Playing With Trouble Read online

  Copyright © 2015 Chanel Cleeton

  Excerpt from Falling For Danger copyright © 2015 Chanel Cleeton

  Cover photograph © Viorel Sima/Shutterstock

  Author photograph © Christina Osborne Photography

  The right of Chanel Cleeton to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Published by arrangement with InterMix,

  A member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,

  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published in this Ebook edition in 2015

  by HEADLINE ETERNAL

  An imprint of HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN 978 1 4722 2979 3

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.headlineeternal.com

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About the Author

  Praise for Chanel Cleeton

  By Chanel Cleeton

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  A sneak peek at Falling For Danger

  Got a taste for scandal?

  Find out more about Headline Eternal

  About the Author

  Romance novels and politics are two of Chanel Cleeton’s greatest passions. What better than to combine them? Chanel received a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Richmond, The American International University in London and a master’s degree in Global Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She’s also a graduate (survivor) of law school – she earned her J.D. from the University of South Carolina School of Law. A summer cruise in the Caribbean changed Chanel’s life when she met and fell in love with a fighter pilot. One happily ever after later, she’s currently living an adventure with her husband and three pups.

  Find Chanel online at www.chanelcleeton.com, follow her on Twitter @ChanelCleeton, and Facebook at www.facebook.com/AuthorChanelCleeton.

  Chanel Cleeton’s sizzling romances are scandalously addictive:

  ‘Flirting With Scandal by Chanel Cleeton has it all. A sexy hero, strong heroine, delicious romance, sizzling tension, and plenty of breathtaking scandal. I loved this book!’ Monica Murphy, New York Times bestselling author

  ‘Scorching hot and wicked smart, Flirting With Scandal had me hooked from page one! Sizzling with sexual tension and political intrigue, Cleeton weaves a story that is as complex as it is sexy. Thank God this is a series because I need more!!’ Rachel Harris, New York Times bestselling author

  ‘Sexy, intelligent, and intriguing. Chanel Cleeton makes politics scandal-icious’ Tiffany King, USA Today bestselling author

  ‘Chanel Cleeton knocked it out of the park with Flirting With Scandal. The banter was refreshing, the political storyline captivating, and the sexual tension was through the roof. Smart, emotional, romantic, and sizzling hot – this book is fantastic!’ Christina Lee, author of the Between Breaths series

  ‘Chanel Cleeton delivers again! Featuring a strong heroine, a steamy romance, and a juicy dose of political scandal, Flirting With Scandal is completely engrossing. Clear your calendars – you won’t be able to put this one down!’ Brenda St. John Brown, author of Swimming To Tokyo

  ‘Chanel Cleeton has done it again, once again weaving a beautiful and exciting world full of passion, intrigue, and emotion. Flirting With Scandal was an incredible story of politics, following your heart, and learning who you are in the midst of the overwhelming chaos around you’ Typical Distractions Book Blog

  ‘Scandal, sex, and politics all come together into one scorching and entertaining read that readers will love from start to finish’ Dirty Girl Romance

  ‘Provocative, sexy, witty, plus the perfect balance of drama and romance, and topped with lovable characters in this politically-charged setting … Sinfully sexy and deliciously scandalous’ The Reading Escapade

  ‘I still have a weakness for political gossip, swanky venues, and preppy (but sexy!) good boys. Chanel Cleeton channels all of this’ Heroes and Heartbreakers

  ‘One hot, sexy, politically charged, provocative and deliciously scandalicious read!! I absolutely LOVED this book and could not put it down’ Four Chicks Flipping Pages

  ‘A wild, emotional ride with two incredibly strong, charming characters that drew me in from the start … A sassy, sexy romance’ Not A Picky Reader

  ‘Chanel Cleeton converted me with this one and I’ll be absolutely sure to keep my beady eyes open for the rest of the books in this series. From the pacing to steam and character development, it was a winning combination … If real-life politics is as riveting as this, I may well pay more attention’ Smokin’ Hot Book Blog

  ‘What another sexy instalment in the Capital Confessions series … Their romance has the perfect amount of sexual tension and steamy scenes, and not to mention just how forbidden it is’ Little Book Heaven

  By Chanel Cleeton

  Capital Confessions Series

  Flirting With Scandal

  Playing With Trouble

  Falling For Danger

  About the Book

  Welcome to Washington, D.C., city of scandal, where no secret stays hidden for long …

  Blair Reynolds was going to be the ultimate politician’s wife – until she caught her fiancé cheating on their wedding day. Vowing to make a fresh start Blair enrols in Law School, ready to buckle down. Unless a hot professor gets in the way …

  Graydon Canter had it all. A flying career, a fortune, and a spot on all the ‘Thirty under Thirty’ lists – until his rocky personal life threatened everything. Teaching law is a chance to get his life back on track. As long as nothing – and no one – trips him up.

  When Blair and Gray are thrown together in the classroom, their electric attraction is impossible to ignore. Gray needs to stay away from scandal, and Blair’s never been a rule breaker. They’re playing with trouble – but maybe such passion is worth the risk?

  Don’t miss Book One in the Capital Confessions series, Flirting With Scandal, and look out for the next tantalising instalment, Falling For Danger.

&
nbsp; To my “Section One” peeps:

  Thanks for the memories. I couldn’t have survived three years of law school without you.

  Chapter One

  Jilted at the altar for the best man, and reeling from the revelation that her father has a secret daughter, rumor has it Blair Reynolds has enrolled at Hannover School of Law here in D.C. Is America’s Princess trading in her tiara for a briefcase?

  —Capital Confessions blog

  Blair

  I never hated law school more than I did at ten thirty in the morning, Monday through Wednesday. There were plenty of reasons to hate law school—hundreds of pages of nightly reading, endless debates over a mythical property annoyingly referred to as “Blackacre,” the constant urge to vomit each time a professor called on me. The biggest one stood in front of me—tailored Canali suit, dark hair, dark eyes, darker soul.

  “Ms. Reynolds.”

  Oh god, he said my name.

  I spent an hour, three times a week, mentally bartering with God to keep that man, that sadist, from saying my name. Each week God ignored me.

  A collective sigh seemed to ripple through the room as my classmates realized they were spared the guillotine. Seventy-four pairs of eyes bored into me, waiting to see how badly I’d fail.

  I rose from my seat awkwardly, my legs wet noodles as I pulled down the hem of my Burberry skirt, struggling to keep the flush on my cheeks from spreading all over my face. Forcing us to stand when we answered a question was an old-school technique, one all of my other professors had abandoned, even for first-year students—1Ls—like me.

  “Brief the case.”

  Shit.

  I’d read. I always read. But law school was the one place where that didn’t matter. No matter how prepared you were, they always pushed you for more than you knew, more than you had, until you were left feeling like your clothes had been stripped from your body, exposing your every naked imperfection to seventy-four peers.

  Crying after class wasn’t uncommon; some students even broke down in class. We all sat on the precipice of an utter nervous breakdown, no more so than in our first-year torts class.

  Your first year of law school was a hazing of sorts, an attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff. I’d heard all of the rumors and figured they were exaggerated; after all, I was the daughter of one of the fiercest U.S. Senators. I’d grown up around scary. But there was scary, and there was scary, and unfortunately for me, law school was in the latter category.

  If statistics were to be believed, about 20 percent of my classmates would drop out by the end of the first year. They’d be the lucky ones. The rest of us would push through, surviving on alcohol, junk food, and Valium. Just kidding about the Valium. The drug of choice here was Adderall, used to treat Attention Deficit Disorder and to get 1Ls through three hundred pages of nightly reading. And not interesting reading with a large font, but less-interesting-than-watching-paint-dry, need-a-microscope-to-see-the-text reading. I’d never tried any kind of recreational drug in my life, but if anything pushed me to it, it would be law school.

  The sadist stared back at me, an expectant smirk on his face. Fuck.

  My language had considerably deteriorated since the first day of classes last month. My mother would have a coronary if she knew what went through my head now. This was what happened when perfect cracked and splintered. This was what happened when your life fell apart.

  I started running through the facts, struggling to remember this one case out of the ten I’d read for his class alone. My hands itched to turn the page in my textbook so I could use it for reference, but our gazes caught across the large classroom, and the look in his eyes kept my fingers still.

  Weakness was his crack, and there was still enough of the old Blair Reynolds inside me to refuse to cede any more self-respect beyond that which he took against my will.

  I stood for fifteen minutes, an eternity, going through the facts of the case, the issue, the law, the conclusion. Stood while he fired questions at me in that voice of his—hard, cold, unflinching. Questions that led me farther down the rabbit hole into an abyss of confusion. Each time I floundered, his smile deepened, as if he got off on my nerves.

  He probably did.

  When it was over I sank down into my seat like it was a life raft and I’d been adrift at sea for months. My legs never wanted to stand again.

  “Nice job,” my friend Adam whispered from the seat next to me.

  “Thanks,” I whispered back, twenty-three years of manners warring with terror over being caught talking in class.

  “Ms. Reynolds?”

  My heart stopped.

  Fuck me, why? Not again.

  “Yes?”

  His eyebrow arched expectantly. Like a puppet, my body automatically rose to a standing position. He had us well trained, me more than anyone. I was little more than a poodle under his command. There were seventy-five people in our torts class, and we’d all done the math, on average we should be called on three times per semester.

  He called on me every fucking week without fail.

  “Why don’t you brief the next case as well?”

  His gaze drifted to Adam sitting next to me, lingering there for a moment as if to say, You got yourself into this mess when you dared to speak during class. Technically, he should have called on Adam since he spoke first. I was only being polite by answering. That would have been fair. But the irony was, law school had little concern with what was fair or just. Ego ruled here, and none was bigger than Professor Graydon Canter’s.

  So many words ran through my head. So far I’d learned nothing about torts. My class time was typically divided into four activities which consumed me for an hour: begging and pleading with God for Professor Canter not to call on me, creating inventive and filthy names I hurled at him in my head, and imagining elaborate fantasies where I told him exactly what he could do with his questions. But the absolute worst, the moments I hated in every corner of my preppy little heart, were the moments when I fantasized about that voice saying other things to me . . . those eyes undressing me, those hands on my body.

  It was the cruelest irony that the man I despised, the man who tortured me from the front of the classroom three days a week, was the hottest fucking thing I’d ever seen.

  His voice, those questions, those eyes that looked at you like they stripped you bare, had me shifting in my seat, edgy and unfocused—

  And he knew it.

  Gray

  This was my penance—

  Three days a week, first-year torts in the morning, a medical malpractice seminar for third-year students in the afternoon. Six hours of teaching a week for a year. One hundred and fifty hours, now reduced to one hundred and twenty-six. Not that I kept count. It was a chance to erase my sins. The professional ones, at least. The others? Beyond redemption.

  The only thing that kept me sane stood in front of the class, stumbling over the case I’d asked her to read.

  I called on her way too much. I knew it, and based off of the way her eyes fairly screamed, Go fuck yourself, she knew it, too. But I’d always had remarkably poor impulse control, and like everything that came before her and annihilated my life, she was another thing that tempted me.

  I’d noticed her the first day of classes. She’d sat in the front of the room, right in the center. I’d walked in late, this classroom the last place I wanted to be. To add insult to injury, it wasn’t even a good law school. I’d gone from the top of my law class at the University of Chicago, to a lucrative practice where I quickly made more money than my South Side background knew what to do with, to this. A shitty visiting professor job at a shitty law school, teaching a bunch of rich students who could afford to pay the school’s ridiculously high tuition, but weren’t smart enough, or motivated enough, to get into a good law school. But then again, I wasn’t exactly the authority on good life choices. If I were, I wouldn’t be here. It said more about my character than I liked, that at thirty I’d already enjoyed a meteoric
rise, followed by an even bigger crash.

  I’d only found out about teaching the first-year class the week before school started. Visiting professors rarely taught 1Ls, but a professor had a medical emergency and Hannover was desperate. Currently ranking in the hundreds on the list of top law schools, they’d struggled to find a replacement on such short notice. So that was how I ended up walking into torts at ten thirty Monday morning and seeing her.

  That first morning, I’d set my books down on the desk in the front of the classroom, looked up, and been knocked back.

  The counselor my former law partners in Chicago made me talk to had said I had an addictive personality. He’d analyzed my behavior—racing my Ferrari down Lake Shore Drive until I lost control and smashed it into a pole, the marriage that ended to a wife who was colder than Chicago winters, the women, the partying—and said I had problems relating to others. He threw around words like “unemotional,” and “cold.” All fancy words for saying what I’d known my entire life.

  I was a bastard.

  It wasn’t exactly a shock; I came from a long line of bastards, drunks, and philanderers. The only difference between me and the rest of the Canter men? I’d gotten out of the hellhole I’d grown up in. Or so I’d thought.

  But it didn’t matter how expensive my suits were, how much I’d paid for my house in Georgetown, or the car I’d bought to replace the one I’d totaled—

  I’d always be the boy from the rough neighborhood in Chicago. The one who got into bar fights, drove too fast, fucked girls with giant tits and curvy asses, knocked back too much Scotch, and played way too hard. I’d tried to erase those parts of myself, or to push them down at least—

  And once I saw her, they came back up again.

  Blair Reynolds.

  They gave us a chart with all the students’ names and pictures. The second I saw her in my classroom I’d stared at that chart like a little boy with a crush. Then I’d looked at her, really looked at her.