Page 45 of Between the Lines

“I can call the car.”

“No need,” she says and pushes past me. She stumbles on her heels in the dimness, and I reach out to steady her.

My hand lands on the bare skin of her back, exposed by the gaping dress.

“Charlotte,” I say.

“I read the contract thoroughly beforehand,” she says sharply. Her eyes meet mine, and damn if a shiver of arousal doesn’t rush down my spine, right alongside my frustration. “I am allowed to break it if the interview subject substantially hinders my efforts. It’s just in the fine print, but it states that if I’m not given adequate resources, I can break it.”

“What qualifies as adequate resources?” I ask. “Want us to battle that out in the courts?”

Her eyes narrow. “You’d do that?”

“I don’t think I’d have to. Don’t you think your editor will just replace you with another memoirist? Your publishing house wants this memoir just as much as my Board does.”

“Because they think they’re getting the scoop!” she says. “When what they’reactuallygetting is a noncooperative, evasive, frustrating, occasionally rude CEO with no interest in sharing even his favorite color.”

“Blue,” I say.

Her mouth tightens, like she’s trying to hold back an expletive. But then it bursts open. “Damn it.”

I shrug out of my suit jacket and hold it up for her.

She stares at it as if it’s a weapon.

“Until we get to the car,” I say.

“I can’t walk around in your suit jacket.”

“Do we have much of a choice?” I ask dryly and look down at her dress, still only held up by her hands. “Or do you want to risk flashing all the good men and women out there?”

She turns with a muttered curse. “Don’t look,” she instructs me, and I look away. I feel her slip into the arms of my jacket but keep my gaze firmly on one of the beige walls.

“Don’t call your editor.”

“I can’t work like this,” she says. “I refuse.”

“You never struck me as someone who backs down from a challenge, Chaos.”

She turns so quickly that her hair hits my still hovering hand from when I held the jacket out to her. “I don’t,” she says. “I just know a losing battle when I see one.”

“That sounds like giving up.” I’m being an ass. An ass in a way I rarely am. At least not since I was a bored and rich teenager. Needling and needling and not saying the right thing like I always have to otherwise.

I’ve never watched my tongue around Charlotte the way I should.

She’s a dangerous creature, standing there with my suit jacket wrapped tightly around her chest. It’s too large on her, the sleeves covering her hands.

She looks delicious.

“You,” she says, her eyes blazing, “are playing games. Even if you’re calling them something else. And I don’t like that. So if you think I’m giving up? That’s fine. But I know what I deserve, and it’s not this.”

Charlotte is going to walk away.

And I know I don’t want this memoir written. I don’t want secrets exposed. I don’t want family trauma reexamined and read by thousands of people. I don’t want new Business Digest articles with clickbait titles.

But I know I don’t want her to walk out, either.

She’s fascinating. Complicated. Intelligent. Our little sparring matches have been the most fun I’ve had in months.

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