The Negotiator (Harbor City 1)

Nerves eating away at her stomach lining, she clucked quietly to herself as she crossed the room. She sucked at lying. It made her nervous and when that happened, well…

“Tu es betes comme tes pieds.” Yes, she transformed into someone who was as smart as the bottom of her feet. Deep breaths, Clover. I’m sure Mrs. Carlyle won’t be as scary this time. Third time’s the charm. Or curse.

Forcing a confidence into her spine that she sure as hell didn’t feel, Clover opened her bedroom door. “Because I’m not a chicken…”

Her voice trailed off as she noticed Sawyer in a black suit and a patterned pale pink tie that perfectly matched one of the stripes on her dress. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Whoever had gone shopping and left the Dylan’s Department Store garment bag on her bed had obviously left one for him as well.

“You look nice,” she said, voicing the understatement of the year.

The suit did everything possible to highlight Sawyer’s broad shoulders, and noticing that did funny things to her stomach—not to mention all points south, making it hard to remember exactly why it was that she shouldn’t follow her own advice and have a little adventure climbing Mount Stuffykins.

His focus was only for her and he gave her a slow, heated up and down once-over. “You look ready to unwrap.”

She halted in mid-stride on her way out the door. Okay, with the pink, navy, and merlot colored stripes on a white background, the dress looked a little like Christmas paper, but that didn’t mean he had to say it out loud. An embarrassed heat inched its way up her chest. “If you didn’t like it, why did you get it?”

“Who said I didn’t like it?” he asked, the lines in his forehead carving a V that disappeared behind the top of his black-framed glasses.

Head high and chin pointed up, she strode right past him on her way to the elevator. “You did.”

“I was trying to compliment you,” he shot back.

“That’s not exactly your strong suit.” No. Being a pain in her ass was his greatest strength.

“No.” Not missing a beat, he was beside her in an instant matching her stride for stride and getting to the elevator down button a half second before she did. He mashed it with more force than necessary. “It’s definitely not.” Twelve very slow, very silent seconds later, the elevator arrived and the doors parted. “Shall we?”

The doors whooshed shut behind them.

She tried to hold on to her annoyance for Sawyer’s crack about her dress but the urge to start nervously clucking was too much for her to shut off. “Do you think we can really carry this off?”

Sawyer let out a breath, the tension melting out of his rigid stance. Taking her hand, he slipped it into the crook of his elbow. “We met at a Starbucks in Singapore. You turned too fast, knocked into me, and spilled my drink all over me.”

That was not exactly what they’d discussed. The man was a wreck when it came to details. Still, the corner of her mouth twitched upward. “You were standing too close to me so there was no way for me to avoid it. You’re just lucky it was an iced coffee.”

“Didn’t matter. After one look at you, nothing would have cooled me down.”

The rough gravel in his voice took

the cheesy line and turned it into something more. One look at his reflection in the mirrored elevator doors as they descended, and that something became a promise of the hot, dirty, and multi-orgasmic kind.

“Cavolo,” she muttered. Holy crap, indeed.

Sawyer raised an eyebrow over the rim of his glasses.

Merida, she’d done it again. She really needed to staple her mouth shut. Talking in another language to herself was weird enough when she was alone. In front of someone else, it was boarding the Weirdo Express. Desperate to cover up her non-English exclamation, she rushed on. “That’s a good line. Be sure to use that one.”

His forearm tensed underneath her palm. “Told you I was a quick study,” he said with a chuckle that held a touch of bitterness.

Determined to get on steadier ground, she pushed ahead. “So we had a whirlwind romance. Of course, I had no idea who you were because I am most definitely not a gold digger.”

“I kept my identity a secret because I wanted to make sure you were only after me for my hot bod, not my bank account.”

“Exactly.” She nodded, working her bottom lip over with her teeth as the elevator sped down to the lobby.

“And when I finally told you, you tried to break it off with me with some asinine plan that we’d split up when we came home to the states.”

“So of course when you saw me at Carlyle Tower the other day, you begged and pleaded for me to give you a second chance.”

He snorted. “No one will believe that.”