Eden’s eyes narrowed and her lips pressed into a hard line. She was doing her best to look intimidating and tough, but all that tough edge did was highlight how gorgeous and delicately built she was. “Tell me the truth, then.”
“I have.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because I have nothing to gain by having you there. You’re clearly my younger, prettier, hungrier replacement.”
That rocked Eden. She folded in on herself a little, looking around until she caught their waitress’s eye. When the pretty brunette came back, she asked for two more whiskeys. Not doubles. Jos very happily sipped her soda water. Either Eden had a high tolerance for alcohol, or she wanted to get blitzed for some reason.
“No,” Eden disagreed, and even though her voice was soft there was no mistaking the command in her tone. It did something to Jos’ stomach. And lower, between her legs, that word made her throb.
Jesus, what the hell? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt a baseline of attraction for someone, let alone this alive. Sparring with this woman who she should hate. This cocky, young, arrogant despite her withering appraisal of arrogance, self-assured, spoiled little heiress turned world’s savior was doing it for her. The world had flipped on its ass somehow, taking Jos by surprise. And very little surprised her anymore.
“No?” She managed to cough the word out, then cleared her throat and took a sip of her drink to cover for it.
“No,” Eden repeated, defiant as before. She leaned across the table, and Jos inhaled on instinct, dragging in not a floral scent, but something much darker and more expensive. The little princess had kept her obscenely costly bottles of perfume from her past life, it seemed. Not as authentic as she was so hungry to be seen as, then. “I want you to tell me something. Something about yourself that no one would know.”
Jos weighed her options. Her heart leapt into her throat, an uncomfortable notion for someone who had spent her whole life telling herself that she didn’t really have one. That feeling anything, fear, joy, happiness, sorrow, was a waste of time. That it was a weakness, and weaknesses could be exploited.
r /> She could tell Eden something about her past, but she hated talking about that. She never discussed where she had come from. The only person she’d ever told everything to was Sandy, and that hadn’t gotten her very far. She’d used it against her in their divorce. The past was a no-go. A zone that Jos refused to visit, even in her own mind. There was no way she was going to give this spoiled little heiress those details. She’d think they were trite. She wouldn’t understand, because how could she? She, who had grown up with everything. That was the thing when describing true horror. It was past the grasp of understanding. It was just words, and words made it trite, and trite could be dismissed.
Jos felt the old, irrational anger rising up in her as images flashed in her mind unbidden. She pushed them away. Her past had taken from her, but she’d used it to carve out a life for herself. She’d survived the horror of it and that made it easier to walk into war zones. It made it easier to face off with people the world considered scary. To go places no one else dared. She’d already been through a baptism by fire. There were no further marks life could leave on her soul, so she’d been bold, and the world had taken notice. It wasn’t courage. No, it was anything but courage.
“I had a miscarriage,” Jos blurted without thinking it through. She wished she was the one with a whisky coming. The burn of it would wash the sorrow out of the parts of her that she’d thought were bereft of feeling.
She hadn’t been as numb as she thought.
“Jesus, what?” Eden barked. She bared her teeth as she gasped, then forced her composure back in place. Her pretty little world had been rocked right off its axis. She studied Jos for a minute that felt like an eternity, then Jos saw it.
The warmth and compassion that she wished she could truly have seen from other people when she lost her baby. It was all there now, etched into the face of a virtual stranger. She was disarmed by that genuine grief.
It was such a stark contrast to the dismissive way Jim, Sheldon, David, and Alden had treated her at that meeting. They might not have known what to say, but it seemed more like they didn’t know how to approach her because things like that weren’t supposed to happen to Jos Frank and they didn’t want to acknowledge it.
“Yeah. I was three months along. At the safe zone.” Jos looked away. She was done talking about herself. She wanted to make that clear.
Eden cleared her throat. She got the message. “I’m not some trust fund, silver spoon brat. I know my parents love me and I love them. I’m not doing what I do to be a rebel. I just truly think I can make the world a better place this way. This is where my talents really lie. One person, even a rich man, can only give so much to charity. Giving is a good thing, but it’s not going to change people’s minds. It’s not going to get to the bottom of society’s endemic problems. That’s what I want to do.”
Grace. Dignity. A regal bearing. Eden Rutherford wasn’t just beautiful, she had a softness about her. A smile that was dangerous because it was so disarming. She had a whole arsenal of weapons at her disposal, and she was completely unaware of them. She was refreshingly guileless, and Jos couldn’t help but feel that she was trapping her into something.
Eden’s eyes swept to hers, burning gold, the window to a soul that was still somehow untarnished. She should tell Eden to run. She should tell her the truth. Did she really care about those extra years on her contract so much?
What would I be if I wasn’t a journalist? Her younger self would have told her to go fuck herself with a single finger flown high in the air.
Eden didn’t bother to hide her soft spots. She didn’t see them as a weakness, even though people had tried to exploit them in the past. It wasn’t just her youth that made her hopeful.
“If it’s not an attitude thing, then I think you should consider the job,” Jos said quietly, as unguarded as she could allow. “I think you’re doing a major disservice to a field of journalism that you really haven’t experienced very much of. No show or experience is the same as the other. You’re discrediting thousands of journalists around the world who truly do care.”
“It’s not them I have a quarrel with.”
Jos recalled exactly why she was here right now. Because she’d once been this girl’s idol. Something horrible raked through her chest. It felt a lot like the pinpricks of barbed wire surrounding and digging into her heart. “So, it’s me then.”
“I don’t know.”
That surprised her.
Eden’s drinks arrived and she drank them both quickly, shooting back one after the other, not stopping to taste anything.
Jos shifted uncomfortably. Maybe she was going about this the wrong way. “No more flattery or platitudes,” she said. “No lies. Just drinks, and the truth.”