But the first woman to ever flat-out reject him was now sitting across from him with a death threat put on her car and eyes he couldn’t unsee.
Rejection fromherfelt like a glancing blow from a sniper he hadn’t spotted.
And the worst part?
He wanted to persuade her.Not because of the cover or protocol.Because some reckless, deeply stupid part of him wanted to know how it would feel if she didn’t say no.
It bothered him more than it should.More than anything should.
Merde, he was in trouble.
Chapter Three
Chloe couldn’t believeLeo had gone behind her back to hire security, once again treating her as if she were a terrified six-year-old instead of a grown woman with a fitness empire and a spine forged from stubborn steel.
She adored him.Of course she did.He’d been the sun in her childhood orbit, the steady force that made everything feel safer.As a kid, she worshipped him, trailing after him and his friends to the gym, wrinkling her nose at the sweat and the “gross stinky boy smell” until the place somehow felt like home.Those clunky old weight machines had lit the fuse on everything: exercise science classes, certification hours, the first videos she recorded in a sunroom so hot her mascara liquefied.Her dream life had started with Leo.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t infuriating.
Right now, he was pissing her off with world-class efficiency.Sometimes that old dynamic clung like a vine, and she hated how easily he could shove her right back into that small, scared version of herself she’d worked so hard to outgrow.The one who waited for permission.
And now he’d unleashed Kayne Serruto on her life.
Yes, fine, Kayne was the most handsome man she’d ever seen.Those eyes alone should’ve come with a warning label.Her brain had short-circuited the moment Leo’s mysterious “contact” turned out to be six-foot-something of muscled danger.His voice did inconvenient things to her pulse.
And now they wanted her to pretend to date him?
Sure.Easy.Totally not a trap she would sprint toward at Olympic pace.
The problem wasn’t pretending.The problem was wanting it to be real.
Maybe he had a terrible personality.Maybe he was rude or arrogant or smelled like boiled cabbage.Something had to ruin the fantasy.Somehow, she didn’t think any of those scenarios seemed probable.
“Chloe?”
She blinked at Leo.“What?”
