The Negotiator (Harbor City 1)

“So we stick to the truth without elaborating,” he said, bringing her back to the reality of the here and now.

She snorted, just trying to picture her mom not digging for details. “How’s that story go?”

Out in the lake, a fish cleared the surface with a pop and dove back in with a soft splash.

“You fascinated me from the moment I met you and after that we were inseparable.”

“Fascinated you?” It sounded ridiculous. He was a multibillionaire with model-like wife candidates everywhere he turned and she fascinated him. More like was different enough to stoke his curiosity for a few weeks. “Is that what we’re going with?”

“It seems close enough to the truth to work.”

“And after we get back tomorrow night?” Her chest tightened, and she looked down at where her hands were clenched in her lap, letting her hair fall over her face. Damn it. She hated it when Daphne was right. Forget falling for him, she was already halfway there.

“We’ll think of something in the car.”

“No helicopter this time?” she teased, trying to regain some of the emotional high ground from that part of herself that was starting to crumble.

He laughed and rolled onto his side facing her, propping up his head in his hand. “You don’t want to know what kind of favor I’m going to owe Hudson for borrowing that.”

“I thought you and your brother were close.”

“We are, but he’s…well, he’s Hudson.”

Grasping ahold of the conversational lifeline that didn’t have anything to do with lying or saying good-bye, she settled back onto the blanket, echoing his position on his side. “What does that mean?”

“That he’s a guy who seems like he doesn’t have anything on his mind except for ways to burn through his trust fund as quickly as possible, but that’s not really him. He just does a damn good job of hiding who he really is.”

“Why?”

“You’d have to ask him. We don’t have deep introspective chats about our feelings. Do you with your brother?”

“Bobby?” She laughed out loud. Even the idea of a heart-to-heart with her brother was too weird to be able to form a mental picture of what it would be like. “No. If it doesn’t happen in his lab, Bobby isn’t very interested. He’s got all of his attention glued to whatever experiments he’s working on. He graduated from college at the top of his class while I was still in high school, and he’s two years younger than me.”

Sawyer reached out and tucked a stray hair behind her ear, his fingers grazing the shell of her ear and sending a delicious shiver down her spine. “But he came home when he got the call about your dad.”

“It’s family.” Unable to stop herself, she turned her head so that her face brushed against his warm palm. “It’s what you do.”

“You obviously care, so why do you spend all your time avoiding them?” he asked, gliding his thumb across her cheek.

“Are you my shrink all of the sudden?” She pulled away, cutting off the touch she craved so much, and rolled onto her back because if she didn’t she might not be able to later—and that scared her right down to her pink toenails. “Or is this like spilling my guts to the stranger at the bar because I know I’ll never see him again?”

&n

bsp; “Sure.” He slipped off his glasses and sat them on the storage box beside them. “Now that the world is a little bit fuzzy, I can be your stranger at the bar. Tell me everything.”

It was both exactly what she wanted to hear and just the words to shred her up a little bit more. Looking up at him—at this man she wouldn’t see again after tomorrow—the knot in her belly unwound, and she knew exactly what she needed to do next. The first rule of adventuring was to enjoy the experience while you could and that was exactly what she was going to do tonight with Sawyer.

…

Sawyer lay on his back on the blanket, looking up at the stars—a true big-picture view—and held his breath. When Clover had brought him out to the lake, he’d half expected her to push him in and try to drown him after the stunt he’d pulled. But she hadn’t. Instead, here they were with one last night together—and he wasn’t about to waste it.

“When I was eleven, I overheard my parents arguing,” she said softly, a ribbon of vulnerability threaded through her voice as she sat up, bent her legs, and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Mom wanted to go on a cruise and dad said he couldn’t imagine being stuck on a boat for a week with a bunch of drunk strangers. She said something about how she’d had plans to travel the world but everything had changed when she’d gotten pregnant. All she wanted was one week. He agreed. It wasn’t until later that night that I did the math. I was born seven months after they got married.”

The lost look on her face gutted him. He rolled up into a sitting position, wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and pulled her close, the urge to comfort her overriding everything else. “They seem happy, though.”

“They are.” Clover sighed and turned her face so her cheek rested in the pocket of his shoulder. The light from the full moon making her blond hair look like it glowed. “That’s the part I’ve never understood.”

“Business or love, every relationship is compromise.”