Expose Me

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.”