The Negotiator (Harbor City 1)

Sawyer laughed, the move making his abs hurt more than the second minute of holding a plank normally did. “No.”

“Is Mom okay?” his brother asked, concern sharpening his tone.

Sawyer dropped out of his plank, regretting that he’d even put that thought in his brother’s head. “Mom’s fine.”

Two beats of silence followed by a less than cheery, “Then fuck off.”

Chuckling at Hudson’s obvious misery at being woken up before the crack of noon, Sawyer started in on pushups. “I want you to be the best man at my wedding.”

“Who is this and what did you do to my brother—not that I’m complaining, but our mom would be upset.”

“He had a spoon,” Sawyer said, sweat starting to bead on his forehead. “It was either him or me.”

“You’re fucking hilarious.”

“You’re not the first person to tell me that.”

“Bullshit.” Hudson snorted. “No one ever says that about you. What do you really want?”

“I need you to tell Mom that I’ve been dating Clover on the sly for months ever since I met her in Singapore on one of my trips to see Mr. Lim.” He pounded out another set of pushups, then rolled onto his back for a breather while Hudson’s brain caught up.

“Who is Clover?”

“My personal buffer.” Sawyer downed a gulp from his water bottle while telling himself that the pickup in his pulse was because of the workout, not because of the blonde and her sparkly crop top he’d spent the night thinking about. “But Mom doesn’t know that either so keep that to yourself.”

“Wait. I thought you refused to hire a personal buffer.”

“I did, but then Clover scared off Mom. How could I not hire her after that?” Just the memory of the look on his mom’s face before she’d stormed off would be cheering him up for weeks.

“This is Jane Lee we’re talking about, right? She was the only female buffer candidate I sent your way.” Hudson’s voice was thick with disbelief. “Does she have superpowers? Is she suffering from radiation poisoning?”

Sawyer picked up his phone and slid it into the wall mount by his pull up bar. “Not that I know of.”

“Then how did she do it?”

“She told Mom off.” He gripped the bar and pulled himself up, curling his legs to a ninety-degree angle.

“And she’s still alive?”

Sawyer couldn’t keep the smile off his face as he began to ease back down, slow and controlled. No one—and he meant no one—ever told Helene Carlyle what to do. “Yep.”

“I kinda want to marry her myself.”

His grip slipped and he landed with a thunk on his feet, his grin gone. “You can work your charms on her once she gets back from Australia.”

“That’s mighty…uh…generous of you.”

He wiped his palms on his basketball shorts hard enough to make his thighs sting. “It’s a fake engagement to keep Mom off my back so I can close the Singapore deal, not an actual real relationship.”

“Of course,” Hudson said with a sigh. “It’s work.”

“Exactly.” He gripped the bar again and jerked himself up. “In six weeks, Clover leaves to go help walnicks or hallababies or something.”

“Wallabies?”

“That’s it.”

“Are you drunk? None of this sounds like you. Who came up this idiotic plan?”