Read Online One Last Hold by Angela Smith - Free Book Online Page B

you.”
    “Oh, that makes perfect sense.”
    His hand fell away, thank God. His touch burned her, promising a hope she couldn’t afford to consider.
    “So you’re doing this to avoid horrid assignments, and protect me from Blake’s nosy reporters who may dig up my past. Is that it?”
    “You should’ve been a lawyer,” she muttered.
    “Well, no worries, darling, I’ve had plenty of reporters nose into my life. I think I can handle any Blake might send.”
    “I need the raise. My rent has gone up,” she blurted.
    “Destroying my life is all about money?”
    “I’m not here to destroy your life,” she defended. Why couldn’t he accept that?
    The truth niggled at her. Should she admit her reasons? Not that she was here as a means to get over him—she’d never tell him that—but the other idea that had materialized.
    “Actually, I considered asking you to let me do a biography on you one day,” she admitted.
    “You what?” He pushed back from the bar. His brows twitched, his jaw tightened and his chest, though covered by his shirt, appeared to be carved from steel.
    She sometimes wondered if what he had underneath his chest, where his heart should be, was carved from steel.
    “I have no intention of doing it without your permission.”
    “You’ll never have it.”
    “Why not?”
    He flung his empty bottle in the trash and got another one. He used his foot to shut the refrigerator door and leaned against it.
    “You just said you weren’t here to destroy my life.”
    “Right.”
    “So writing a biography would destroy me. My reputation. My career. It would destroy everything.”
    “I don’t believe that.”
    He twisted the top off. His muscles flexed as he brought the bottle to his lips. She watched his Adam’s apple as he drank and swallowed the longing to taste him. He held onto the neck of the bottle with his fingers, letting it dangle by his thigh.
    She did not look at the bottle next to his thighs. Ignored the way his pants outlined his shapely ass, legs, groin.
    She weaved her fingers through her hair and tightened her fingers on her strands. “I think your fans would love you even more for seeing you’re a human being with problems and mistakes.”
    “No. My fans would hate me.”
    “And I think it’d help you to talk about it.”
    “No.”
    A shadow crossed his face. She’d been wrong. He didn’t have steel under his chest, where his heart should be. Maybe it was just rubber, taut and unbending at times, vulnerable to fractures at other times.
    She dropped the grip on her hair and let her fingers fall to the notebook, grabbed a page, and crinkled the corner. She’d said too much. He wasn’t ready for this. She wasn’t even sure she was ready for this.
    “You’re using Blake as much as he’s using you, aren’t you?” Wesley drained his beer and tossed it in the trash. “You want to become a famous author and make a lot of money, possibly quit your job so you can write. Your boss merely wants information about the elusive race car driver.”
    “It has nothing to do with becoming famous and making a lot of money. If I wanted to do that, I could have done exactly that. And technically, I’m not a reporter. I’m a journalist for a very popular magazine and one I’m proud of. I don’t report on the news, I write personality pieces. True ones.”
    Wesley rolled his eyes and sidled next to her at the bar. He didn’t sit. She looked away. “As true as your subjects say they are.”
    “What is your deal with news media anyway?” She whirled her chair around so her knees were even with his upper thighs. Big mistake. He stood in front of her, his already powerful body looming over her. Her legs parted, her feet rested against the bottom of the chair. And all she could think about was pulling him into her.
    In between her legs, where she burned for him.
    “News media?” he scoffed. “It’s all about sensationalism. Most of the ones I’ve met are corrupt. They’ll lie,