Bargaining with the Boss (Honeybrook Love, Inc. 2)

"It might be fu-un." She sing-songed "Just think of it, meeting up late at night in some dive-y bar wearing nothing but a trench coat. Then he'll take you in the back and pin you to the wall and--"

Natalie held up a hand. "I think I've got it. Thanks."

&nb

sp; "You'd be able to get out some aggression, that's all. It'll help you relax and--"

"I'll try a punching bag."

"But--"

"Let's just drop it." Natalie snatched the fork back and stabbed at her salad, allowing the silence of the little diner wash over them as they continued their lunch.

Eliza was a kid. She didn't know what it was to be in love to have meaningful sex with someone. Then again, when Natalie'd been in love, she'd been a kid, too. With Jimmy, at least, it had been love. And maybe that had been a very, very long time ago, but after that, what was the purpose of raw, dirty, sweaty, naked...

She squeezed her thighs together again, and then took another big bite of her cold salad.

Okay, maybe she was a little bit...eager to get back in the saddle. But that didn't mean she had to jump on the first person to offer her some. She had options. She was still young.

The TV in the corner of the restaurant blinked onto the news, and she dropped her fork as a picture of Franco, all tan and dark and handsome, blipped onto the screen. He was walking out of some Hollywood clinic, his hand shielding his face from the flashing of the cameras.

"What?" Eliza turned to look at the screen. "Oh, this? It's been my jam all day. It's trending everywhere."

"What are they saying?" Natalie tried to read the captions on the screen, but the TV was too far away for her to make out the words.

"They're saying Gianna is pregnant and Franco denies that it's his baby." Eliza shook her head. "They've been saying for years that he's the player type, but he never struck me as a scum bag like that, you know? I guess you just never know with some people."

A baby?

Christ.

"I guess." Natalie pushed her salad away and dropped some money on the table. "Hey, Eliza, I'm not feeling well. Do you care if walk back to the office alone?"

"No, that's fine, but if you have hot sex with Brooks, you have to tell me about it."

Natalie didn't bother dignifying that with a response.

Instead, she hustled from the restaurant, dialing her cellphone as fast as she could. It didn't even ring before Franco picked up.

"It's not mine." Franco said.

"You just said—"

"I'm saying now that it's not mine."

"How could you know that?"

"Because I haven't slept with her in four months. She's two months along." He was calm as ever. Like he was discussing the weather and not, perhaps, the immanent demise of his entire shipping conglomeration.

How did men like Frano and Brooks do that? Stay calm and relaxed while the entire world talked bad about them? While things fell apart?

When things had been bad for her…

But no, she wasn’t going to think about that.

"You haven't slept with her?" Natalie asked.

"I broke up with her five months ago. She was in a big show a couple weeks later and didn't want the bad press, so I told her we could fake it for a while. From there, it sort of—"