“Just tell me one thing, Beaux.”

“It’s BJ to you.”

I couldn’t care less what she wants me to call her because it’s not like I’ll be speaking to her again anyway. “Why play me like you did? Because you did play me, right? You slithered up to me at the bar, used your sexy voice and those come-fuck-me eyes to reel me in, and then stayed long enough after I left to ask around and see where I was. So were you waiting in the stairwell? Biding your time until I came down so that you could get in my pants and what? Ensure you’d get my blessing for the position because you researched me enough to know what happened with Stella and knew I was going to freak the fuck out? And then when Rafe called last night, you figured out who it was and bolted in case I put two and two together?” I’m shouting now, hands fisted at my side, and almost nose to nose with her. I don’t care about goddamn protocol now.

Shit, we fucked that over last night the minute my lips touched hers.

My breathing is labored and when I force myself to step back, I can read the look on her face. I swear to all things holy, she must be the best damn actress on the face of the earth. Beaux’s eyes are wide, her bottom lip is trembling, and her eyes are welling with tears.

I love and I hate the sight of her tears all at once. I love them because it means it just might have been a coincidence, and I hate them because it means there is no way in hell she’s tough enough to survive the despair here if she can’t handle my chewing her out.

She wipes her palms on her jeans, and I focus on the motion, because I’m always leery of a woman wielding tears. When she doesn’t speak but just stands her ground, I look up and meet her eyes to find anger and disbelief.

“Rest assured, I knew who you were, Tanner Thomas… but I didn’t know until this morning that you were my new partner.”

I snort at the word partner, crossing my arms over my chest as I lean against the wall. “Yeah. Uh-huh. Convenient.”

“Look, Pulitzer, I don’t need your goddamn chivalry. I can handle myself just fine,” she says with a sneer.

I reach out and grab her arm as she skirts past me. “You sure as fuck needed me last night.” She wants to be a bitch? Well, I can be a grade A asshole. She has no idea who she’s messing with. We already started this relationship with a bang, so why not keep it going that way, right?

“Wow. You forget all of your women that quick? Last I checked, you were the one who made the first move in the stairwell.”

“Really?” My voice escalates with each letter of the word. “Parade that body of yours around and —”

“What? Be a woman? The audacity,” she says, feigning horror. She stops trying to shrug out of my grip and instead surprises me when she steps farther into me. “Let’s make one thing clear. Chivalry is dead. I wanted you. I had you. And I assure you, it won’t happen again.”

“You’d better come at me with better lines than that if you think I’m going to buy your bullshit lies. I believed them once. Not again, Beaux… or is it BJ?” We stare at each other in a silent standoff.

“It’s both, but you have to earn the right to call me Beaux, and it seems you already lost that,” she says as she lifts her chin in defiance. And shit, in less than twenty-four hours I believe I’ve met both Beaux and BJ. The funny thing is I’m not sure which one I like more. Or if I like either at all.

“Why’d you bolt last night? It’s a little too convenient, don’t you think?” I’m still feeling unsure about her motives and I hate it. I’m a man who survives by following his gut instinct, and right now my gut isn’t telling me shit. So goddamn frustrating.

Beaux steps toward me, steel in her posture, and spite in her voice. “Did you think you were that special?” she asks, causing me to immediately bristle at the comment, male ego front and center. “Don’t act so surprised. I found your bed easily in the dark, so why do you think I couldn’t have found the door so easily afterward?”

Touché.

“I don’t like being played.”

“And I don’t like being judged.” She takes a step back. “Now that we got that out of the way, let go of my arm.”

I keep my hand on her for a moment longer, wanting more from the answers than she’s giving me. Still I’m aware we both had sex last night willingly. I didn’t ask questions, didn’t want to know more – and that’s on me.

But I’ll put a whole helluva lot of blame on her right now too. I think there’s more to this story than she’s telling me. I keep thinking about that look in her eyes through the darkness of the room last night, and I can so easily see that she was deceiving me. And that’s sitting about as comfortable as a chastity belt on a hooker.

“Great, then I’ll expect the call from Rafe shortly that you’ve changed your mind about the position.”

“Fuck you.” She yanks her arm back this time, and I let it go willingly, watching every nuance of her reaction to try and figure out the truth here.

“Do you talk to your mother with a mouth like that?” She’s such a contradiction. Elegant with the mouth of a trucker and a body made for sin. No wonder I’m intrigued and pissed simultaneously.

“Shall I say it again? I don’t have a problem repeating myself. And just so you know, I’m damn good. My candids earned me the spot.” She starts to walk away and then stops. “Better yet, I will call Rafe. I’ll ring him right up and let him know how emotionally unstable you are. How you refuse to perform the song and dance for the brass by taking me under your wing. We’ll see how long you last before they yank you out of here for being the goddamn liability that they fear you are.” That victorious smirk of hers returns with a vengeance, and she turns on her heel and stalks out of the office before her words hit home and take hold.

My feet remain rooted in place as I watch her ass sway from side to side down the hall until she turns the corner. Even when she’s gone from sight, I can’t move. My thoughts collide together with her words to shake the sarcasm from them so that I can really hear what she said.

And as much as it pains me to admit it, she’s absolutely right. If I was pissed a minute ago, I’m livid now. I start to move on reflex, pacing without thought because I need to work off some of this anger while I process my thoughts.

The men controlling the strings are actually testing me. Making sure I’m not a liability because I refused to take the time off they requested. I believe sabbatical was the term they used. Well, fuck that.

Do they really think strapping me with some damn rookie and having to teach her the ropes is going to prove my stability? That it will keep me out of the trouble that they obviously believe I caused when everything went down with Stella? And if that’s the case, they’re contradicting themselves by saying I’m fucked up in a sense but meanwhile putting me in charge of teaching a newbie the minefield of reporting out here on what feels like the fringes of civilization.

Damn, it’s like they’re not sure what they want from me. They won’t let me go to CNN because they’re afraid to lose me and my reputation, but at the same time they think I’m about as stable as a fault line.

Yes, what happened to Stella and everything else that went with it messed with my head. She was my best friend, for fuck’s sake. If it didn’t affect me, then they should be worried. But just because I’m having a hard time with it doesn’t mean I can’t do my job effectively.

I went through their circus hoops to get back here. I retrained in all of the protocol I first did what feels like a hundred years ago when I started this career: captive training courses, first aid certification, ethics classes. I did them and then some. Even went to the fucking shrink they asked me to see so she could ask me the same question ten different ways from Sunday to just get the same answer I gave the first time.

Well fuck them. Fuck them and the horse they rode in on weighted down with all their asinine reasons for treating me this way. I’ll prove each and every one of them wrong. I’ll take this babysitting job and still get the best goddamn story out there. Break it first. Prove to them that I’ve still got my mojo.

Decision made. I can play the corporate bullshit game with the best of them. Now I just have to wrap my head around chasing after a woman I’d much rather let run out the damn door. She’s sassy and haughty and she was a one-night stand, but damn it to hell, I’m a man with needs.

I just don’t want one of them to be her.

“This is utterly fucking ridiculous,” I mutter under my breath as I stride down the hallway to try to find the rookie.

I look in the obvious places first and can’t find her. I’m about to walk up to the front desk of the lounge area of the hotel to ask if anyone knows where Beaux’s room is so I can lay down the parameters of this partnership, when something catches my eye across the street from the hotel.

“Fucking hell, woman,” I growl as I shove the entry doors open. The heat hits me like I’m in the center of a furnace, but I don’t give it any reaction because in a few weeks’ time I won’t even notice it. Still, I grumble, pissed that I instantly feel protective of her. While I might try to shrug it off as being a good person, somehow I know it’s more than that.

I’m playing right into corporate’s hand by rushing out to rescue their new golden girl from making a huge mistake and getting into a car that looks like a cab but isn’t one. The difference between the creeps here and the ones back in the States is that the ones here have ten times less regard for women. I know firsthand. I’ve reported on some scenes that made me sick to my stomach.

A sketchy-looking local has his hand on her upper biceps, and he’s gesturing wildly over whatever he’s arguing with her about. And the only thing I see is that she keeps trying to shrug out of his grasp, and he just holds on. I can’t hear enough of the verbal exchange between the two of them to know what it’s about, but rather can hear the frustrated pitch of Beaux’s voice as she argues with him.

I all but run toward the yellowish taxicab with nothing more than a broken sandwich-board-type sign on the top of it. “Do not get in the car, Beaux!” I command as I come around the back of the car, causing her head to whip over to me in surprise.

“I’ll get in the damn car if I want to!” she snaps at me, hands already on her hips and posture stiff. “Who the hell do you think you are? First, you insult me and my work upstairs, and then you chase me across the street and tell me what to do? Dream on, asshole.”

The man she was talking to slinks around the hood of the car, far from inconspicuous, but shady nonetheless. “Everyone knows not to get in the cabs here if they’re not —”

“I wasn’t getting in the damn cab! I didn’t come in here blind and wet behind the ears, so back the fuck off. You got me pissed off enough that I wasn’t thinking, and I ran outside without my hijab,” she says referring to the head scarf most women wear here. Her voice is a mixture of contrition and anger because I caught her making a mistake after I got her so flustered that she fucked up.

“Without thinking. Hmm. Guess that’s something a rookie does. Oh wait, you’re not a rookie, though, are you?” I hold her stare as I goad her, while the sun’s heat feels as if it’s burning through my clothes and straight into my skin.

She lifts her chin in defiance, a nonverbal fuck you that makes me respect her and dislike her all at the same time. The tough-girl routine is fine and dandy stateside, but out in this crude Wild West of a place, it can end up getting you killed.

“So where were you going in this cab that isn’t really a cab, rook?” I ask the question to get a reaction, see if she’s lying to me, and her quick intake of air and widening of the eyes is the one I was hoping she wasn’t going to give me. She was really going to get in the damn car with this guy. Unfuckingbelievable.

I’m a reporter, not a goddamn nanny.

She huffs out a breath. “I’m a big girl. I was asking the guy a question. Is there a crime in doing that, Pulitzer?” Beaux takes a step toward me, irritation in her voice and defiance in her stance as the car idling beside us takes off.