The Negotiator (Harbor City 1)

“Good thing neither of you need to be here anyway, so go away.” He grabbed the bottle of whiskey more for show than anything since the contents of his stomach echoed the slosh of the amber liquid in the bottle.

Hudson swiped it out of his hands and set it down on the bright red bar cart. “You’ve had enough.”

Sawyer couldn’t look away from the cart. He and Clover had refinished it out on the balcony and staring at it was like dragging barbwire across his skin. So he kept staring at it as a punishment for her leaving and a reminder that she’d been here at all. He got up and stumbled toward it. “I’ll say when I’ve had enough.”

“No, you’ll listen,” his mom said, stopping him in his tracks.

The change in momentum was more than his fragile sense of balance could take. He flung his arm out to keep from tipping over, connecting with a chair and sliding down into it.

Holding on to his anger since his dignity had disappeared, he glared at his mom and brother. “You obviously want to say whatever it is that you’ve got on your mind, so say it and leave.”

“You’re a moron,” Hudson said.

“Maybe,” Sawyer said, sounding every bit like an asshole but unable to stop himself. “But I’m still smarter than you.”

Helene walked in between them, stopping the argument before it even got started, and halted in front of Sawyer’s chair. Arms crossed and her expression grim, she shook her head in dismay. Then she got down to giving him the talking to she’d obviously come here for.

“For the past year, I have been so afraid that you’d go through life without having what your father and I had—love,” she said. “You’re so busy with Carlyle Enterprises and your blasted big-picture vision that you miss all the little things that make life important. The small moments that combine to make something great. After what happened with your father, I couldn’t let you make the same mistakes he did. And I couldn’t fail you the way I failed him by not finding a way to make you see that there’s more to life than your damned big-picture plan. So I began pushing wife candidate after wife candidate at you and you barely even noticed.”

“Oh I noticed,” he grumbled.

“Not until Clover came around,” she shot back.

Having her memory imprinted on his brain was bad enough. Hearing her name was unbearable. “If you’re here to talk about her, you can just leave now because she’s gone.”

“We’re all aware of that,” Hudson said. “Irving is a fountain of information.”

To everyone but him it seemed.

Helene went on as if neither of her children had said a word. “When your brother told me about this juvenile little plan you came up with to have Clover pose as your fiancée, I was utterly annoyed.”

He swore he could smell smoke as the creaky gears in his head jammed to a halt. Eyes narrowed, he turned to Hudson. “I can’t believe you told her.”

“When you didn’t show up to work for the first time in your entire life yesterday, Mom broke out the pliers and battery jumper cables.” Hudson shrugged. “She broke me.”

Sawyer sank back into the chair, defeat weighing his shoulder down. “Thanks a lot.”

Still ignoring her children’s sniping, Helene continued, “And then when Linus told me about your absolutely horrible proposal—”

Jesus. Humiliation heated his face to wildfire levels. “Is there anyone who can keep their mouth shut around you?”

“No,” Helene said. “Not even your fake fiancée who told me all about your dates to the flea market. I’ve never met anyone who could get you out of the all-business-all-the-time mindset. But she did. And looking at how you’re handling the fact that she left, I can only come to one conclu

sion. You are as in love with Clover as she is with you.”

If he’d had it in him, he would have laughed. It would have been a bitter, mean little laugh but a laugh all the same. Instead, he just sat there like a man who’d been slugged one too many times by a heavyweight boxer.

“Try again,” he managed to get out. “She said no.”

“To being your teammate?” Helene snorted, a sound he’d never heard her make before in his entire life. “Color me shocked.”

Why did the women in his life keep getting stuck on that word? Correction. Not women. Woman. Clover was gone. Out of his life. It was just woman now. And that woman was his mom. That wasn’t fucking pathetic at all.

“It wasn’t like that,” he said, the pit of his stomach filling with the kind of dread that only happened when he’d fucked up. “I didn’t want her to think that marriage meant the end of her autonomy, her sense of adventure. I didn’t want her to feel trapped.”

“So instead you made her feel unloved,” Helene said. “Well done. Add to that your brother brilliantly interfering by telling her to break it off with you.”

“You what?” He bounded out of the chair toward Hudson, swinging.