“So are we in agreement?” Sawyer asked as he adjusted his cuffs.
Of course, it was back to business for him. Well, two could play at that game. His negotiation tactics might be unusual—she’d never dry humped anyone at the Turkish bazaar—but she couldn’t deny they worked because she was about to say yes.
She was going to agree to be a temporary fiancée to a man she’d just met—or translated to Clover terms, just another job to list on her whack-a-do resume. Of course, that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to have to make some adjustments to their agreement. If she was in, she was going all in and so was he.
“Agreement?” Clover smoothed back a few stray hairs and tried to get her heart rate back down to not-running-a-marathon levels. “About the fake engagement?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll need to work out the details.” There. That sounded all tough and corporate.
He straightened his glasses that she must have sent askew during the kiss. “I usually leave those to other people.”
Nice try. “Not this time.”
He shrugged those mouthwateringly broad shoulders. “Have it your way.”
“Always.” Okay, not really, but it made her sound all badass and she had a feeling she was going to need that bit of bravado to keep her head on straight for the next few weeks. She was going to need that edge because Sawyer was about to learn the art of negotiation from a real master. She couldn’t wait to see how he’d take it. Now this was gonna be fun.
6
Vito’s Diner sat on the corner of Hammish and Fifth. The burgers were thick and charbroiled. The shakes were made with full-fat milk and ice-cream. The breakfast was served twenty-four hours a day. Best of all? There wasn’t a socialite in sight. It was the only place Sawyer Carlyle wanted to be after they’d run the gauntlet trying to make a quiet exit out of the gala and the last place Clover probably imagined he’d ever go.
She sat across from him in the booth—he’d taken the side with the tear in the blue vinyl seat—and studied the six-page menu that covered everything from colossal pancakes to cheddar melts to mom’s chocolate chip cookies. They’d spent the ride over on opposite ends of the Town Car’s backseat.
The kiss in the supply closet had been the kind his cock wasn’t going to forget anytime soon, but he couldn’t let it happen again. One, she may not be his employee but he was still signing her checks. That employer/employee line was there for a reason. Two, he wasn’t fooling himself. They were still in the middle of a negotiation. He’d been in the game too long to lose an advantage because his dick had started doing the thinking for both heads.
The waitress stopped at their table, pad and pencil at the ready. “Hey Sawyer, you feeling the burger or the tuna melt tonight?”
Easiest decision of the night. “Cheeseburger, please, Donna.”
“Excellent.” She nodded, her French fry earrings bobbing. “Everything on it?”
“You bet, and extra bacon.”
“Got it. Chocolate shake?”
Just the mental image of the shake loosened some of the tension pinching his shoulders tight. “The biggest you’ve got.”
“That kinda night, huh? I’ll add some extra cherries for you.” Donna chuckled and gave him a wink before turning to Clover. “How about you, hun?”
“Can I get the same kind of cheeseburger he’s having but with jalapeños instead of the extra bacon?”
“You got it,” Donna said. “Anything else?”
Clover’s gaze traveled down the full menu page devoted to shakes and malts as she worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “I’ll take the pineapple shake but a small, please.”
A small? That was a sacrilege at Vito’s—sort of like turning down a cheesesteak in Philadelphia or a real deep dish pizza in Chicago.
“They’re really good,” he said. “You’re gonna regret that size.”
“He’s right, hun,” Donna said, backing him up.
Clover gnawed on her lip for another three seconds before nodding her head. Decision made. “Okay, I’ll give you that win. As big as they come, extra cherries.”
“Now that’s how you do a night at Vito’s.” Donna slipped her pencil in with the three others stuck in her steel gray bun. “I’ll have it out to you two in a jiffy.”
Donna strolled away, humming in that tuneless way of hers, to go drop off their ticket to her husband, Steve, in the kitchen.
“I take it you come here a lot,” Clover said, flipping her menu shut and putting it back in its original spot between the half-filled ketchup and totally-full mustard.
“Yeah, Linus pretty much saved my sanity the first time he took me here after one of my mom’s never-ending charitable fundraisers.”
He was there so often now he’d made it onto the regulars’ board. After he’d spent a few meals decompressing from one or another of his mother’s events, he’d asked about Vito. Turned out Vito was Donna and Steve’s dog, who’d been banned from his own restaurant under threat from the city health inspector.
Clover toyed with the sugar packets. “Fancy parties aren’t your thing?”
“Not when she’s got five women lined up like she’s casting the role of Mrs. Sawyer Carlyle,” he grumbled, sounding like an ungrateful ass and not caring one bit.
“Which brings us back to business.”
“Yeah, I guess it does.”
“Then let’s get to it.” She pulled a napkin out of the dispenser and smoothed it out on the table before pushing it across to him. “I’m assuming you have a pen in your jacket, my purse barely fits my phone and my lipstick.”
“I don’t think we need to write anything down.” But he reached out to take the napkin anyway, his fingers brushing hers and sending a shot of electricity straight down to his cock before she pulled her hand away.
“Nice try, Big Bucks.” She went straight back to fiddling with the sugar packets as if she wanted to touch something—someone—as much as he did right now. “You’re writing it down.”
He took off his glasses and with deliberate care cleaned them with the napkin she provided. Dick move? Oh yes. Negotiations weren’t about being nice. Good thing being an asshole was never a problem for him. “Don’t trust me?”
Her snort was about as far from the sound a socialite would make as he was from closing the Singapore deal. “I trust written agreements more.”
“Okay, let’s start at the beginning then.” He smoothed out the napkin on the table and then withdrew a pen from the inside pocket of his jacket. “We need a cover story. No one is going to buy that we met and got engaged in the same day.”
Not by a long shot they wouldn’t. While she delicately annihilated her bottom lip and fidgeted with the sugar packets, he scanned his memory for RomCom movie plots for something that would work—not that he was about to say that out loud. It was bad enough Hudson knew his guilty pleasure. If Clover had that little tidbit in her pocket, he had no doubts she’d use it against him.
She made a little ah-ha sound and her face lit up; the sugar packets fell onto the table forgotten. “Secret relationship.”
He nodded. “We could have met while you were in Singapore on one of my trips over to see Mr. Lim.” He’d seen it work, on the big screen at least, but those schemes always required backup. “I’ll have to bring my brother Hudson in on it for corroboration, but we can pull it off.”
She slumped back against her seat. “Your mom won’t buy it.”
“She will if we do it right.” Socially acceptable PDA, being seen together, family events. His stomach tightened at the possibility of how Clover would wilt under a solo Helene Carlyle interrogation. There was only one way to avoid that. “You’ll have to move in to my place.”
Her brown eyes went wide and she went right back to playing with the sugar packets. “That’s a little extreme.”
“Why?” It was, but the more he thought about it the more he liked the idea. His dick fucking loved it. “Most couples move in together once they’re e
ngaged, plus it will mean that we’ll be together enough that it’ll be hard for my mom to corner you when you’re by yourself and get the truth out of you.”
“I can hold my own with your mom.” She grabbed a third sugar packet. The woman should never play poker.
“Scaring her off isn’t the same as being caught in her crosshairs,” he said. “We have to make her believe this so I can give the Singapore deal the attention it needs. Once I close that, we can have our break up and by then I’ll have a plan to get my mom to give up her ridiculous marriage campaign.”
Donna picked that moment to come by with a tray loaded down with food and shakes. It smelled like heaven—all bacon grease and whipped cream. She gave him a wink and took off again without a word. No doubt, she was planning on needling him for information about his date as soon as she could get him alone. Donna was almost as bad as his mom.
The first bite of the burger made him close his eyes in appreciation as he offered up a silent thank you to pigs everywhere. Clover wasn’t as quiet. Her delighted moan made his cock thicken against his thigh, then he made the mistake of opening his eyes. It took both hands for her to hold the giant burger, but that wasn’t the part that turned his own bite to ash in his mouth. Her gaze was heavenward as her pink tongue darted out and licked up the splattering of mayo on the corner of her mouth and bottom lip. The move gave him all sorts of really good bad ideas. She could have moaned again after that, sang “Jingle Bells,” or hollered at him, he wouldn’t have heard over the blood rushing in his ears on its way from his brain to parts farther south.
On automatic pilot, he took a second bite of his burger and didn’t taste a damn thing.
“If we’re going to do this,” Clover said, setting the burger back down on her plate. “Then we’re going to have to actually act like a couple.”
He took a drink of his tasteless shake, ignoring the extra cherries, and managed to get is brain back on track even with its limited blood supply. “That’s why you’re moving in.”
“That’s not what I mean,” she said, shaking her head. “You need details. Couple activities. Couple inside jokes. Couple rituals. If you really want to make it believable, then you have to commit to not just talk the talk, but walk the walk.”
She put her glossy red lips around the straw of her pineapple shake and sucked, and he could swear he heard the sparks and sizzles of his synapses exploding.
“Like what?” he managed to get out.
“Saturdays at the flea market.”
Okay, that horrible idea brought him back from the edge of fantasy. “There has to be something else.”
“It’s perfect,” she said. “I always go in the morning. We can find something to refurbish, and it will be just the kind of couple detail that will make all of this seem more real.”
“People actually do that?” It sounded about as fun as his mom’s ideas about arranged marriage.
“Haven’t you ever seen Flea Market Flip?”
He shook his head and took another bite of his burger, which had thankfully gotten its flavor back.
“It’s my favorite show,” she exclaimed as if that made this insanity any better. “Add it to the list. You can’t miss that. We can binge-watch on Friday nights to get pumped up for the flea market the next day.”
“I don’t like it.” He fucking hated it.
Clover narrowed her eyes at him, her sexy mouth pursing with disapproval. “You don’t have to like it. You just need to do it so we can find some more details to back up this ridiculous fake engagement.”
This is why he was a big-picture man. Details sucked. “I’m afraid to ask, but what else?”
“Post-event late night dinners at Vito’s. Picnics in the park. Sunday brunch at your apartment with your family.” She tapped a finger on the pen resting across the blank napkin. “Go on, write it all down. It’ll be golden, trust me.”
“And in six weeks when you leave for Australia, what will we tell them?” The end game was clear as day, but how to get there was muddled.
She took another bite of her burger and mulled over his question. “We’re just too different. It wouldn’t have worked. It was the whole The Way We Were thing.”
“The what?”
“You haven’t seen it?” She looked at him as if he were an alien. “Robert Redford? Barbara Streisand? Buckets of salty tears?”
“I got nothing.”
“Add it to the list,” she demanded. “We’ll have movie night and can alternate picking. Come on, write it down.”
He did, managing to hold the half of his burger that was left in one hand as he did so. Movie nights—he just had to keep it on the down low that he preferred chick flicks. Flea markets—about as fun as shoveling after an ice storm. Dinners out—now that he could get behind. As he was writing she listed more of her requirements. Chocolate syrup in the fridge for her morning oatmeal. Jasmine scented bubble bath. Raw potatoes to snack on. It took him right up until the end to realize she was fucking with him—at least on some of it.
He glanced up from the heavily inked napkin, his suspicions confirmed by the all-too-innocent look on her face. Yep. She was messing with him.
“Is everything just another fun adventure to you?” he asked, realizing too late that he hadn’t added a damn thing of his own to the list. Some hotshot negotiator he was.
“What fun would life be if it wasn’t?” She winked as she sucked up the last of her shake and then popped the final cherry into her mouth.
Cherry. Mouth. Lips. Tongue. Taste. Clover. It all mixed together in his head with the kind of vivid details he usually never fleshed out—especially not in a jerk-off fantasy that he wasn’t about to indulge in. She was a sorta employee and held the fate of this subterfuge in her hot little hand. Without warning, the mental image of that hand wrapped around one of his favorite body parts nearly undid him.
Fuck. Get in the game, you fucking chump.
“Okay so you can skip the bubble bath and the raw potatoes, but since this job has just jumped fourteen notches on the difficulty scale, I’m going to need additional compensation.”
Of course. “Like what?”
“A black card to cover the cost of clothes, shoes, and other incidentals.”
The woman was mercenary. He couldn’t help but admire it. “I don’t think so.”
“I obviously don’t have the kind of wardrobe that a fiancée of yours would have. I don’t want to embarrass you with your friends, after all, and if I happen to get a few items for my trip to Australia, too, well, you should still consider yourself getting off cheap.”
Forget mercenary. She was downright brilliant. In three short sentences, she’d managed to put him in his place about his comment when she’d walked out of her apartment building in that sexy little shirt and skirt combo, reminded him of the need to make this whole fake engagement seem real, and managed to make him outfitting her for her next adventure downright sensible. The woman was dangerous.
“As long as you don’t end up looking like just another boring socialite, then I can give you that point. Lots of bright colors and a little bit of skin showing.” His gaze dropped to the bottom edge of her crop top. “For effect.”
“Uh-huh.” She raised an eyebrow. “Whatever you say.”
He demolished the last bite of his burger, using the time to clear his head of useless fantasies. “I have two conditions of my own.”
“Shoot.”
“Beyond Hudson, no one can know the engagement is a fake. Not your girlfriends, not your family.”
Her perky smile dimmed. “Why not? It’s not like they move in the same circles as your family.”
“Because my mom probably already has an investigator looking into your background.” More than likely she’d started the process earlier today after Clover had told her to take her lunch invitation and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.
She tugged her bottom lip between her teeth again. “I don’t want to lie to them.”
“We
don’t have a choice, not if we’re going to carry this off.” One slip and the game was up. The fewer people who knew, the more likely it would work.
Clover stacked the plastic creamer cups, her jaw stiff. “Fine. And the second condition?”
“What happened in the closet can’t happen again,” he said, capping the pen and putting it back in his jacket.
Her head tilted up and her grin was anything but perky. It was sexy, teasing, and exactly what his dick didn’t need right now. “Okay, so we avoid closets.”
“Clover, you know what I mean.” And God did his dick object to him putting that detail into words.
“Got it.” She nodded her head solemnly, ignoring the creamer pyramid that had been so fascinating only moments before. “No super-hot, make-my-toes-tingle kissing in a supply closet or anywhere else.”
She was laughing at him. His male ego objected, but that was nothing compared to the official complaints being filed in triplicate by other parts of him. Without glancing down at the napkin, he signed it and slid it across to her for review, realizing too late that he hadn’t written down the last requirement.
Paging Dr. Freud.
Clover didn’t seem to notice. She just signed it, folded it up, and put it in her purse before closing it with a snap. So there it was. He’d woken up this morning with a normal life. By noon, he had a personal buffer. By ten o’clock, he had a fake fiancée. He couldn’t even imagine what new little adventure tomorrow would bring.
7
The next morning, Clover’s phone vibrated on the bedside table, buzzing and bouncing against the glass tabletop. She peeled an eyelid open, holding a hand up against the early morning sun shining through her window like a laser beam. The rest of the apartment she shared with her bestie was silent—except for the buzz, buzz, buzz of her phone. Letting her eyelids droop back down, she slapped her hand blindly against her bedside table until she made contact with it, swiped right, and brought it up to her ear.
Love in the Dark Page 22
