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Hell had no fury, and the scorned woman behind this website must be one manipulative wench. She even had awful tee shirts for sale, so she could make money off the vulnerable and vindictive.
‘Forget it, Ethan.’ Polly tried to switch topic. ‘I shouldn’t have sent it to you. You’re coming to the christening, right? Alone?’
‘Yeah,’ Ethan growled. ‘So I can shield Mum from Dad’s latest. And you were right to send it this to me, but off to believe it.’ Eyes glued to the screen, he clicked on another couple of entries and seethed even more. He was on there with all the cheats and creeps—though that assumed that what these women claimed was actually true. He knew for sure his thread was fabrication, so he was sceptical. And increasingly furious.
‘This is defamation.’ The injustice burned. ‘The internet might be all about free speech, but this is wrong.’
It was completely wrong. Damaging and dangerous. A site like this shouldn’t be allowed. Someone had to do something about it before some guy’s life or job was derailed by a bad online reputation.
Ethan Rush never shied from a challenge. And he didn’t take anything lying down.
Nadia’s eyes hurt as she squinted at her inbox. Staying up all night to moderate and update the forum had been such a dumb idea. And she’d had to come up with two new blog topics—which at three in the morning had been next to impossible. Her site had gotten so much bigger than she’d ever dreamed it would—truly fabulous—but it made focusing on the day job difficult. Unfortunately it was the day job that paid the bills. And it was the day job that was going to buy her the life and respect she’d fought for for ever. So she wasn’t going to screw it up.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Despite exercising on her way to work, there’d been no endorphin high, and she was going to need something more to get through the next eight hours. But before she could raid the snack machine for an assortment of fatty, sugary, salty, fifty-times-processed, plastic-wrapped rubbish, her phone rang.
‘Nadia, I have a gentleman in reception asking for you,’ Steffi the receptionist informed her, with an incredibly sparkly intonation.
‘Really?’ Nadia checked her calendar, but her first appointment wasn’t scheduled for an hour. ‘Me?’
‘You. Apparently no one else will do.’
Really? Nadia didn’t think so. He was probably a relentless wannabe recruit and Stef was fobbing him off on her. Millions wanted to work at Hammond Insurance. She knew. She’d fought like a wildcat to get her foot in the door.
‘He’s pretty insistent. Shall I send him through?’
Oh, yeah—Steffi was totally fobbing off some weirdo on her. ‘Okay.’ Nadia caved. ‘Meeting room five, in three minutes.’
‘Fantastic,’ Steffi gushed.
Nadia frowned and lowered her voice to whisper into the phone. ‘Stef, is everything okay?’
‘Sure. Why?’
‘You sound a little … puffed.’
‘Oh, no.’ Steffi laughed too loudly, all her breath seeming to blast down the phone. ‘I’m fine!’
Uh-huh. Nadia hung up and swivelled her chair. She needed some screen-free time anyway. She picked up one of the recruitment packs and walked to the meeting room.
If he was a wannabe recruit Steffi could have given him an info pack, but some of them were determined to talk to someone beyond Reception. Ah, well, it was a relief to delay starting properly, and she could raid the vending machine on her way back. She got to the meeting room and took up her position behind the desk. She flicked open the pack and prepared herself to deliver the bright smile and the spiel outlining the benefits of this amazing, ancient company, but not allowing too much hope to build in the guy. Hammond only took the best of the best. It took a hell of a lot of hard work to cut it here, and ninety-nine percent of people who applied never got over the threshold.
She looked up as a figure appeared in the doorway. She blinked at the brightness of Steffi’s smile. The receptionist was flushed and sparkling, as if she’d had three too many glasses of champagne. She loudly told the person following her, ‘Here’s meeting room five!’ then stepped to the side and Nadia saw the guy himself.
Cue several blinks in quick succession.
So not what she’d expected. She’d been thinking recent graduate—nervous, but bright. Sometimes they were youthfully brash, but they were never this smoothly confident, never this coolly controlled, never this kind of three thousand percent full-grown, red-blooded man. Sharp tailored suit, even sharper eyes, and a smile on the face that went with the prime male body. Nadia had never seen anyone with such perfect features in real life—that kind of symmetry was the domain of airbrushed aftershave ads. Only this guy had an edge that was never in those ads. No wonder Steffi had morphed into a breathless bimbo. Nadia’s lungs squeezed helplessly in sympathy and she couldn’t even manage an answering smile, let alone a hello. But the minute Steffi disappeared so did his smile.
A ripple skittered down Nadia’s spine and her brain sharpened. She blinked away the blinding effect of his beauty. He didn’t look as if he hoped to score a job at the most prestigious insurance firm in the city. He looked as if he had the world and its riches at his feet already, and could take or leave anything at his leisure. But that edge was there—simmering—and something raw was a scant centimetre below his incredibly smooth surface. Something she wasn’t sure she wanted to identify.
He paused another moment just inside the doorway, then carefully closed the door behind him. All the while he stared as hard at her as she belatedly realised she was staring at him. Finally he spoke. ‘You’re Nadia Keenan?’
She swallowed. ‘That surprises you?’ she asked, with a coolness that surprised her. She gestured to the seat across the table, because she was going to get a crick in her neck if she had to look that far up for another moment. Yeah, she should have stood, but her legs were as supportive as soggy tissue paper, and somehow she knew revealing weakness in front of this guy wouldn’t be a smart idea.
He took the seat, moving his all-muscle, no-fat frame in a too controlled kind of way that made the ripples run even faster across her skin. Apprehension … and something else she definitely didn’t want to identify. Instead her brain tracked down another avenue. Exactly how had he known to ask for her specifically? Because she was sure now he had—it wasn’t Steffi fobbing anyone off. This guy was here for some very precise reason. But she was merely an HR assistant. It wasn’t as if her name was listed on the company website. So why her?
Silence sharpened another second. She glanced past him, relieving her strained wide eyes and trying to regulate her pulse back to normal. Two of the walls were windows—the lower half frosted, but the upper part clear. Her clenched muscles eased a smidge. Anyone walking past could see in. There was no reason to feel isolated—no reason to feel as if the room had been sucked of all its oxygen. There was no reason for those ripples to relentlessly slither back and forth across her skin. And it wasn’t exactly fear … it was that something else.
She swallowed again and drew another cooling breath. ‘How can I help—?’
‘What’s the policy on internet use here at Hammond?’ he interrupted.
Pressing her lips together, she nudged the recruitment pack on the table between them, avoiding looking at him as she pulled her scattered thoughts together.
‘I should imagine it’s pretty conservative,’ he continued, before she’d collated her answer. ‘Pretty conservative establishment all round, is Hammond.’
‘Do you have a point, Mr …?’ She paused deliberately, still not looking him in the eyes.
‘Rush. Ethan Rush,’ he said, as smoothly and unselfconsciously as if he were James Bond himself. ‘Do you recognise my name?’
‘Should I?’
‘Yes, I think you should.’
She blinked and pushed the pack again, to buy another moment of thinking time. Except she couldn’t really think—she could barely breathe—and her pulse was pounding. ‘Well, I’m sorry, Mr Rush, you’ll have to explain.’
‘But you’ve been warned about me.’
‘I have?’ Startled, she looked up—and found herself snared in the reddish tint of his brown eyes—the hardness of those eyes.
‘Yes, on WomanBWarned. Do you know that website, Nadia?’
In less than the micro-second it took for her to gasp, shock had covered her body in goosebumps. Every inch of her skin screamed with sensitivity; every cell was shot with adrenalin. She let another second slide, and as it did she decided to avoid—then feign ignorance. And if that failed she’d deny, deny, deny.
‘Was there something you needed today, Mr Rush?’
‘Yes, I wanted to be sure about the internet policy here at Hammond, and apparently you’re the HR expert on it.’ He didn’t seem to move, but he was somehow even bigger, filling the room with ferocious energy. ‘Tell me,’ he said drily, ‘does your employer know you run one of the bitchiest, most defamatory sites on the internet?’
Nadia’s throat tightened as if a hangman’s noose had just been jerked, rendering speech impossible.
‘It wouldn’t do your little HR role much good if your bosses found out about your hobby, would it? Not when you’re sending out these little edicts to all their employees about online protocol. Not in a great position to give advice, are you?’
Nadia firmed her jaw—she resented the “hobby” description.
He pulled a paper from his pocket and unfolded it, placing it in the table. She glanced at the heading, and then back up to his simmering countenance. She didn’t need to read more because she’d written most of it. The internal memo on internet access and computer use, explicitly detailing that social networking sites, forums and such, were forbidden. She’d drafted the updated policy before getting it approved by Legal and her supervisors.
‘Where did you get that?’ And how on earth had he tracked her down?
‘I find it so ironic that you deliver seminars to the other employees about protecting their online presence and reputation when you’re so vicious in cyberspace yourself.’
‘Do you have a point, Mr Rush?’ She curled her toes and tensed her muscles. She wanted to escape but refused to run away. Because she really needed to know what his point was. Despite her hammering heart, she told herself to keep calm. She was safe. She’d never used Hammond computers for her forums and she never would—her job mattered too much.
‘What do you think, Nadia? Why am I here?’
She shrugged her shoulders slightly. ‘No reason I can think of. Unless you wish to discuss possible employment at Hammond, I don’t think we have anything to say to each other.’
He smiled as he surveyed her. Sitting back in his seat, he was now completely at ease, as if he was the one who worked here, and not total stranger who’d just come in off the street. And he was completely gorgeous, in an all-male, all-arrogant way.
Oh, yes—woman be warned. She knew his type—too good-looking for his own good. A spoilt playboy who’d been outed as a two/three/four or more timer for sure. And he wasn’t happy about it? Too bad.
His eyes compelled her to answer his challenge. Fire burned in them—literally a touch of russet in the cinnamon iris—impossible to ignore.
But she’d damn well try. ‘You might be twice my size, but you don’t intimidate me. You can take your threatening attitude elsewhere.’
‘Threatening?’ He laughed. The sound spiked the air with danger. ‘I’m not here to threaten, Nadia. I’m here to extract a promise.’
She quickly touched her tongue to the inside of her dry lips.
‘The thread about me is defamatory,’ he said bluntly.
‘Well …’ She forced a smile. ‘The defence to defamation is truth.’
‘That’s right,’ he agreed.
‘So you’re saying what’s on there isn’t the truth?’
‘That’s right.’
She shrugged. ‘So prove it.’
Six seconds passed by. Her senses had suddenly grown so acute she could hear the hand of her tiny watch ticking, so she knew exactly.
‘You don’t think that’s the wrong way round Nadia? In a free and just legal system a man is innocent until proven guilty. But in the little world you’ve created he’s guilty until proven innocent. You don’t see a problem with that?’
She shot him a look designed to wither. ‘The men detailed on my site are guilty.’
His answering glare was withering and then some. ‘You don’t accept that it might be open to abuse? You don’t think a woman with a vendetta might take advantage of it?’
‘A woman with a vendetta? Please—men like you made up that kind of stereotype.’
‘So you’re not a woman who was hurt by some man and seeking payback? That isn’t why you set this thing up?’
Her temper flared. ‘I set this up so people had access to information. All kinds of information.’
‘Because all men are bastards?’
‘Information about dating in the modern world,’ she corrected. But this conversation was futile. He was never going to understand—clearly his outsize ego was too bruised. ‘I don’t need to justify myself to you.’
‘Oh, I think you do.’ He leaned forward. ‘I think you need to justify your actions to a lot of people. And why won’t you come clean about it? Why hide behind online anonymity? Your employers here don’t even know.’
She glanced out of those windows, wishing they were solid walls now. Of course they didn’t know. They’d totally disapprove. They stressed online responsibility and reputation—it was what she taught every new recruit. And she did not want to jeopardise her job. She’d worked too hard to get it.
‘I don’t cheat,’ he said firmly. ‘And I don’t swindle naïve girls out of their life savings. So why am I on there?’
‘You’ve obviously hurt someone.’ And she’d be reading the thread to find out how, the second she got the chance.
‘So where’s my right of reply?’
‘You can post a rebuttal. You just have to register and log in.’
‘What? And give myself an anonymous identity like the shrews on there?’ He shook his head. ‘I think you need to take ownership of the site that you’ve created. You need to take responsibility for the accuracy of the content and for the damage that can ensue from it.’
‘In what way has it damaged you?’ He struck her as bulletproof.
He paused. ‘Reputation is an unquantifiably precious thing.’
She knew that. ‘So what do you want?’
He sat back in his seat, the back of his fingers brushing his mouth and jaw. She tried very hard not to follow the movement and focus on that mouth with its full lips. Instead she tried to meet his gaze—except it seemed it had wandered.
She watched, steaming up, as he looked at her mouth, her neck, her chest. She saw the deepening fire in his expression and felt the response inside herself—her muscles shifting as hormones rushed. Beneath her blouse her breasts tightened.
Of course her body would react to just a look from this too handsome playboy stud. Her mating instinct was so off.
Slowly his lashes lifted and he captured her gaze with his gleaming one. ‘I guess if I have to prove it, then I’ll prove it.’
‘How are you going to do that?’ And why was she suddenly whispering?
‘Three dates,’ he said, just as softly.
‘Pardon?’
‘You and I are going to go out on three dates. You’re the judge, jury and the executioner, right? So judge me on the facts. I’ll prove to you that what’s up on your site is untrue.’
She laughed—only one note lower than hysterical. It was preposterous. ‘I’m not dating you.’
‘It’s that or call your lawyers.’ His gaze coasted over her again, assessing in the most base way. ‘Got lots of money for lawyers, Nadia? No, of course you don’t. Otherwise why would you be working as a lowly HR assistant?’
‘The users of my forum sign a waiver.’ She tried to recover her ground. ‘I can’t be held responsible for what they put up there.’
‘It’s so convenient for you to hide behind that rule, isn’t it? I think it could be due for a test in court, though.’ He smiled sympathetically. ‘And it’ll take months. All that time off work … Everyone here at work is going to know, Nadia. And your family, friends.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘They don’t know either, do they?’ He went for the kill. ‘You’re going to need good lawyers for a long and expensive time, honey.’
‘You’re willing to waste that money yourself?’ Her stomach churned. He couldn’t be serious. Surely he wouldn’t do that?
‘I don’t think it is a waste. Anyway, I am a lawyer, I can represent myself.’
Of course he was a lawyer. He was every inch an aggressive, adversarial jerk. Well, he wasn’t going to intimidate her. She swallowed back the bile burning its way up her throat. ‘I’m not taking your thread down. It’s freedom of speech.’
‘Actually, I don’t want you to take it down,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Let’s face it, once things are out there on the web they’re out there for ever. What I want is a retraction.’
