview.”

“All right.” Seemed like everyone did, she thought. Coincidence? Probably not. Probably everyone, even Michael, was surprised she’d actually scored a prime-time interview with Treffen. Everyone but her. She’d worked hard for it, and she’d earned it, and she fully intended to have it make her career.

“What about it?” she asked as Michael sat down across from her.

“Treffen and his lawyer want to meet with you before the interview to go over exactly how it’s going to proceed.”

Chelsea frowned, even though she wasn’t really all that surprised. “That seems a bit counterproductive. I’d like to have our conversation progress naturally.”

“Treffen wants a little more control.”

“Why?”

Michael shrugged. “Why not? The man has a reputation, Chelsea, and it’s not to sob on a pink velour sofa.”

Annoyance prickled, even though she knew Michael had a point. “You know this interview isn’t going to be like that.”

“I know, which is why you should meet with him. It makes sense.”

“Maybe.”

In the past week she’d taped two shows, one with a disgraced Olympian who’d had to give back her bronze medal after a doping scandal, and another with a country Western star trying to resurrect her career after several album flops and public meltdowns. Chelsea had brought them to tears both times.

But her interview with Treffen was going to be different. No sordid secrets, no noisy tears. Just honest, respectable journalism. Treffen, after all, wasn’t a washed-up has-been trying to resurrect his career.

I know what he’s done.

She thought suddenly of the hard look on Alex Diaz’s face when he’d spoken about Treffen. No matter what he had or hadn’t said, he clearly didn’t like the man.

And now, Chelsea realized, she wanted to know why. She needed to know, especially if Treffen intended on imposing his control over the interview.

“I’m happy to meet with him,” she told Michael. “But he’d better not expect to dictate all the terms of the interview.”

“He just might,” Michael warned her with a shake of his head. “And if you want Treffen to do this interview, you just might have to agree.”

Chelsea pressed her lips together in silent, if unwilling, acceptance. Nothing could jeopardize this opportunity to interview Treffen, to finally make her career. Rise above the rumors she had always refused to deny. Nothing—not even the man himself.