“Shorter.”
“But otherwise the same?” She could picture it. He’d probably been the only four-year-old in his undoubtedly expensive preschool with a business plan in his backpack.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Clover,” she corrected automatically.
He nodded noncommittally and pulled over in front of a high-rise on the corner of Expensive Avenue and Forget-About-It Street. Okay, those weren’t the actual street names, but it sure felt like it. Craning her neck as she looked out the passenger window, she could almost make out the name “Carlyle” written across the top of the building in giant sweeping font.
Whip fast, Linus got out of the car, rounded the hood, and opened her door. “Mr. Carlyle is waiting for you in the penthouse. Just have Irving buzz Mr. Carlyle to let him know you’re on your way up.” He held out his hand to help her out. When she didn’t move, he dropped his voice so there was no way anyone heard his words amongst the clatter of Harbor City. “No need to worry, Clover. You’ll do just fine.”
Were her nerves that obvious? Only if you’re breathing, rat lady.
She took a deep breath and accepted the driver’s help out of the car, even though she’d been stepping out of vehicles unaided for as long as she could remember. Somehow she knew he’d see it as her being rude, and she couldn’t do that to him.
“Thank you, Linus.”
He nodded and closed the door behind her.
Squaring her shoulders so no one would notice the way they quaked, Clover forced one foot in front of the other toward the opulent glass doors. She’d made it halfway through before she realized she had no frickin’ clue who in the hell Irving was.
…
It turned out that Irving was the doorman who had a big, shiny name tag—thank you whoever was watching out for her upstairs. He had a huge fluffy black mustache, perceptive eyes, and a Russian accent as fake as her engagement. She liked him immediately.
The exaggerated Bond-villain pronunciation he used when he called up to Sawyer’s penthouse and his devotion to smoothing his impressive ‘stasche with his fingertips was a thing to behold. In fact, she was so fascinated watching Irving that she didn’t have any time to double think her life choices. No. Her stupid brain saved all the fun, torturous stuff for the looooong elevator ride up to the top floor of a very tall building.
The doors whooshed open to reveal…a totally lux open-concept penthouse. It was all grays, blacks, chrome, and cold industrial chic without a living soul in sight. She was afraid to touch anything. Gobsmacked and a little petrified, she must have lingered in the elevator too long because the doors started to close. Leaping forward, she sped through just in time.
“Hello?” Standing in the foyer, she glanced around the empty space. “Mr. Carlyle?” Still nothing. She took a tentative step forward, her high-heeled boots clicking on the slate tile floor. “Sawyer?”
“In here,” he called out from somewhere down the hall on her left.
She click-clacked her way down the hall and through the open doorway at the end before jolting to a stop. The room was massive, taking up the entire length of the building with floor-to-ceiling windows covering three walls, giving him a two-hundred-and-seventy degree view of the Harbor City skyline. Opaque glass block half walls divided the huge space into three distinct rooms: office, sitting area, bedroom.
Sawyer was in the first one, sitting behind a glass-and-chrome desk, scowling at his laptop. If he was devastating in a suit and deadly in a tux, the man was scorching in a plain white T-shirt. Because he was sitting down she couldn’t see but her fingers were crossed that he’d paired the bicep-baring shirt with a pair of worn jeans that hung low on his hips and clung to his ass. He may have declared that they were hands-off, but he didn’t say anything about being eyes-off and a girl had to get her kicks from somewhere—especially when he hadn’t even slowed down in typing since she’d taken a step inside his domain.
When he didn’t look up or acknowledge her presence, she cleared her throat. “I really hope you pay the cleaning crew extra for all the Windex they have to use,” she said, breaking the silence.
Sawyer looked up, took off his glasses, and rubbed the area under his brown-green eyes. Then, he looked around as if he’d never seen the room before.
After a quick perusal that skipped right over her, he pushed his glasses back in place and dropped his gaze back to his screen. “The doorman should be up with your bags soon.”
“That’s what Irving said.” Now this wasn’t awkward. Not. At. All.
“Irving?” Sawyer asked, his fingers poised on the keyboard.
“The doorman.”
“Huh.” One dark eyebrow arched upward above the top of his glasses. “I’d always figured him for something more like Vladimir.”
He went back to typing while she lingered in the doorway feeling as guilty and excited as a teenager loitering outside a liquor store.
Instead of taking the hint and going on an exploratory mission, her nerves took ahold of her mouth. “So what’s the plan?”
They had backgrounds to plot, stories to come up with, and an entire secret love affair to create before Sawyer’s mother got a chance to break them.
He kept typing. “You settle into your suite on the other end of the hall and I figure out what in the hell is sinking this Singapore deal.”