The Negotiator (Harbor City 1)

If he’d just told her that he was actually an alien here on an undercover mission, she wouldn’t have been more surprised. “You’re part of the Marry Off Sawyer campaign?”

“On the down low.” He grinned and spun her a little bit farther away from the other couples on the dance floor. “I couldn’t let my mom know I was helping. It would ruin my image. Didn’t you ever wonder why all of the other job applicants were bodyguard-types except for you?”

The mental image of squashing into the only open seat between two huge guys in suits and dead-eyed expressions flashed in her mind. “I thought I was in the wrong place.”

“And I would have put big money on the belief that you were exactly where you belonged.” Hudson sighed and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now, though. You’ve got to put a stop to this fake engagement before it goes any further. I know it all started out as a simple thing until the Singapore deal closed, but now it’s a problem.”

He wasn’t wrong. The truth of it shouldn’t hurt, but it did. “You mean I’m a problem.”

Hudson offered her a kind smile. “Yes. I know my mom took you out shopping the other day. It may not seem like it at first, but she’s a woman who gets attached to people and after what happened when we lost my father…” his voice trailed off for a second. “You seem like a nice person and I hate to be such a cold bastard, but I need to put my family first. You have to break it off with Sawyer sooner rather than later.”

“It’s…” She searched for the right word to describe the complete mess of a situation she found herself in, “complicated.”

“And it’s only going to get more so.”

He wasn’t wrong. Whether she was pregnant or not, she couldn’t settle for being Sawyer’s teammate. She knew it. She’d always known it, she just hadn’t wanted to admit it—even to herself. “Your mom and Sawyer think they’re the steel will in the family, but they’re wrong, aren’t they?”

Hudson raised his broad shoulders in a noncommittal shrug as the music ended, and he began walking her back toward the table.

Three steps in and an all-too-familiar ache started in her pelvis. Realization made her stomach drop. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said and started walking toward the bathroom just outside the ballroom doors.

By the time she walked out ten minutes later, knowing for sure she wasn’t pregnant and unable to decide whether to be happy or sad, she wasn’t surprised to find Sawyer waiting for her in the hall. Of course, that didn’t make seeing him hurt any less. The Bayview Hotel in the middle of a gala probably wasn’t the place to do this. No. It definitely wasn’t the place to do this, but if she went back to the penthouse with him, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to walk away tonight. Or any other night. Love was a real asshole that way. It had to be now or never.

“We need to talk—in private,” she said.

His body tensed, but to his credit he didn’t try to pull the truth out of her right away. Instead he took her hand—the frisson of desire his touch ignited was almost a cruelty—and led her down the hall until they found an unlocked supply closet. Once inside, she shut the door and leaned against it, needing the support it offered.

“I’m not pregnant.” She should be relieved—and she was…kind of.

His shoulders sank. “You’re not?”

“No.”

Sawyer started pacing in the small room. “It doesn’t change anything.” Three steps to the shelves holding toiletries. “We’d still make a great team. We can still make this work.” He turned and took three steps in the other direction to the shelves stacked high with towels. “It just gives me more time to work kids into—”

“Your big vision?” She finished the sentence for him, amazed that her heartbreak didn’t send her to her knees.

“Yes.” He stopped pacing and couldn’t have looked any more satisfied if he tried.

God, it devastated her, but she had to give him every chance to tell her she was wrong—that he wanted to stay together because he loved her. “Because we make a good team.”

The first hint of doubt crept into his hazel eyes even as he nodded.

She bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to keep the tears at bay if not the misery eating her up. “I don’t want to get married because I’m half of a good team. I want more than that, and so should you.”

“But you wouldn’t have to give up traveling or adventures or feel like you’re trapped behind a white picket fence,” he said, his words coming out fast with a tinge of desperation. “The penthouse doesn’t even have a fence.”

God she hurt, all the way down to her bone marrow. She loved him. He didn’t love her. It wasn’t enough—for either of them. Gritting her teeth to stop herself from crying, she slipped off the engagement ring and held it out to him.

But instead of taking it, he just stood there staring as anger began to seep into his eyes. “So you’re just gonna walk away and that’s it? We’re done?”

“Yes.” It was as much as she could say at the moment without worrying she’d break down.

She couldn’t do a damn thing to comfort him, so she laid the ring on a low stack of towels and went back to the door—every motion as deliberate and painful as if she was walking through a frozen ocean.

“Fine. Go,” he snarled. “The whole fake engagement was just a stupid fucking bullshit story anyway.”

No. It wasn’t bullshit. It was heartache and pain and the best time of her life. Now she had to do the right thing for both of them even though it shredded up her insides until she was a bloody mess. They both deserved more. So she went.