Expose Me

“I was patient.” The words came out clipped, because now terseness was her only defense against the tide of desire that was washing over her, wrecking her resolve like castles in sand. “I spent a year getting to know him, making sure I was at the same parties he was, admiring his work—”

“Sucking up.”

Chelsea drew back, startled by the scorn in his voice. And a few seconds ago she’d been semicontemplating having sex with this man. “He’s an incredible person,” she said shortly, “who has done a world of good for women’s rights—”

“I know what he’s done.” Alex smiled coldly, and the eyes she’d thought were so amazing with their golden glints now looked like chips of black ice. “But I wonder if you do.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Are you going to put him on your sofa? Have him spill his secrets and make him cry?”

His voice was a low purr but Chelsea still heard the sneer. Felt it. “It’s not that kind of interview,” she answered coolly. “I’m not interested in shock value with Treffen. But frankly, I’m not really sure why you care.”

“Because I care about Treffen.”

“You sound like you hate the man.”

“Hate isn’t the right word. But I’d like to see what he does with an interview. What you do with it.” He raised his beer bottle to his lips again, his mouth still curved in a cool smile, his eyes still hard.

Chelsea decided she’d had enough of his innuendo and snark. So he didn’t like Jason Treffen. Considering the lawyer and human rights activist was lauded as a modern-day saint, that was a little strange, but it had nothing to do with her.

Except maybe it did. Because she was interviewing the man, and if she wanted to make it as a serious investigative journalist, she needed to know. Needed to dig.

But not right now. Not when Alex Diaz was making her feel so weak, both from his mockery and the attraction she still, damn it, felt. It coursed through her relentlessly, a river of want that carried her will right along with it.

Almost.

She straightened, flashed him one of her glittering smiles. “Well, stay tuned, then. It airs live on March twentieth.”

And without waiting for a response, she turned and walked away from him, her shoulders thrown back, her chin held high.

* * *

Alex raised his beer to his lips as he tracked Chelsea’s movements around the room. For a moment there he’d considered telling her the truth about Jason Treffen, but then he’d thankfully thought better of it. It was hardly cocktail party chitchat, and he didn’t know her well enough to trust her with that particular powder keg. Not yet, anyway.

She was ambitious, he got that, and tough. He was pretty sure she had the balls to bring down Treffen on live television, if she wanted to.

The question was, did she? Could he convince her? He possessed a savage need to see Treffen with his world crumbling around him, and everyone else seeing it, too. No longer would the man fool everyone into believing he was such a damned saint. They would know him not just as a sinner, but a devil.

Austin had already exposed Treffen to his family, with the help of Sarah’s sister, Katy. Hunter was working on ousting Treffen from his law firm. And Alex had been charged with confronting the man on national television, showing the world what he really was: a monster who used the women he said he was saving. Who damned them to lives of shame, scandal and sin. Everything in Alex ached to see Jason publicly exposed—and he would do whatever it took to make it happen.

Including use Chelsea in whatever way he could. The woman was cold; she’d slept her way to the top. He didn’t feel so much as a flicker of guilt for using her. Sleeping with her, if it came to that.

But he did feel a certain amount of frustration. Sexual frustration. Never mind Treffen, he wanted Chelsea Maxwell in bed, beneath him, those gray-green eyes turned to molten silver with desire. He wanted her haughty little smile to become a desperate, begging kiss, to turn her tinkling laugh into a breathy sigh of pleasure and need.

He wanted to be the one to do it. To shatter her icy control and make her melt. For him.

He glanced at her walking away from him, her dress flowing over her like mercury. The front might have been high-necked and as chaste as a nun’s habit, but the back plunged right down to the tempting curve of her butt. Alex had always considered himself more of a breast man, but the sight of Chelsea Maxwell’s back, golden and perfect, made him reconsider.

He watched her glide away from the crowd and then instinctively followed, curious as to why she was leaving the party so soon. He stopped when he saw she was just heading toward the narrow hall that led to the ladies’. What the hell was wrong with him?

He was letting this woman lead him around by the balls, and she didn’t even know it.

Or maybe she did.

* * *

Chelsea checked her makeup in the mirror of the ladies’ toilet and took a deep breath. And another, because parties like this—and exchanges like the one she’d had with Alex Diaz—brought her to the brink of an anxiety attack. Not that she’d ever show it. Ten years on and she’d learned not just to live with it, but to hide it.

She stared at her reflection in the mirror, willed the color to return to her cheeks, her heartbeat to slow and her palms to stop tingling. You’re better than this, Chelsea. Stronger. Will it away.

A breath. Another. She continued to stare at her reflection, her face composed, her eyes hard. And finally, finally, the color returned and the tingling went away and she breathed deeply, her heart rate normal.

There. See?

Taking one last breath to steady herself, she turned from the mirror and left the ladies’ room.

Twenty minutes more and she’d call it a night. The thought brought an almost painful wave of relief. Her exchange with Alex Diaz had made her feel particularly edgy, everything just a little too close to the surface even though she knew, intellectually at least, that it was all still well hidden away.

Thank God.

Even Michael didn’t know how hard these occasions could be for her. When you had a high-profile career in television, you could hardly admit that socializing sometimes made you almost cripplingly anxious. That people scared you.

People like Alex Diaz.

She’d continued to feel his eyes on her as she’d moved around the room, and while his attention hadn’t scared her precisely, it had made her wary. Wary and aware, because even from fifty feet away he had the power to affect her. Make her ache. And that was too much power for one man to have.

She turned away from the mirror and headed back out to the party, stopping suddenly when a familiar bulk blocked the narrow hallway.

Paul Bates, AMI’s leading news anchorman and a complete ass. A drunken ass, judging from the fumes Chelsea could smell from ten feet away, and the way he lurched toward her. She took another deep breath and started to move past him.

He grabbed her arm, fingers digging in, nails snagging onto the slippery fabric of her dress. “Where you going, beautiful?” he slurred, and the whisky fumes now hit her full on the face. Chelsea didn’t move, didn’t pull her arm away. She knew better than that; men like Paul Bates liked a little resistance. Or even a lot.

“Back to the party, Paul,” she answered calmly. “But I’d suggest you remove your hand from my arm unless you want to be slapped with a sexual harassment suit.”

“Oh, come on, Chelsea.” She could get drunk off his breath alone, Chelsea thought dispassionately. “You could be a little friendlier to me, you know,” he continued, his voice turning both insistent and wheedling. “I could help you the way Agnello does.”

As if. She’d seen Paul eyeing her at the studio before, had ignored a few thinly veiled insults, some offensive innuendo, but he’d never actually come on to her before. He’d never touched her.

“Oh, I’m sure you could, Paul,” Chelsea murmured, tossing in a throaty chuckle for good measure. He made a clumsy grab for her hand and started drawing it to his crotch. Chelsea let him, felt his rather unimpressive hard-on. And smiling sweetly, she squeezed his balls hard enough for him to choke.

With a gasped curse he released her hand.

Chelsea moved past him, stopping abruptly when she saw another figure blocking her exit.

Alex Diaz.

He was gazing at her with narrowed eyes, his mouth twisted into something like a smile.