The Negotiator (Harbor City 1)

She looked up at him, one eyebrow raised in sardonic disbelief. “Tell me more, Dr. Sawyer, of the lessons in love you learned from old chick flicks?”

He grinned down at her and tweaked the button tip of her nose. “Low blow.”

“Just an accurate one,” she shot back. “Look, you’re no more well-adjusted than I am. Look at your family dynamic.”

She pulled back from him and lay back on the blanket, and he followed suit.

From an outsider’s perspective, he could understand why she saw it that way, but there was more to the story that he hadn’t ever talked about with anyone—until now. “You never saw us before my dad died.”

“What was it like?”

“It was…” Words failed him. God, how could he explain it? Staring up at the star-filled night unlike any he ever saw in Harbor City, an achy soreness started in the middle of his chest and spread outward. “Everything it’s not now. My dad’s death was completely unexpected. We didn’t have time to prepare, to think, to plan. It was just like all of the sudden the world had changed. I had to take over Carlyle Enterprises. Hudson and I had to take care of our mom. The international building market softened. Everything was…different.”

“Too many new details,” she said, understanding thick in her voice as she reached out and intertwined her fingers with his and squeezed.

“And they were never my specialty.”

Fuck, now that was an understatement. Still, when he was with Clover all he could notice were the details. The silk of her hair. The smoothness of her skin. The soft smile she gave him first thing in the morning before she woke up. But that wasn’t everything. It was all the little things from her quick mind to her smart mouth to her craving for adventure that made her so damned irresistible—and dangerous to him.

He should get up now. Walk back to the house. Go to bed. Wake up and fake his way through a brunch with a family he’d never see again. But he didn’t move a muscle.

Maybe Hudson was right and all of those RomComs had fucked up his head because sitting here with Clover he couldn’t think of any place he’d rather be. Or maybe it was that being with Clover had begun to feel right, something that if he said out loud would probably send her sprinting toward her next adventure like a world record–holding track-and-field star.

She shifted beside him, turning so she faced him. Echoing her movements, he did the same. They were so close, mouths only inches apart, but neither of them made a move as anticipation began as a buzz in the back of his head and moved south.

Her pink tongue darted out and glided across her plump bottom lip. “I’m not ready to go in yet.”

“And I’m not going anywhere without you.” Dipping his head, he closed the distance between them and claimed the woman he had no right to.

Chapter Nineteen

This is what Clover wanted—needed—a night that didn’t have a tomorrow, just a now. Tomorrow could take care of itself because tonight she had Sawyer.

Breaking the kiss, she nudged him onto his back, following so she ended up straddling his hips. God, he was sexy as hell, all square jaw, muscles, and hard planes. She leaned forward and traced her lips across his stubble-covered jaw and down his corded neck as she fisted his T-shirt, yanking it higher.

“Off. Now.”

“You are so fucking demanding,” he said with half a laugh.

“Like you aren’t.” She glided her fingertips over the ridges of his abs like a topographical map of heaven, and he sucked in a breath through his teeth. No one was laughing now.

“I’m the one on my back and totally at your mercy,” he said, but the predatory look in his eyes said he was anything but vulnerable.

“As if that’s ever the case.”

His hand went to the small of her back and he rolled her, putting her underneath him. “I guess you’re right.”

Heart racing, she stared up at him, trying to remember to breathe because basic bodily functions seemed amazingly difficult when all she wanted was to take all he was offering. Damn. It shouldn’t be so easy for him to turn her into a boneless mass of want and hunger, but he did. So she fought against it, marshaling all her effort into maintaining at least a sheen of indifference.

Looking up at him through her eyelashes, she gave him her best sex kitten look. “Say it again.”

“Why? Does being right get you hot and wet and needy for me?” Now his fingers were the ones doing the walking, caressing her skin over the thin material of her tank top and sending little jolts of electricity across her skin.

“You do that just by breathing,” she answered, desire making her voice breathy.

Standing up, he reached behind his head and stripped off his shirt and dropped it onto the dock. His pants and boxers followed. Hands on his hips, the moonlight at his back, he stared down at her—more confident and sure of himself than any man she’d ever known. If there was one moment in this adventure she’d never forget, it was this.

“Oh Dios mío,” she sighed.