The Negotiator (Harbor City 1)

Sawyer nodded and started toward her, his long legs eating up the space between them. “Uh-huh.” His gaze was still firmly fixed on her, and his expression said it all. Dissection or worse.

She swallowed hard, the sound echoing in the office Clover now realized was intensely quiet. Even Amara had stopped typing and was staring at Clover like she was a bunny trapped in the corner and about to die.

“So I’m totally fired before I even start, right?” She offered a wobbly grin, but he didn’t seem to get the joke. Who needed Australia? Surely the endangered Rock Wallabies that she would have been helping could save themselves. “Okay then, have a great life and good luck with the whole pissed-off-mom thing.”

He stopped just out of arm’s reach, his hazel eyes seemed softer up close and held a hint of curiosity behind his glasses as if she were a puzzle he was determined to solve. “Well, that’s a new one.”

“What? Gotten fired before they were hired?” She let out a strangled laugh. “Oh yeah. It’s happened to me a bunch. There was this one time when I was applying at a weight loss call center when I told the woman on the phone that she was perfect just the way she was and the supervisor lost his—”

“No.” He shook his head. “No one’s ever gotten my mom to retreat.”

“I’m sure you’re exaggerating.” She gulped and tightened her grip on her purse strap as she scurried backward, slapping her hand behind her in an effort to hit the elevator call button. “I’ll be off then. Have fun picking out a much less mouthy buffer.”

Finally, she made contact and pressed the heel of her hand against the button. Now was when she should have turned around, faced the closed elevator doors, and pretended that no one was behind her while she waited for-ev-er for the elevator to make its way back up to the top floor. But she couldn’t. It wasn’t that it would be rude—God knew she’d just proved her ability to fly right past rude and sail into verboten territory. It was because of him.

Sawyer Carlyle might be dressed in a suit, the cost of which would finance her adventure in Australia and about a dozen others, but that didn’t mean he was civilized. Nope. Something in his intense hazel gaze promised other things, dangerous things, too-bad-to-be-good-but-I-don’t-care things.

He reached her side in a few determined strides, but this time he didn’t stop outside of touching distance. Instead, he slid his hand across the small of her back, sending a meteor shower of sparks across her skin, lighting her up from the inside out.

“Amara, please clear my calendar for the next hour.” He marched forward, the force of his hand taking her with him, as he strode toward his office. “Gentlemen, thank you for your time, but I’m afraid the position has been filled.”

Filled? Oh God, what had she done?

Chapter Two

Sawyer didn’t know what to do next. It was an unusual feeling. Normally, he always had a plan—that was the benefit of being a big-picture kind of guy. If one approach didn’t work, it didn’t matter because as long as he reached his goal, how he got there didn’t matter.

He flexed his hand as he walked around his desk and sat down, needing something to do with the hand that had rested on the small of her back so he wouldn’t be tempted to touch her again. He wasn’t a stranger to beautiful women, but the woman sitting in the guest chair scoping out his office wasn’t someone he’d put in that category—at least not in that suit.

The jacket was boxy and ill-fitting. The pants pooled at her ankles as if they were meant to be worn with much less sensible shoes than the nip of a heel attached to her dull black pair. Her hair was a soft, golden blond that was straight and styled parted down the middle. Her makeup was minimal, a light pink lipstick and maybe a little something around the eyes. Those eyes, though. Big, brown, and laughing. At him? Maybe. Definitely at the situation. It was unusual to say the least.

He’d just hired a woman for a job that hadn’t existed until a few minutes ago, and he didn’t even know her name.

He grabbed ahold of that fact like it was a cold beer on a hot August night—the solution to all of life’s uncertainty. “Let’s start with your name.”

She stood up from the guest chair and extended a hand over his desk. “Clover Lee.”

On automatic pilot, he reached out and shook her hand. There it was, that little zap of something extra again, and he promptly let go. “Clover?”

“Legally, it’s Jane,” she grimaced and sat back down, flexing her fingers as if she’d felt the shock, too. “But no one calls me that. My mom is very stuck in her boring small-town ways out in Sparksville. I mean our dog is named Spot, for God’s sake—and not ironically. So I guess I should be glad to be just plain Jane and not—”

“Do you have any experience as a personal buffer…Miss Lee?” he broke in, sensing she could continue for days with tales of “boring” Sparksville.

“No, but I am a fast learner and have an extensive international background.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a single sheet of paper and handed it to him.

Scanning the sheet, things began to fall into place. Not-a-plain-Jane Clover Lee had an obvious aversion to consistent employment.

She jumped from one temporary job to another almost as if each one was just an excuse to get to the next. She’d gone from weird odd jobs stateside to teaching English in Thailand or helping organize small business cooperatives in Ghana and then bounced back to the U.S. for another round of jobs he’d had no idea existed. Her resume couldn’t be more unlike what was expected of the well-heeled Harbor City elite if she’d tried. That’s what had thrown off his mom and probably him as well—she personified the unexpected. It might just be what he needed for something as ridiculous as a “personal buffer.”

He set the resume aside, the single sheet bre

aking up the clean lines of his otherwise spotless desk. “What are your salary requirements?”

Her cheeks turned a soft shade of pink, but she didn’t drop eye contact. “The other Mr. Carlyle spoke of a range, and I believe I’d be at the high end of that number. Ten thousand for six weeks of work, after that I’m gone.”

He laughed—a rusty bark of a sound that made her eyes go wide. That he, by himself, was worth almost a billion and the company worth a hundred times that didn’t factor into this. He had started out his life at Carlyle Enterprises negotiating with union bosses who were little more than mob henchmen before eventually moving on to brokering deals worth the GDP of small countries. Ten grand? It wasn’t much, but that was never the point of talking money when putting together an agreement. Winning was. If he didn’t have that, then that grand “big picture” vision started to waver, and he wasn’t about to let that happen.

Relaxing against the back of his chair, he let his lips curl into a patronizing smile. “That’s a lot of money.”