Devastated (Anger Management, #1)(15)

“No,” Hunter said, taking a disturbing amount of pleasure in seeing her small shoulders slump in defeat as she reluctantly put everything back on the desk and sat back down.

He still wasn’t sure how’d she’d managed to do it or why she’d purposely disobeyed him, but he planned to find out. Until then, he was going to teach her a lesson that she would never forget so that the next time that he told her to do something she did it without question. If she’d been anyone else, he would have sent her packing, but that wasn’t an option, not if he wanted to avoid spending the next year in jail.

Still…

Hunter couldn’t help but find himself intrigued by her rebellious act. It made him wonder about her, which was why he’d asked a few of his men to look into her background. It was also the reason why he’d texted Ryan a few minutes ago and asked for a copy of the background check the D.A. ran on her. It wouldn’t tell him much, but it was a start.

“Are you married?” the court-appointed therapist asked, trying to draw his glare away from the small woman doing her best to pretend that she wasn’t there.

“Read the fucking file,” Hunter said, leaning back in his chair as he watched Kylie throw one last wistful glance at the door before returning her attention to the computer.

He ignored the woman determined to piss him off with the rest of her asinine questions as he sat there, bored out of his fucking mind, which was the only explanation that he could come up with to explain why he was suddenly wondering about the shy little thing that he normally went out of his way to avoid. If she’d continued to do as she was asked, he would have happily continued to ignore her, but unfortunately, that was no longer the case.

When her lips twitched and she suddenly turned her head with what sounded suspiciously like a snort of laughter, he couldn’t help but wonder if she’d lost her goddamn mind. That is, until a chill tore down his spine and he turned his head to find himself face to face with a fucking sock puppet.

“I’m Mr. Cuddles and I want to be your friend!”

---

“You’re a horrible, horrible man!” the therapist screamed somewhat hysterically as she hugged the remains of that really disturbing sock puppet against her chest right around the time that Kylie decided that now would be an excellent time to find something else to do, somewhere else…and hopefully behind the safety of a locked door.

Unfortunately for her, the man that had reduced a trained mental health professional to tears with barely a half dozen softly spoken words decided that it was time to acknowledge her presence. She would have been fine, more than fine in fact, with continuing with the way things were, but apparently, she’d made a tactical error this morning and now she was about to pay for it.

Granted, she’d known when she did it that it was going to bite her in the ass. She’d kind of been hoping to use Hunter’s therapy session to buy herself a little more time before she had to face the consequences of her actions, or rather the actions that the contract that she really wished that she’d never signed, dictated. If it had been up to her, she would have happily left the very angry man that was slowly turning her chair around so that she was forced to make eye contact with him alone, especially since she’d finally worked up the courage to Google him last night.

And she really wished that she hadn’t Googled him.

As the man who had a history of violent tendencies that she was really trying not to think about at the moment, leaned down and placed his large hands on the chair’s armrests, effectively trapping her, she couldn’t help but regret not making a run for it when she had the chance.

“Tell me something,” the man that she’d seriously underestimated drawled seductively as he leaned in until she was close enough to see that his emerald eyes were actually two different shades of green, “why did you let her in?”

“Because she knocked?” Kylie found herself saying as she tried not to notice just how good he smelled or think about the video she’d watched on YouTube of him beating quite a few angry-looking men into submission.

“I see,” Hunter said, sounding thoughtful as he moved in closer so that his mouth was next to her ear. “Anything else?”

“Because it’s part of my job,” Kylie said absently, struggling against the urge to shove him away as memories of the last time a man had been this close to her hit, making it difficult to focus on the large man toying with her.

“It’s your job to do whatever I tell you, Miss Daniels,” he reminded her before he pushed the chair away and walked off, leaving her sitting there, wondering what just happened, because she was pretty sure that something just happened, and she doubted that it was something good.

---

“Miss Smith?” Hunter said, biting back a smile as he waited for the small woman who thought she’d outmaneuvered him yesterday to say something.

Instead, she continued to stand there, clearly struggling to come up with a way to save herself from getting on that treadmill, but thanks to the contract that he’d finally had a look at last night, there was no getting out of this and they both knew it. Unless she quit, that is…

But they both knew that she wasn’t going to do that, not with that clause that Ryan snuck into the contract. At least now he knew why Ryan had allowed the court to force an assistant on him, because it had been his idea to give him a fucking babysitter. He probably thought having her here would keep him in line. It wouldn’t, but then again, that was something that Ryan should have realized before he’d decided to fuck him over. But more importantly, Hunter now knew why she hadn’t quit yet. He still couldn’t figure out why she’d signed the contract in the first place when the only one that benefited from it was him, but he would.