Darker Nights
Page 5
Also available from Totally Bound Publishing:
Rock Star
Nan Comargue
Excerpt
Chapter One
Finn Carter flopped down on the chair across from Maggie’s desk and groaned loudly.
“My heart is broken.”
Maggie glanced up from her laptop. “Oh dear,” she said. “Not again. That makes it, what, three times in the last two months?”
Finn’s smoky blue eyes sparkled at her. “Probably,” he agreed. “Now what are you going to do about it?”
She blinked at him. “Me?”
“You’re my lawyer,” he told her, a grin starting to tip the sides of his sensual mouth. “You’re supposed to have solutions to my problems.”
It was difficult not to smile back at that famous face but somehow Maggie managed it.
“Your legal problems, buster. Not your romantic ones.” She picked up a pen and tapped it against her cheek. “Are there still such things as lovelorn columns? You could write into one. Think about the headline—Huge Music Star Just Wants Love. The columnist would be overrun with responses. Of course, nowadays, you could probably just send out a tweet and have the same effect.”
Finn was staring at her so intently that the burgeoning smile at her own joke dried up.
“What’s the matter?” she wanted to know.
When he answered, his voice was harsh and utterly unlike the smooth tones he used to sing, “I hate it when you do that.”
“Do what? Joke with you?”
Maggie was taken aback. She seldom laughed at her client’s quips but, after all, she and Finn had known each other for nearly a decade. If that didn’t give her some leeway to show a bit of humor with him, what did?
“Subtly put yourself down,” was Finn’s incredible reply. “Act like you’re a million years old.”
Maggie felt her expression freeze. “I wasn’t aware that I was doing that,” she said stiffly.
“‘Are there still such things as lovelorn columns?’”
He was an excellent mimic. Heat flooded Maggie’s cheeks.
“Stop being a prick,” she snapped. “We both know exactly how old I am—”
But even before she’d finished her thought, she could see the grin on his face. Had she just…?
Yes, she had. She’d just called her biggest client a prick.
He was going to fire her.
Fuck.
“How old are you, anyway?”
Maggie’s head drooped as she waved his question away. He was playing with her. He fired agents as an annual ritual, starting with his own parents at the age of seventeen. Of course he was going to fire her. He was just going to make her squirm first.
“You’ve been my lawyer ever since I landed my first recording contract,” he continued to muse aloud, “and assuming you were called to the bar for a couple years before that, you would have to be, uh, thirty-nine?”
Despite herself, Maggie had to smile slightly. “Is that the polite way of saying forty?”
Finn was leaning across the desk, staring at her as if his life depended on her response. “Am I right?”
“I’m thirty-eight,” she said. “As of last Monday.”
A frown suddenly marred his handsome face, reminding her of a series of sexy pouty ads he’d done a few years ago. Was that for the jeans company or the cologne? It was so hard to remember. Everybody wanted Finn Carter for their brands. His smoky, sexy good looks were a perfect vehicle to sell anything from vacation spots to athletic shoes.
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t even know your birthday.”
“Why would you?” Maggie asked reasonably. “I never told you what it was.”
Her breathing started to slow down to a normal pace again. Maybe he wasn’t going to fire her after all. Maybe she really was the only fixture in his constantly changing retinue of professional hangers-on, as one popular magazine had once described her in a slim side panel to a long spread about Finn.
“You know my birthday,” he pointed out.
She ventured a tentative smile. “June sixth. Every female between the ages of twelve and eighty knows that.”
He leaned back in his chair, his eyes narrowing. “And I get presents from pretty much all of them. What did you get me this year?”
Maggie flushed. “A pen.”
“Right.” His beautiful voice was suddenly flat.
“It was a very nice pen,” she found herself protesting.
“So nice, in fact,” he said, “that you bought one for every single one of your male clients, didn’t you?”
How did he know that?
“Yes, that’s right,” she told him, her voice clipped.
“What did you get your female clients?”
“A silver hairbrush set.”
He nodded. “Perfect. Absolutely perfect.”
In spite of herself, Maggie asked her next question. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He spread his hands out on the desk and she couldn’t help noticing how strong they looked, lean and tanned and incredibly masculine. Like the rest of him. A sex symbol since he was a teenager, the smooth unlined features that had first captivated the hearts of other adolescents had given way to an austere beauty that was both elegant and primally natural. It contrasted with his music, which had started out being pure pop and was now folksy and plain. His last album had had a definite country bent to it and had reached triple platinum in record time.
“You play it safe, Meg.” That was his particular nickname for her. “All the time. About everything.”
He made it sound like an insult, which he no doubt meant it to be.
“I’m a lawyer,” she said, as if that explained everything.
“Lawyers hook up,” he pointed out. “Lawyers date. Lawyers get married. Lawyers get their hearts broken.”
Not her. Not ever.
Her only relationship was with her job and, by extension, her clients. It was better that way. Safer.
Her mother had married four times, always searching for that perfect man and that perfect relationship. After each divorce, she’d fall into a depression that lasted more and more months each time and as soon as she partway recovered, she’d foolishly rush back into the very next marriage. It was crazy. And it was never going to happen to her.
Inspiration hit her.
“Let’s make a deal,” she said. “I’ll stick to only giving you legal advice from now on and you can go on getting your heart broken. I won’t say a word, I promise.”
Finn’s mouth quirked. “What about the name calling?” he asked.
Her face felt hot again. “I won’t call you any more names.”
“Let’s leave that part out of the deal,” Finn told her, extending his hand over the desk. “Only the next time you call me a prick, I’ll show you what a real one looks like.”
He already had hold of her hand, so Maggie had no choice but to shake on it.
She spent the next few hours after he was gone wondering what he had meant by those last words.
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About the Author
Nan Comargue is a thirtysomething romance and erotic romance writer who has been reading romance novels all her life. She prefers sexy confident heroes who win over slightly introverted heroines (read: nerdish types) but she writes about everything from angel-warriors to cowboy ménage.
Email: nancomargue@gmail.com
Nan loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at http://www.totallybound.com.
Also by Nan Comargue
Captive Angel
The Gamble
Snow Fire
Rock Star
All Together Now: Country Hearts
At Your Service: A Lady for Two
Lasso Lovin’: Hard Luck Ranch
Wild After Dark: Darker Nights
Wanton Witches: Sudden Storm
Comargue, Darker Nights