I used to think that Derek was the one person in the world who hated my guts the most. But over the years I was realizing something more uncomfortable: nobody hated me more than I hated myself. Derek only did to me in real life what I did to myself mentally each second of every day. Sometimes I imagined that my self-hate had conjured him up from thin air, like a bad magic spell. In any case, it was days like this where I became paranoid that all of this awful stuff about me was visible to others.

I sat in the interview room in a tasteful charcoal grey skirt suit and modest heels, subdued makeup and a can-do hairstyle. I was answering all the questions the interviewer posed to me with a calm poise I had practiced for hours in the mirror the day before. My resume was up to date, honest and sufficiently impressive for this position. Everything was going smoothly.

The woman across the desk from me set her documents aside and suddenly got a serious look on her face. I took a deep breath and prepared for her to ask me why I had moved at all, why I had abandoned my family and come looking for a job here of all places, and why now.

“Kate, I was unsure about whether to mention this to you during the interview, but I thought I’d give you a chance to explain yourself…” she said and laced her fingers together thoughtfully.

“ALS Marketing received an …anonymous call this morning from someone expressing concerns over your suitability for this position. I won’t bother to repeat what was said but I have to say that it has raised some unease about your application.”

My blood froze cold in my veins. I struggled to form words.

“A… you say an anonymous call?” I sputtered, my brain scrambling to understand.

“Now, I certainly am very pleased with what you’ve shown us in interviews, I’ve made that clear, and our follow up with your references shows nothing at all to be concerned with…”

“I think it’s my ex,” I blurted. She gave me a look that was hard to decipher.

“There’s no …the call is just intended to sabotage me. There are no concerns, the call is just …he’s just being malicious, you see he’s done this before, and there’s really no problem…”

“Miss Limburgh, please, I understand. I gathered as much. But I need you to understand, the fact of his calling at all is a problem.”

I looked at her.

“We’re a small company, Miss Limburgh, and to be frank with you I’m loathe to employ people who may bring disruptions to the workplace. While you have my sympathies regarding any …personal issues, we’ve just had to deal with this kind of thing in the past and it doesn’t make sense for us, from a business point of view.”

“So… you won’t hire me because of that call?” In the time it took me to say the sentence, all the hope and optimism I had gathered this morning in getting dressed and ready for this interview collapsed and crumbled to nothing. He had won. Again. All my energy focused on the supremely difficult task of making sure the interviewer didn’t know how close I was to crying.

“Well, we’re interviewing several people at the moment, and there are a few other very well qualified candidates. You’re a good fit, Miss Limburgh, but I do hope you understand our reservations.”

I don’t know exactly what happened next but somehow I shook her hand and found my way out into the lobby again, where the receptionist assured me with a sunny smile that they would be in touch should I make the shortlist. I smiled back, feeling numb, and went to cry in my car.

The things I had taken weeks to build up towards could be destroyed by him with a single phone call. I felt so exhausted, so miserable I couldn’t summon the energy to turn the ignition and pull away. There was no chance in hell they were ever going to call me back. This was it. Another dead end and all I could do was sob.

But, like they have a million times before, my tears dried and I realized that feeling sorry for myself wasn’t going to help me one bit. That woman in the building certainly didn’t care, and there was no police officer in the world who would bother with a random threatening phone call that I could never prove had anything to do with Derek. Nope, I had to do it by myself.

I turned the ignition, pulled off and merged with the traffic, my mind numb. The day was sunny and innocent, but I couldn’t shake the dark cloud over my head. If I didn’t find work soon I’d be in real trouble. I didn’t have the resources to carry on like this. I didn’t have the energy.

By the time I pulled into our complex road my interview skirt suit was crumpled and a little sweaty. My shoes pinched. My eyes felt puffy. I had no thought in my mind but to get inside, eat something huge and unhealthy and then crawl into bed and binge watch something until this lump in my throat went away.

I parked, and a large box on my doorstep caught my eye. I wasn’t expecting a parcel. I locked the car and went to look at it. At first I was sure it was a mistake – there was no name or address on it or anything. But then my heart skipped a beat when I saw what it was: a box of 48 tubes of scar cream. I laughed out loud.

I looked over my shoulder, tucked it under my arm and hurried inside, feeling the beginnings of a blush coming on. It had to be from him. I turned the box over and over on my lap, not quite sure what clues I was expecting to find. Max. Where did he even find this much of the stuff? It was hilariously over the top, but I couldn’t help wonder: what did all of this mean?

I raced to my laptop and tapped furiously to take down the two reviews and then stared at the empty space left on the screen. The gift could have been a mild threat. It could have been nothing more than him making a point to get what he wanted. But a small part of me hoped it was because, in a weird way, he cared. In any case, struggling with money myself made me feel less inclined to jeopardize the work of some guy who probably wasn’t that bad after all.

The incident that morning felt like it was rapidly fading. I made myself a cup of coffee and tried to think. He was some He-man stereotype trying to make it in the civilian world and, frankly, not doing that good of a job. I was an unemployed marketing consultant who precisely fit his demographic. Why hadn’t I seen it before?

I quickly changed my pinchy shoes, ruffled my hair loose and reapplied a layer of gloss. Then I walked over to his apartment, hoping to heaven he was home. My insides were pure jelly as I stood there on his doorstep, the doorbell echoing inside, but I tried to keep my cool. When he opened the door, he was shirtless. It was all I could focus on for a split second. There was just so much of him. Every surface of his body was firm and sculpted; he would have looked like an anatomical drawing of the human muscular system were it not for his velvety tan skin.

“Max, hi,” I said awkwardly.

He didn’t seem surprised to see me.

“I took them down. The reviews. I’m sorry, I don’t know why I was being so awful about that…”

“Thank you.”

My mind raced. I didn’t want that to be it. Why wasn’t he letting me in?

“I got your gift,” I said. I found myself facing the same problem I always did with him: I didn’t know where to put my eyes.

“It wasn’t a gift,” he said and dragged his gaze over my skirt suit. “It was just something you needed. I hope it’s enough.”

“For the scars I have? Oh there’s not enough in the world for that,” I said and laughed, but when he didn’t laugh I realized how sad my attempt at humor must have sounded.

He silently stepped aside to let me in and I was immediately faced with a living room very much like my own. It felt pointless to dive into small talk, and soon we had both stayed so quiet that the moment for chit-chat had passed. I sat down on his sofa – so much nicer than my own! – and clasped my hands tight to stop them from shaking too obviously. To my surprise he sat down right beside me, nothing but a few inches of air between us. I was doing my best to stay calm but all I could think about was the fact that he had once been interested enough to ask me out. That and the fact that I’d already seen him naked.

“I …have a proposition for you,” I said slowly. I had his interest. “Those reviews weren’t fair. But they weren’t completely inaccurate. If you haven’t had a problem yet with those classes, you soon will.”

“Class attendance has dropped by two thirds,” he said plainly.

“Uh, yeah. I’m sure I didn’t help the situation.”

“I hope you haven’t come over to yell at me some more?”

Our eyes locked and I felt a wave of regret for ever letting him see what an awful bitch I become sometimes.

“No, no yelling,” I said. “I want to help you.” All my focus went onto that inch of space between us, now electrified somehow. He was so close to touching me.

“I can help you market your business properly. You’re obviously an expert, but you’re not promoting yourself at all. You have no social media presence, no ads, nothing.” I looked down at his immense hands folded gently in his lap. I tried to imagine him on the job. I had never gotten the whole ‘men in uniform’ thing until that moment.

“That’s what I do for a living. I’m… between jobs right now and I could do that for you. I could make sure you’re reaching the women you need to, advertising to them in exactly the right way, getting your classes out there…”

It was so silent I thought I could hear my own heartbeat.

“Kate?”

“Yeah?”

“How did you get those wounds on your shoulder?”

I didn’t want to talk about that. I didn’t want to be the poor messed up girl with a history of domestic violence. I didn’t want him to look at me like that, to pity me. I wanted him to see me as I saw him: strong.

“My ex. We’re separated.”

I don’t think I’d ever before been this close to abs that looked like they belonged on a bodybuilding magazine cover. It was wildly distracting. “I have a restraining order against him but… well, that’s basically worthless in this state. I moved to get away from him. I left my job. He uh… he was very violent. But he hid it. Everyone thought he was this saint, this perfect guy. But when we were alone he’d just turn into something else. I know that human beings can do horrible things to each other but him… I don’t know, most of the time it was like he wasn’t even human… I’m sorry this must sound crazy.”

“It doesn’t. I know exactly what you mean.”

All at once a desperate ache thumped between my legs. I couldn’t stop my body – it was as though there were strange electrical pathways running through my body that were voice-activated. And his voice was just the right blend of leathery and husky that it suddenly didn’t seem to matter that we weren’t touching at all.

“That’s why I wanted to offer these classes, Kate. Because I wanted to teach people that they don’t have to be victims to that. That no matter how evil others are, you can always take action, you can always defend yourself.”

“Oh, god, I’ve been really mean to you, haven’t I?”

He laughed.

“Didn’t I tell you I’m a retired SEAL? You’d have to be a lot worse to scare me off,” he said. And there was the ache again.

“I can help you, though. Let me make it up to you. You have lots to offer and I can help you reach the women you want to reach.”

“I don’t need any charity.”

“It won’t be charity. Just something you need,” I said and again caught his eyes. It was easier this time, to hold his gaze.

“You could hire me for a while, see how it goes—”

His lips were on mine in an instant.

I squeezed my eyes shut and the world spun around me. All at once his hard body was pressing firm against mine, and his shoulder was bearing down into mine, and his gorgeous sweet lips folded softly into mine and lingered there, as though we needed a moment to taste the decision we’d both made. He was a hard man. His hands were hard and his forearms were hard and his legs were hard and every part of him was solid as rock. And yet… when he parted his lips against mine, his tongue was so unbelievably soft it was like we melted there together, like a tiny window of tenderness had been opened and all this sweetness was now rushing through it.

His hand came to my knee and held me there, and he leaned in for a delicate, careful kiss. I yielded and kissed back slowly, feeling all the anxiety melt from my body. I felt so calm and safe in that kiss, even though it was over too quickly, and he was soon pulling back to look at me, stroking away my hair with the back of his fingers. His eyes were full of delicious questions. When he leaned back in again, he collapsed on top of me and pressed me firmly into the sofa with the slightest effort of his powerful body. I winced and cried out. He pulled back and looked at me with panic on his face.

“Sorry, my… it’s my,” I said and gestured to the ugly looking scabs and welts snaking all down my shoulder. It was the most searing pain to have them squashed into the sofa. Without skipping a beat, he grabbed me, spun me around and examined the skin there, and when his fingers slid under the strap of my blouse and slid it off, I could find nothing in me that wanted to stop him.

“You need some vitamin E oil. I could rub it in for you,” he said playfully as he traced fingers as light as spider webs over my bruises and cuts. I wriggled out of his grasp and slid the blouse back on.

“No way, that’s a gross job, and I don’t care if you’re a marine or whatever,” I said laughing. But it was another semi-joke that fell flat. His other hand remained on my knee, and sweet Jesus was it the best feeling in the world. He came close again and parted his lips for another kiss but I turned my head and smiled awkwardly.

“Hey... have I… I hope I haven’t embarrassed you or something?” he said.

I waved him off and tried to regain my composure. I tried to force myself to stop thinking about that lump in his pants I was almost sure I felt a split second ago.

“No, not embarrassed, it’s just…” he pinned me with his eyes again. I couldn’t believe it. Here was this perfect specimen of a man basically in my lap and he wanted to kiss me and dear lord if he didn’t stop staring at me like that I didn’t know what I would do.

“It’s just that… I’m not really ready for any of …this yet,” I said and held my hands up between us. He looked confused but backed away a little.

I wanted to throw him back on this sofa and ride that cock of his until I passed out. I wanted the full weight of that fucking gorgeous body on top of me and I wanted both of those strong arms to hold me down and fuck me till I couldn’t take any more.

“I’m still trying to get on my feet, you know. To get my head clear,” I said, now suddenly aware that I was soaking wet. He nodded slowly but looked upset.

“Sure, yeah, I understand. I just …what can I do to help you out?” he said, and glanced at my shoulder. I hated that. I didn’t want to be anyone’s damsel.

“Hire me,” I said quickly. “If you want to help me, let me help you. I know what I’m doing. And it would make me feel better about those reviews,” I said and smiled at him. This time he smiled back at me.

“So that’s still a no from you, huh?” he said, and reluctantly took his hand off my knee.

“For a date? Yeah. It’s a no.”

“But you want to work for me? And do some marketing for the business?”

“That’s a yes,” I said and held my breath.

He thought for a moment and then smiled sadly, but held out his hand for me to shake it.

“Ok, then consider yourself hired.” His body language was suddenly more professional, but his eyes hadn’t lost that secret, delicious depth they had a moment ago, his sweet lips against mine and eyes locked so it felt like kissing him double. I shook his hand and then smoothed out the top of my skirt.

“Before I go,” I said, and stood to leave. “I have a confession to make.”

He remained sprawled on the sofa and looked up at me. His body had a magnetic pull to it, and I imagined myself falling into his lap for more, but I stopped myself.

“I can see into your living room from outside,” I said and gestured to the large window. It was on this very sofa that I had first seen him and his …body. His face suddenly went pale.

“You should close the curtains,” I said and tried to suppress a smile. His eyes went wide but I was already on my way to the front door. I let myself out and raced back to my apartment, a mixture of relief and fear and excitement washing over me as I slammed the door behind me and crumpled down to the floor, back against the door.

He was amazing.

Scarily amazing.

I could still taste him and it was though the ghost of his hand was still on my knee. It was certainly the weirdest job interview I’d had that day, and that was saying something.