Bargaining with the Bride (Honeybrook Love, Inc. 1)

And what had she asked him, again?

He looked thoughtful, but for the first time in their entire bizarre conversation he looked puzzled. Almost tense. And if she didn't know him better, she might even think he looked uncomfortable.

"You know, I don't think that would be a good idea," her biscuit suddenly felt very dense in her throat, and she cleared it, trying to find a way to breath. Her chest tightened, but through it all she willed herself to look nonchalant.

"Yeah, me too," her voice sounded casual, and the slight strain she hoped was only noticeable to herself. Inside, her subconscious was patting itself on the back, ignoring the fact that she was, in fact, very chalant. Possibly the chalantest.

"Really? Good. I was a little concerned given," Garret cleared his throat, "the, um, circumstances."

There was no mistaking it now. He was genuinely uncomfortable, and shiny possibility of bating him was all too tempting to pass up. Her subconscious had practically burst into doing the wave.

But, keeping her cool, she sipped her coffee and tilted the cup just above the ridge of her nose. He could only see her eyes as she said, "The circumstances?"

Oh, yeah. Smooth.

She wasn’t so open and closed now, was she? She was an enigma. A goddamn piece of Sherlock-Holmes-level intrigue.

"Well, the inherent, um, situation between us as made evident by experimentation." He cleared his throat again, slightly flexing those delicious biceps in the process.

"I'm not sure I'm getting it," her kingdom for a recording device. She glanced at her sad, dead cell phone with despair.

"You know what I'm saying,” he said.

Dammit. He wasn't taking the bait.

"It sounds like you think I'm hot." She leaned back in her chair, trying to suppress her laughter.

"Well, it was more of a mutual experience as far as I was aware."

"Oh, so not only do you think I'm hot, you think I think you're hot, too?"

"That was my understanding—"

“But you don’t think we should act on your objective observations?” Her fingers traced quotes around the word “objective,” but he ignored her.

“No.”

“Do you have a hypothesis about why not, or should we draw some sort of ven diagram?” She rose from her chair and slowly moved across the room, her back to him as she swayed her behind deliberately with every step. She could practically feel his eyes boring into her naked legs, poring over the crease where her ass met her thigh.

It might have been her imagination, but she thought she could hear him swallowing as she turned around to face him again.

Apparently, the scientist wasn’t so cut and dried as she’d thought. Somewhere in his Bicentennial Man exterior, there was a beating heart. And based on the way his pupils dilated when she turned to face him, that heart of his was going at a pretty solid rate.

"Well, as I said before, this is a business arrangement and we should keep things professional. I think anything else might be inappropriate,” he sipped his coffee, indecision etched into every feature.

“So, sorry, it’s still early and I’m a little slow. If I’m hearing you right, you think that it would be inappropriate for us to have sex—” a look of shock lit up Garret’s features, but she pressed on, “but it’s perfectly fine for you to live in close quarters with me for a month and spend every waking moment together? That’s cool?”

“Well, it’s not really foolproof, but yes. That’s the general idea.”

“You’ve got one thing right. It’s definitely not foolproof.”

“Be that as it may, it’s our best option at present. I’ve sent in the paperwork to notify the company of our relationship status. I feel it’s best for us to avoid the office for today while the memo circulates, and then by Monday most people will have gotten used to the idea.”

She blew on her coffee, if only to give her suddenly dry mouth something to do. She blinked once, twice, and then blew out a sigh, “So, you mean to tell me that you notified everyone in the office that we’re in a fake relationship. Including the secretaries and the people I’m in charge of?”

“I didn’t see another option—“

She held up a hand to stop him. This was the way with corporate men. They didn’t understand, and maybe that wasn’t their fault. They had no context for what it was like to be a woman in a position of power in an office.