If there was one thing that Hannah had learned from a young age, and which obviously helped as a PR strategist, it was how to read people. Usually, she was exceptionally good at it but now and then, she came across someone who wasn’t quite so easy to figure out. Macho bluster aside, there was something about the guy that eluded her. While so far he’d been a royal pain in the ass, there was also a vulnerability to him that she couldn’t ignore.

The fact that he was so easy on the eye and had such an unsettling effect on her was possibly clouding her judgement also, and that was the last thing she needed just now.

She’d caught another brief insight into what she suspected was his true nature at the animal shelter that day.

Clearly, Ward had seen something of himself in that ill-fated cat – something wild that didn’t want to be confined, refused to be tamed. The problem was that Hannah didn’t want to tame him anymore. That wasn’t her job.

But to prove to her new bosses that her professional reputation was justified, she had to overhaul his car-crash image and rebrand him into a likeable, more accessible kind of athlete. And according to his agent, if she didn’t do what she’d been hired to do, he was in danger of being cut from the Panthers permanently.

Since the stubborn tough guy side wouldn’t let her in though, she needed to figure out another way to get a proper handle on him and …

Hannah’s head snapped up when suddenly she heard a sound coming from somewhere inside the apartment.

She instinctively picked up a kitchen knife from Courtney’s funky little knife holder, a stainless steel figure with knives sticking out of various body parts voodoo-style. Moving slowly to the doorway, she peeked into the living room before tiptoeing through, trying to better make out the direction of the noise. Which weirdly, sounded like people talking, followed by a dramatic burst of … was that music?

Hannah exhaled as all at once she realized what it was. The sound was coming from the TV in Courtney’s room. One that she had accidentally discovered when she’d first arrived was motion-activated. In fact, all media in the apartment was; a supposed benefit of the younger girl’s state-of-the-art entertainment set-up.

She’d gotten a similar fright when, upon entering her assigned bedroom on the first night here, the TV had automatically flickered to life like it did in a high-end hotel.

To save her nerves, and following some help from Courtney’s assistant Sara, she’d since deactivated the sensor in the rooms she was using. But since Hannah had no cause to access the influencer’s bedroom unless expressly required, there’d been little need to do so in the primary suite. So what could have activated it now?