Hard Compromise (Compromise Me)

by Samanthe Beck

  “I know what you meant.”

  His terse reply whipped the air between them, like a battle flag snapping in the wind. After a tense moment of silence, he blew out a tired breath. “Lauralie…” His voice trailed off and he ran his palm over the back of his neck. Booker, tongue-tied? It was adorable and disconcerting at once.

  “How about a temporary job?” he finally asked.

  The question took her by surprise. She straightened. “My livelihood went down in flames today. If you know of a job, I’m all ears.”

  “My sister’s getting married on Valentine’s Day.”

  “Congratulations. Don’t tell me she’s waited until now to think about a wedding cake—”

  “No.” He cleared his throat. “As far as I know, she’s got all that handled. The job doesn’t involve baking, it involves acting.”

  Huh? “I don’t understand.”

  “This wedding puts me in an awkward position. I could use your help getting clear of it. I’m willing to pay you for your time.”

  “Sorry. I’m confused. How does your sister’s wedding land you in an awkward position? Do you dislike her fiancé, or something? Hey.” A nasty thought formed in her mind and left a queasy suspicion in the pit of her stomach. “Does this acting job involve me hitting on your sister’s fiancé so you can expose him as a faithless, gold-digging manwhore?”

  “Jesus, no. Nothing like that. Aaron’s a great guy. Solid. And if I doubted his motives, I’d have no problem confronting him directly, not resorting to a sting operation.”

  The queasy feeling faded, but a little envy swept in, flowing toward Booker’s sister. What would it be like to have a protective family looking out for her? She’d probably never know. “So, you’re…happy for them?”

  “Yes, but on a personal level, I’m fucked, because as soon as Kate and Aaron announced their engagement, I became collateral damage.”

  “How so?”

  “My mother convinced herself she engineered their match. She introduced them, and claims credit for finding them their soul mates.”

  “Aw. That’s sweet.”

  “It’s delusional. And terrifying. The woman already believes she knows better than the rest of us how we should live our lives. Now she also thinks she knows who we should live them with.”

  She couldn’t help herself. She laughed. “Okay, so your mom is a busybody with a newfound knack for matchmaking. I don’t see how this impacts you. You’re not the one walking down the aisle on account of her.”

  “If she gets her way, I will be. The next match she intends to make is mine.”

  Laughter threatened again, but she managed to hold it in. “What’s wrong, Booker, not ready to settle down? You know, I think you should reconsider. I mean, you’re well into your mid-thirties now—”

  “I’m thirty-two,” he shot back, “which is early thirties, no matter how you do the math, but certainly old enough to know I don’t want or need my mother interfering in my life.”

  “You poor, poor man. Hey, I have a suggestion. Why don’t you grow a pair and tell mommy to mind her own business?” Big words coming from a woman who handled her own mother by paying the woman to get lost. But Booker didn’t need to know that. Nobody needed to know that.

  He shook his head. “Trying to change her mind once she’s locked onto an objective is a waste of breath. She’s got me in her sights, like a sniper. Her ego’s involved, she’s motivated, and for the next six weeks she’s got unprecedented opportunity, in the form of a wedding and half a dozen related events I have no option but to attend. Unless I take countermeasures, she’ll use each and every one of those occasions to shoot single women at me in rapid-fire succession. My only hope is to take away her reason for pulling the trigger.”

  “Okay, Sheriff, I’ll bite. How do you plan to convince her you’re bulletproof?”

  “I don’t. I take the opposite tactic.” He crossed his arms, and smiled a slow, cunning smile that did unspeakable things to her insides. “I show up with a date and make her believe fate beat her to the kill.”

  Beat her to the…kill? This sounded bad. Risky. “Forgive me. I’m not fluent in The Art of War. What, exactly, are you saying?”

  “I’ll pay you six thousand dollars to convince my mother we’re in love.”

  Chapter Six

  “You’ll pay me six thousand dollars to whaaaat?”

  Wide blue eyes regarded him like he’d lost his mind, but no suspicion lurked in their depths, so Booker stayed the course. “I’ll pay you to be my date for all the family events I have to attend between now and the wedding—a thousand dollars each.”

  Those wide eyes turned doubtful. “What are these events? I don’t play polo. I never attended cotillion, and I’m not a member of the country club.”

  “You drink wine, right? Kate and Aaron are having a wine-tasting thing for their bachelor/bachelorette party. My parents are hosting a party. There’s the rehearsal dinner, and then the wedding itself, and the reception—I count those separately.”

  “And I still only count five events.”

  “I factored in a practice date. We want this to look real.”

  She tipped her head to the side. “Define date, Sheriff. And while you’re at it, define real, because I think on Craigslist people call this ‘The Girlfriend Experience’ and I’m pretty sure it’s illegal.”

  “Get your mind out of the gutter, Jailbait. My proposal involves me paying you to make a series of public appearances with me, convincing my mother we have a deep emotional connection. Anything happening between us, in private, has nothing to do with this arrangement.”

  Strangely, drawing the fine lines between what the money covered, and what it excluded, didn’t bother him. Those lines remained very clear in his mind, and even though she’d raised the question, he sensed she’d done it for the sake of argument. He wasn’t making an indecent proposal, and they both knew it. Dishonest? Yes, and morally debatable, but not indecent.

  Second thoughts sprouted like weeds. You really want to do this? Lie to your family? Manipulate Lauralie into accepting your help? He’d already conducted a ten second internal debate before he’d opened his mouth, but apparently his conscience demanded a final go/no-go check. He took stock of her, sitting beside him in a sweatshirt and cut-offs like some ghost of her teenage self, still covering any fear or uncertainty with a tough veneer of I-don’t-need-anyone. She’d let down her guard with him enough to disclose the extent of her situation, and that alone felt like a breakthrough even if the confession had been an effort on her part to push him away. He’d called her on it, demonstrating he wouldn’t be pushed away so easily, but she still couldn’t take that extra step—accepting help. Too much pride. Too little trust. Whatever the cause, he needed to deal with it, and find a way to make it okay for her to take what he offered without sacrificing her self-respect. If the end goal required a little deceit and manipulation, so be it.

  He looked at her again. She chewed on her thumbnail.

  A lot of manipulation. For maximum effect, he waited another half a second before shaking his head. “Never mind. Now that I’m thinking it through, I see it’s not going to work.”

  Her chin came up. “Why won’t it work?”

  Bait taken. “What I have in mind requires half a dozen convincing displays of serious, heartfelt attachment. It’s too much to ask.” He waited another beat before adding, “Of you.”

  She turned to face him, her arms crossed, brow ominously low. “What do you mean, ‘of me’? What’s wrong with me?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with you, per se, but you’re thin on real-life experience. I need someone who can make this look authentic, or I’m wasting my time and money. Forget I said anything. I’ll find someone else.”

  “Okay, first off”—she held up one finger—“I have plenty of experience. Second—”

  He took hold of her wrist. “You don’t do relationships. You have no experience with deep attachments.”

  “Oh, an
d you do?”

  The irony of her question coaxed a laugh out of him. “You don’t know everything about me, Jailbait.”

  That earned him a startled expression, followed immediately by a gratifying flush. Bothers you that I’ve got you wondering, doesn’t it? She tried to tug her wrist free but he held on.

  “Why not ask her, then?”

  “Who says I haven’t?”

  “Wow. And she turned you down. Who found you less than irresistible?”

  That she’d misinterpreted his comment was for the best. She wasn’t ready. “I don’t kiss and tell.” He kissed the inside of her wrist and let go of her hand. She absently rubbed her thumb over the place his mouth had touched, and shot him a cautious look.

  Not a single lie had passed his lips. Even so, he ought to correct her, but the flare of jealousy he’d unintentionally provoked proved a little too rewarding.

  Her lips hitched into a jaded smile. “Last night suddenly makes a lot more sense.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You showed up out of the blue, crashed my party, and fucked my brains out. Now I know why.”

  He already didn’t like where this was going. “Lauralie, I don’t know what you think you know, but—”

  “You came looking for the time-honored cure for a bruised heart—mind-numbing rebound sex.”

  Okay, he should have corrected her. “Last night had nothing to do with rebound sex.” And that’s all he could say, because if he told her last night had been about them, she’d take off so fast she’d leave skid marks on the shoulder of the road.

  “Don’t worry.” She patted his arm. “I happen to be a big proponent of mind-numbing sex. I don’t need to complicate things with a bunch of pretty lies. I never have.”

  She didn’t have the first clue what the hell she needed. “You’re a cynic.”

  Sunlight slanted across her face, turning her eyes to sapphires. “I’m a realist. Do you honestly think most of us are cut out for forever?”

  “Yeah. I do.” He reached out and smoothed the little V from between her brows.

  “Hmm. Who would have guessed you were such a rosy-eyed romantic.”

  “I’m not a rosy-eyed anything. I don’t think it’s easy. From what I can tell, it takes work, and compromise, and”—he laughed at fate’s way of punishing him with this discussion—“a shitload of patience, but I know the meaning of the word commitment, and if I make a one, I stand by it. Forever.”

  “I know the perfect girl for you.”

  “You think?” He brushed her hair away from her face. Were they about to have an epiphany?

  “Yep. Unfortunately she just moved to Maui.”

  The near-term choices were let her go or shake some sense into her. He let go. “Chelsea’s a great girl, but she’s not the one for me.”

  “Well, I’m going to give you the same advice I gave her before she left.”

  “What’s that?”

  She wrapped her arms around her body and sat with her back against the door. “Guard your heart. You let people in, and they trash it like a cheap motel room.”

  The strength of her belief showed in every stiff line of her body. Not for the first time, he wanted to hunt Denise Peterson down and rail at her for failing to muster up even a basic degree of accountability. Or rail at Lauralie for turning her mother’s shortcomings into a personal philosophy instead of laying them precisely where they belonged—at Denise’s doorstep—and expecting better of herself. But mentioning all the ways she was adopting her mother’s limitations would push her away, and he wanted to reel her in. “You proved my point.”

  “What point?”

  “You’re the wrong woman for the job. You don’t believe in forever, and you can’t even talk about the possibility without wedging yourself into a corner and getting defensive. You think my mother won’t pick up on this?” He gestured at her. “My mom misses no detail. She’s not going to buy us as a couple.”

  Lauralie uncrossed her arms, shook them out, and then tipped her head back, to the left, and the right, working the kinks from her neck. Finally, she looked at him. “Yes, she will.”

  “You think you can sell her on us? How?”

  “Like this.” She leaned over the center console, sank her fingers into his hair, and fused her mouth to his. Her breasts landed against his chest, and even through two layers of clothes he knew she didn’t have a stitch on under her sweatshirt. He imagined she was equally bare beneath the shorts.

  Painful as it was to resist finding out, he fought his way back to the well of restraint he’d drunk from for too many fucking years, because he hadn’t meant to turn this into a sexual challenge. Yes, he wanted her, and yes, less than twenty-four hours ago he’d unapologetically used sex to get her. Last night that move had felt fair. Today, after the universe had conspired to throw her world into a tailspin? Defining fair got much trickier.

  Trickier still when she moaned and arched against him, and what started as her trying to prove something turned into her trying to ask for something.

  Comfort.

  Instead of good tidings, the New Year had rained a shit-storm down on her. She sought shelter. Temporary shelter, granted, but even so he wanted to be the man to give it to her. She’d accept it from him—as long as it took this form. He got a grip on her hips, hauled her onto her knees, and took control of the kiss.

  Her hair swung forward, shielding them from anything beyond the kiss, but the sharp scent of smoke clung to the curls, reminding him of how easily fate could have twisted in a different direction, and he wouldn’t be holding her now.

  The realization set off another one of those primitive needs. This time he didn’t fight it. He shoved his arm between her legs, lifted her over the console, and positioned her on her knees astride his lap. A domineering move, he acknowledged, despite the fact that it put her on top. She thought so too, judging by her reactions. She bit his lip hard enough to bruise—punishment for reminding her she wasn’t in charge. At the same time, she rocked herself against his arm, still lodged at the apex of her thighs. She needed this, badly. The hot, wet seam of her shorts pressed against his skin didn’t lie.

  He tightened his arm, trapping her squirming hips in the angle where his flexors met his biceps.

  She bucked, putting one last effort into controlling the ride, then let out a little cry and wrapped her arms around his head.

  Surrender so sweet deserved a reward. He jostled her in the crook of his arm. Three times. Fast and hard. Her breasts, restrained only by her sweatshirt, bounced against his face.

  “Oh. Oh. Oooooh.” Her hold on him tightened. Her body trembled, then stiffened, and her husky moan filled the car.

  A second later she slumped forward, face against the headrest. He turned his head and kissed the curve of her neck. “That’s never going to fool my family. You’ll have to try harder.”

  She laughed, and gave him a weak hug. “That will get you disowned. I meant to demonstrate how convincing I can be with a kiss, but some people”—she drew away and rolled her eyes—“don’t know when to quit.”

  “Some people don’t know better than to squirm around in my lap.”

  “That’s a risk you run when you drag a person onto your lap.” Very deliberately, she squirmed again.

  He grabbed her hips to still her. “I’m the one who doesn’t know when to quit?”

  “Feels to me like we quit too soon.” Despite his restraining grip, she rocked forward, managing to grind his balls and his cock in one fluid motion. While he sucked in a breath, she licked her lips seductively. “There’s still plenty of work here, and I hate to leave a task unfinished.”

  His body ached to let her finish him, but after spending the last few hours sweating in last night’s clothes, he needed a long shower before he was fit to be worked on. “Sorry, Jailbait. I instituted a firm ‘No blowjobs in my parents’ driveway’ policy after an unfortunate incident my sophomore year of high school.”

  Her
eyebrows lifted. “Sophomore year? My, weren’t you precocious.”

  “I didn’t say I was involved. I said it was an unfortunate incident.”

  “Were you involved?”

  “I was sixteen, I’d gotten a car for my birthday, and I was in love. That’s all I’ll admit.”

  “Hey, you’re the one who wants to convince your mother we’re in love. Just sayin’,” she added when he blocked her hand from wandering to his fly.

  “I was in love with the car.” He swept her hair back from her face, relieved to see the desolate look haunting her features since the fire mostly gone. He wanted to keep it that way, which meant it was time to close the deal. “But when it comes to us, I think you’re right. The chemistry is very convincing.”

  Her expression sobered. She looked toward his parents’ property and cleared her throat. “Booker, I don’t pretend to be an expert on families, least of all yours, but making them think we’re”—she paused and made air quotes—“‘in love’, might be a bad call, even if your mother is overstepping her bounds. I have nothing to lose if things go sideways, but you could damage your relationship with your parents.” She turned back to him and pinned him with a serious look. “Have you thought this through?”

  Her concern took him by surprise. He’d been so intent on finding an acceptable way to help her, he hadn’t anticipated she’d worry about him. “The genius of my plan is in its simplicity. Nothing will go sideways.”

  She laughed and crawled off his lap. “Jesus, you’re cocky.”

  “I’m a realist,” he echoed her earlier self-assessment. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow night at seven.”

  Confusion notched her brows. “What’s tomorrow night?”

  “Our first date. Wear something pretty.”

  …

  Another outfit landed across the bed. Laurie sighed at the growing pile, and dug into her closet again.

  The first options had seemed too dressy, and the next, way too casual. Of course, she was aiming at an unknown target, considering Booker had given her no details beyond Wear something pretty. She pulled a slinky blue dress out of her closet and looked at it critically before shoving it back into the closet. Too…something.