The Negotiator (Harbor City 1)

The woman was mercenary. He couldn’t help but admire it. “I don’t think so.”

“I obviously don’t have the kind of wardrobe that a fiancée of yours would have. I don’t want to embarrass you with your friends, after all, and if I happen to get a few items for my trip to Australia, too, well, you should still consider yourself getting off cheap.”

Forget mercenary. She was downright brilliant. In three short sentences, she’d managed to put him in his place about his comment when she’d walked out of her apartment building in that sexy little shirt and skirt combo, reminded him of the need to make this whole fake engagement seem real, and managed to make him outfitting her for her next adventure downright sensible. The woman was dangerous.

“As long as you don’t end up looking like just another boring socialite, then I can give you that point. Lots of bright colors and a little bit of skin showing.” His gaze dropped to the bottom edge of her crop top. “For effect.”

“Uh-huh.” She raised an eyebrow. “Whatever you say.”

He demolished the last bite of his burger, using the time to clear his head of useless fantasies. “I have two conditions of my own.”

“Shoot.”

“Beyond Hudson, no one can know the engagement is a fake. Not your girlfriends, not your family.”

Her perky smile dimmed. “Why not? It’s not like they move in the same circles as your family.”

“Because my mom probably already has an investigator looking into your background.” More than likely she’d started the process earlier today after Clover had told her to take her lunch invitation and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.

She tugged her bottom lip between her teeth again. “I don’t want to lie to them.”

“We don’t have a choice, not if we’re going to carry this off.” One slip and the game was up. The fewer people who knew, the more likely it would work.

Clover stacked the plastic creamer cups, her jaw stiff. “Fine. And the second condition?”

“What happened in the closet can’t happen again,” he said, capping the pen and putting it back in his jacket.

Her head tilted up and her grin was anything but perky. It was sexy, teasing, and exactly what his dick didn’t need right now. “Okay, so we avoid closets.”

“Clover, you know what I mean.” And God did his dick object to him putting that detail into words.

“Got it.” She nodded her head solemnly, ignoring the creamer pyramid that had been so fascinating only moments before. “No super-hot, make-my-toes-tingle kissing in a supply closet or anywhere else.”

She was laughing at him. His male ego objected, but that was nothing compared to the official complaints being filed in triplicate by other parts of him. Without glancing down at the napkin, he signed it and slid it across to her for review, realizing too late that he hadn’t written down the last requirement.

Paging Dr. Freud.

Clover didn’t seem to notice. She just signed it, folded it up, and put it in her purse before closing it with a snap. So there it was. He’d woken up this morning with a normal life. By noon, he had a personal buffer. By ten o’clock, he had a fake fiancée. He couldn’t even imagine what new little adventure tomorrow would bring.

Chapter Seven

The next morning, Clover’s phone vibrated on the bedside table, buzzing and bouncing against the glass tabletop. She peeled an eyelid open, holding a hand up against the early morning sun shining through her window like a laser beam. The rest of the apartment she shared with her bestie was silent—except for the buzz, buzz, buzz of her phone. Letting her eyelids droop back down, she slapped her hand blindly against her bedside table until she made contact with it, swiped right, and brought it up to her ear.

“Hello,” her voice came out sounding like a rusty door in a haunted house.

“Jane, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me, but I’m just too excited to care,” her mom said, obviously already on her second pot of coffee. “Congratulations! When’s the big day? Tell me all about Sawyer. I want details now, young lady.”

Clover’s eyes flew open, and she was suddenly fully and utterly awake with the icy dread only her mom could inspire sliding down her spine. “Hi, Mom.”

“Don’t you ‘hi Mom’ me, young lady,” her mother said, going Mach Two. “I want details about this engagement, and I want to know when you and Sawyer will be coming home for Sunday dinner. It’s bad enough that I only found out because Kelly Osgood posted about the news on Facebook after seeing it on some Harbor City gossip blog. There’s no way I’m going down to Heber’s Deli for your dad’s pastrami without details of my own.”

Sapo tonto! Not only was she a stupid toad, she was a naive idiot who’d thought she just might make it through this fake engagement without her family finding out. Why did her mom’s oldest friend also have to be a gossip junkie?

“I can hear you breathing, Jane.” Her mom gasped. “Oh God, tell me this isn’t another one of your silly adventures. It’s way past time when you needed to start acting like an adult.”

Translation: When was Jane finally going to settle down and start mass producing grandkids like a human rabbit? Okay, her mom hadn’t used the words “mass producing” or “human rabbit,” but that’s basically what she wanted. Thirty was just around the corner, according to her mom. Funny. Last time Clover had checked, it was still four years away. A fake engagement should have lessened some of that pressure to settle into a boring life just like her mom’s, instead it had all the markings of adding gas to the fire under her mom’s ass.

“I’ve been acting like an adult for years, Mom,” she said through gritted teeth. “I paid my own way through college. I have good friends. I pay my bills on time.” Even if this month it had been by the skin of her teeth. “You may not like the life I lead, but it’s mine and I like it.” And she liked that it was as different from her mom’s staid life in Sparksville as possible.