“I knew Durand couldn’t be serious about Arlington,” Alice said.

Or me.

Maggie must have noticed the smirk Alice strained to hide. “They’re so unserious about Arlington College that their chief executive officer is coming in place of Sebastian Kehoe,” Maggie said.

Alice’s hand fell from the knob of the door and thumped on her thigh.

“What?”

Suddenly, Maggie seemed to be having difficulty meeting her stare. “Several Durand executives were on a business trip here in Chicago recently. When Kehoe got ill, Dylan Fall agreed to fill in for his remaining appointments.” Maggie glanced at her warily. Or was it worriedly? “I . . . I didn’t want to tell you because I thought you’d get more nervous, but I didn’t want you to walk in unprepared, either,” she said miserably.

A wave of queasiness hit her.

“Dylan Fall,” Alice stated in a flat, incredulous tone. “You’re telling me that in nine minutes, I’m going to be interviewed by the chief executive officer of Durand Enterprises?”

“That’s right.” Maggie’s expression of stark compassion faded and was replaced by her game face. “This is the opportunity of a lifetime. I don’t expect you to get a spot at Camp Durand, necessarily—that might be too much to hope for, all things considered. But you’re a unique, smart girl, and you’re kick-ass with numbers, and . . . well, you’re the best Arlington has got. You’re the best I’ve ever known,” she added with a defiant look. “At the very least, you had better walk in there, hold your head up, and do Arlington College proud.”

Maggie’s proclamation still rang in her head while Alice waited on hot coals in the waiting room of the dean of business’s offices. The dean had apparently cheerfully vacated his office for Dylan Fall.

Of course.

Fall probably had people regularly lying across mud puddles so he could cross without soiling his designer shoes.

Maggie had been right to call her out earlier. Alice didn’t stand a chance of getting into Camp Durand—let alone getting hired as an elite Durand executive. But that didn’t mean she would cower. Alice had stood up to bastards and lowlifes that were a hundred times scarier than a suit like Dylan Fall.

She’d stood up and walked away, pride intact.

“He’s ready for you,” Nancy Jorgensen, the business department secretary, twittered as she stuck her head around the corner of the door leading to a hallway. Alice stood, clutching her new vinyl portfolio and trying not to sway in her heels. She cast Nancy Jorgensen a dark glance. The middle-aged, typically gray little woman looked suspiciously flushed with color and excitement. She suspected she knew why: Dylan Fall. Traitor, Alice thought bitterly as she stalked past Nancy.

Just get this damn thing over with.

Instead of walking into the office Nancy specified, Alice charged. The door was lighter than she’d imagined from its formidable, oak-paneled appearance. She pushed at it too aggressively and it thumped against the wall inside the office. Alice started at the loud noise and froze on the threshold. The man sitting behind the large oak desk looked up and blinked.

“Is there a fire?” he asked quietly.

“No,” Alice said, frowning, wary because she wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not. Funny he had mentioned fire. She hadn’t been this nervous since she’d locked herself in her bedroom and her uncle Tim had ignited some of her mother’s meth-cooking chemicals in order to smoke her out of it. He hadn’t succeeded, but he’d very nearly killed Alice—and himself—in the process.

Nancy closed the door behind her with a hushed click. Dylan Fall studied her while Alice’s lungs burned for air.

He suddenly whipped off the glasses he wore and stood. Alice willed her ungainly limbs to move. He reached out his hand.

“Alice. Dylan Fall. I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to meet you,” he said, his voice low with just a hint of gravel to it. Her spine flickered with heightened awareness at the sound.

“Thank you for taking the time to see me,” she said, gripping his hand firmly and giving it a perfunctory pump. He held out his other hand in an elegant “please, sit” gesture and lowered into his seat. She sat in the leather chair before the large desk, feeling like her arms and legs were glaringly out of sync with her brain . . . worse, like she were a beggar supplicant at the polished altar of the god of wealth and power. She absolutely refused to be impressed or cowed by Dylan Fall.

You can refuse all you want. You are.

“I’m glad to have the opportunity to meet with you. From what I’ve gathered, much of the statistical brilliance from the philanthropy and profit article in the Journal of Finance and Business is owed to you,” he said, picking up a pen and tapping it on the desk. He moved the pen in an absentminded fashion, running long fingers over the smooth metal cylinder, flipping it, and repeating the process.

Alice ripped her stare off the vision and focused on his face. Her heart had started to beat uncomfortably fast. He played with the pen in a distracted way, but his gaze on her was razor sharp. The thick drapes were drawn, blocking out the spring sunlight. The contrast of shadow and glowing lamplight made his strong jawline and near-black eyes appear even more dramatic. Enigmatic. She’d already known what to expect from his looks, or at least that’s what she’d told herself. He had dark brown hair that was smooth, despite its thickness. It was longer in the front than in the back. He wore it combed back, the style suiting his business attire, even if it did look like it could be sexily disheveled in a heartbeat by a woman’s delving fingers. A pair of lustrous, drilling eyes advertised loud and clear you better give Fall exactly what he wanted, or he’d freeze you to the spot. Dark lashes and slanting brows added to a sort of sexy gypsy-gone-corporate-pirate aura about him. His face was handsome, but in a rugged fashion—full of character and strength. He was far from being a pretty boy. There was something rough about him, despite the expensive suit and epic composure. The cleft in his chin only added to the sense of hard, chiseled male beauty.

The media loved him. She’d seen photos of him clean-shaven, sexily scruffy, and even once with a beard and mustache. Currently, he wore a very thin, well-trimmed goatee. His skin wasn’t pale, but he didn’t look like the type of man who tanned as a matter of course, either. Alice imagined that, like her, he spent a lot of his time reading reports and squinting at numbers on a computer screen, or else sitting at the head of a boardroom table.

Durand Enterprises was well known for not only its strong philanthropic practices, but its financial robustness. Alice herself had suggested it right off the bat for their multifactorial, longitudinal study about the correlation between company philanthropy and profit. Alice had pored through journal and magazine articles, collecting relevant data on Durand, so she’d seen photos of Fall.

She’d stared at those photos a lot. So much so, in fact, that she’d started to think she was getting a little obsessed with the business mogul.

She was pretty unimpressed by men as a rule. She’d had to deal with her share of strutting, bullshitting, worthless, and dangerous males in her life. Good-looking men usually had even fewer redeeming qualities than the plain or ugly ones, in her opinion. The ugly ones had to compensate somehow in order to compete for women. She didn’t usually blink twice when she met a hot guy, but Dylan Fall was the kind of rough-and-tumble gorgeous that had all sorts of involuntary chemical reactions sparking in her body.

At the moment, she damned him straight to hell for it. Didn’t he possess an unfair amount of advantages as it was?

She straightened her spine and cleared her throat. “I was one of four research assistants on Dr. Lopez’s project. We all did our share of research and running numbers.”