I hurried back to my apartment, aware that Brian didn’t try to stop me or call me. I spent the next hour behind my computer, figuring out my bills and expenses, searching for ways to make cuts. With a promotion at the club—which wasn’t guaranteed—I could pay for my apartment. But I wouldn’t be able to afford my student loans when they went into repayment the next month.
Brian had effectively trapped me. Not a bad strategy. The Laynie from a day before would have to give into his wishes, taking a job at one of the high paying corporate offices that had pursued me at graduation.
Fortunately, I had another option.
Taking a deep breath, I picked up my cell phone and pushed redial. God, was I really doing this? I was. And if I was honest about it, I was glad for the excuse. Maybe I really should have been thanking Brian.
The number Hudson had called the night before rang only once before he answered. “Alayna.” His voice was smooth and sexy. Not sexy like he was coming on to me but like the sex he exuded naturally.
The confidence threw me. “Uh, hi, Hudson.”
I paused.
“Is there something I can help you with?” I sensed he enjoyed my uncertainty. Why couldn’t I display the same confidence he did? I never had anxiety issues at work or at school.
The thought of school jostled something and I blurted out the question that had niggled at me during lunch. “How did you know I was intelligent?”
I heard a creak and I pictured him leaning back in a leather chair behind an executive desk. “What do you mean?”
“You said I was…” I blushed, glad he couldn’t see me. “Beautiful and intelligent—“
He interrupted me. “Exquisitely beautiful and extremely intelligent.”
“Yeah, that.” Having heard them before made his words no less effective. The matter-of-fact manner of his statement should have felt clinical and cold, but they were anything but. A shiver ran up my spine. I cleared my throat. “But you’ve barely talked to me. How do you know anything about my intelligence?”
He paused only briefly. “The graduate symposium at Stern. I saw you present.”
“Oh.” The symposium had been held a month before graduation and had featured the top students from the MBA program. Each of us had presented a new or innovative idea for a panel of experts. My presentation had been called Print Marketing in a Digital Age. I hadn’t wanted to know who was on the panel, knowing that names would send me into obsessive researching and online stalking. Afterward, the experts and presenters were invited to a wine and cheese soiree, so that students could schmooze and corporate execs could make job offers. I’d presented for the experience. For the honor. I hadn’t wanted a job, so I’d skipped the after affair.
Now I wondered what would have happened if I’d gone. Would Hudson have tracked me down? Was it entirely coincidental that he’d made an offer on the club I worked for around the same time as the symposium?
“Is that the only reason you called, Alayna?” His all-business words held a hint of a tease.
“No.” I closed my eyes and clutched onto the side of my desk for support. Accepting his offer was harder than it should be. I couldn’t help but feel it was too easy of an out—like I was selling my soul to the devil.
But I also felt a surge of excitement, a thick electric wave of freedom. “Your proposition—I’d like to do it. I’m saying yes.” Remembering his other proposition to seduce me, I clarified. “Your offer to pay my student loans, I mean.”
His chair creaked again and I imagined him standing, his hand thrust in the pocket of an Italian suit. Ah, yum. “I’m very happy to hear that, Alayna.”
I shook the vision out of my head and waited for him to say more. When he didn’t, I said, “So what happens now?”
“I have time in my schedule at four-thirty. Come to my office at Hudson Industries then and we’ll finalize the details.”
I’d get to see him in—I looked at my watch—two hours. My heart sped up. “Sounds nice. I mean, good. Sounds good.”
He chuckled. “Goodbye, Alayna.”
“Bye.” I hugged the phone for several seconds after he hung up, mesmerized by this stranger’s effect on me, wondering if I’d be able to pull off the scam he’d concocted, hopeful I’d be able to thwart his promised advances.
All right, maybe I didn’t hope for that last one, but I wanted to believe I did. For my sanity’s sake.
I also thought about the symposium, considering the possibility that Hudson Pierce had gone to greater lengths than he’d let on to set up this facade for his parents.