The Negotiator (Harbor City 1)

“Now that’s how you do a night at Vito’s.” Donna slipped her pencil in with the three others stuck in her steel gray bun. “I’ll have it out to you two in a jiffy.”

Donna strolled away, humming in that tuneless way of hers, to go drop off their ticket to her husband, Steve, in the kitchen.

“I take it you come here a lot,” Clover said, flipping her menu shut and putting it back in its original spot between the half-filled ketchup and totally-full mustard.

“Yeah, Linus pretty much saved my sanity the first time he took me here after one of my mom’s never-ending charitable fundraisers.”

He was there so often now he’d made it onto the regulars’ board. After he’d spent a few meals decompressing from one or another of his mother’s events, he’d asked about Vito. Turned out Vito was Donna and Steve’s dog, who’d been banned from his own restaurant under threat from the city health inspector.

Clover toyed with the sugar packets. “Fancy parties aren’t your thing?”

“Not when she’s got five women lined up like she’s casting the role of Mrs. Sawyer Carlyle,” he grumbled, sounding like an ungrateful ass and not caring one bit.

“Which brings us back to business.”

“Yeah, I guess it does.”

“Then let’s get to it.” She pulled a napkin out of the dispenser and smoothed it out on the table before pushing it across to him. “I’m assuming you have a pen in your jacket, my purse barely fits my phone and my lipstick.”

“I don’t think we need to write anything down.” But he reached out to take the napkin anyway, his fingers brushing hers and sending a shot of electricity straight down to his cock before she pulled her hand away.

“Nice try, Big Bucks.” She went straight back to fiddling with the sugar packets as if she wanted to touch something—someone—as much as he did right now. “You’re writing it down.”

He took off his glasses and with deliberate care cleaned them with the napkin she provided. Dick move? Oh yes. Negotiations weren’t about being nice. Good thing being an asshole was never a problem for him. “Don’t trust

me?”

Her snort was about as far from the sound a socialite would make as he was from closing the Singapore deal. “I trust written agreements more.”

“Okay, let’s start at the beginning then.” He smoothed out the napkin on the table and then withdrew a pen from the inside pocket of his jacket. “We need a cover story. No one is going to buy that we met and got engaged in the same day.”

Not by a long shot they wouldn’t. While she delicately annihilated her bottom lip and fidgeted with the sugar packets, he scanned his memory for RomCom movie plots for something that would work—not that he was about to say that out loud. It was bad enough Hudson knew his guilty pleasure. If Clover had that little tidbit in her pocket, he had no doubts she’d use it against him.

She made a little ah-ha sound and her face lit up; the sugar packets fell onto the table forgotten. “Secret relationship.”

He nodded. “We could have met while you were in Singapore on one of my trips over to see Mr. Lim.” He’d seen it work, on the big screen at least, but those schemes always required backup. “I’ll have to bring my brother Hudson in on it for corroboration, but we can pull it off.”

She slumped back against her seat. “Your mom won’t buy it.”

“She will if we do it right.” Socially acceptable PDA, being seen together, family events. His stomach tightened at the possibility of how Clover would wilt under a solo Helene Carlyle interrogation. There was only one way to avoid that. “You’ll have to move in to my place.”

Her brown eyes went wide and she went right back to playing with the sugar packets. “That’s a little extreme.”

“Why?” It was, but the more he thought about it the more he liked the idea. His dick fucking loved it. “Most couples move in together once they’re engaged, plus it will mean that we’ll be together enough that it’ll be hard for my mom to corner you when you’re by yourself and get the truth out of you.”

“I can hold my own with your mom.” She grabbed a third sugar packet. The woman should never play poker.

“Scaring her off isn’t the same as being caught in her crosshairs,” he said. “We have to make her believe this so I can give the Singapore deal the attention it needs. Once I close that, we can have our break up and by then I’ll have a plan to get my mom to give up her ridiculous marriage campaign.”

Donna picked that moment to come by with a tray loaded down with food and shakes. It smelled like heaven—all bacon grease and whipped cream. She gave him a wink and took off again without a word. No doubt, she was planning on needling him for information about his date as soon as she could get him alone. Donna was almost as bad as his mom.

The first bite of the burger made him close his eyes in appreciation as he offered up a silent thank you to pigs everywhere. Clover wasn’t as quiet. Her delighted moan made his cock thicken against his thigh, then he made the mistake of opening his eyes. It took both hands for her to hold the giant burger, but that wasn’t the part that turned his own bite to ash in his mouth. Her gaze was heavenward as her pink tongue darted out and licked up the splattering of mayo on the corner of her mouth and bottom lip. The move gave him all sorts of really good bad ideas. She could have moaned again after that, sang “Jingle Bells,” or hollered at him, he wouldn’t have heard over the blood rushing in his ears on its way from his brain to parts farther south.

On automatic pilot, he took a second bite of his burger and didn’t taste a damn thing.

“If we’re going to do this,” Clover said, setting the burger back down on her plate. “Then we’re going to have to actually act like a couple.”

He took a drink of his tasteless shake, ignoring the extra cherries, and managed to get is brain back on track even with its limited blood supply. “That’s why you’re moving in.”