by Avery Flynn
“And who exactly do you think you are?” the other woman asked, each word enunciated with crisp, clinical disapproval.
“Just exactly who I am.” She smiled with as much warmth as the other woman’s voice. “Clover Lee.”
The woman blinked, looked at Sawyer, and then turned her focus back to Clover. “Are you saying,” the woman started, each word coming out slow and distinct as if she was pissed as hell but too classy to yell, “that my son would rather work than go have lunch with his mother?”
Son? Son? SON?!?
Oh shit.
This was why Clover shouldn’t get anxious. Only bad things happened when she let her nerves get the best of her. She needed to say something. She needed to apologize. She needed to find a hole big enough to swallow her completely.
She couldn’t get a single word out.
The woman’s mouth—Sawyer Carlyle’s mother’s mouth—twisted up and her eyes narrowed, but her freezer-burn level stare moved away from Clover and onto her son. “Sawyer, this is not over.”
Without another word, one of the most powerful women in Harbor City high society whirled around and joined the woman still holding open the elevator doors.
“Analisa, let’s leave Sawyer and his…person to their ‘jam-packed’ schedule,” she said.
The woman who’d walked into the office with Mrs. Carlyle gave Sawyer a sexy wink and then joined the other two. Maybe it was the woman’s sky-high heels. Maybe it was just her natural gait. Whatever it was, the slow roll of her hips as she strolled back onto the elevator snagged the attention of everyone in the office, even Amara stopped typing long enough to look up and shake her head.
The quiet hum of panic-tinged white noise buzzed in Clover’s ears as the elevator doors closed and took the trio of women down the sixty-three floors to the lobby. Heat beat at her cheeks. The agony of oh-hell-what-did-I-do-now was a brick in her stomach.
She turned to face Sawyer, who still stood in the middle of his open doors, staring at her as though she were an alien and he wasn’t sure what to do with her. She really hoped he chose to send ET home instead of dissection or worse. “That was your mother?”
Wow. Ah-mazing conversational skills there, Clover.
Sawyer nodded and started toward her, his long legs eating up the space between them. “Uh-huh.” His gaze was still firmly fixed on her, and his expression said it all. Dissection or worse.
She swallowed hard, the sound echoing in the office Clover now realized was intensely quiet. Even Amara had stopped typing and was staring at Clover like she was a bunny trapped in the corner and about to die.
“So I’m totally fired before I even start, right?” She offered a wobbly grin, but he didn’t seem to get the joke. Who needed Australia? Surely the endangered Rock Wallabies that she would have been helping could save themselves. “Okay then, have a great life and good luck with the whole pissed-off-mom thing.”
He stopped just out of arm’s reach, his hazel eyes seemed softer up close and held a hint of curiosity behind his glasses as if she were a puzzle he was determined to solve. “Well, that’s a new one.”
“What? Gotten fired before they were hired?” She let out a strangled laugh. “Oh yeah. It’s happened to me a bunch. There was this one time when I was applying at a weight loss call center when I told the woman on the phone that she was perfect just the way she was and the supervisor lost his—”
“No.” He shook his head. “No one’s ever gotten my mom to retreat.”
“I’m sure you’re exaggerating.” She gulped and tightened her grip on her purse strap as she scurried backward, slapping her hand behind her in an effort to hit the elevator call button. “I’ll be off then. Have fun picking out a much less mouthy buffer.”
Finally, she made contact and pressed the heel of her hand against the button. Now was when she should have turned around, faced the closed elevator doors, and pretended that no one was behind her while she waited for-ev-er for the elevator to make its way back up to the top floor. But she couldn’t. It wasn’t that it would be rude—God knew she’d just proved her ability to fly right past rude and sail into verboten territory. It was because of him.
Sawyer Carlyle might be dressed in a suit, the cost of which would finance her adventure in Australia and about a dozen others, but that didn’t mean he was civilized. Nope. Something in his intense hazel gaze promised other things, dangerous things, too-bad-to-be-good-but-I-don’t-care things.
He reached her side in a few determined strides, but this time he didn’t stop outside of touching distance. Instead, he slid his hand across the small of her back, sending a meteor shower of sparks across her skin, lighting her up from the inside out.
“Amara, please clear my calendar for the next hour.” He marched forward, the force of his hand taking her with him, as he strode toward his office. “Gentlemen, thank you for your time, but I’m afraid the position has been filled.”
Filled? Oh God, what had she done?
Chapter Two
Sawyer didn’t know what to do next. It was an unusual feeling. Normally, he always had a plan—that was the benefit of being a big-picture kind of guy. If one approach didn’t work, it didn’t matter because as long as he reached his goal, how he got there didn’t matter.
He flexed his hand as he walked around his desk and sat down, needing something to do with the hand that had rested on the small of her back so he wouldn’t be tempted to touch her again. He wasn’t a stranger to beautiful women, but the woman sitting in the guest chair scoping out his office wasn’t someone he’d put in that category—at least not in that suit.
The jacket was boxy and ill-fitting. The pants pooled at her ankles as if they were meant to be worn with much less sensible shoes than the nip of a heel attached to her dull black pair. Her hair was a soft, golden blond that was straight and styled parted down the middle. Her makeup was minimal, a light pink lipstick and maybe a little something around the eyes. Those eyes, though. Big, brown, and laughing. At him? Maybe. Definitely at the situation. It was unusual to say the least.
He’d just hired a woman for a job that hadn’t existed until a few minutes ago, and he didn’t even know her name.
He grabbed ahold of that fact like it was a cold beer on a hot August night—the solution to all of life’s uncertainty. “Let’s start with your name.”
She stood up from the guest chair and extended a hand over his desk. “Clover Lee.”
On automatic pilot, he reached out and shook her hand. There it was, that little zap of something extra again, and he promptly let go. “Clover?”
“Legally, it’s Jane,” she grimaced and sat back down, flexing her fingers as if she’d felt the shock, too. “But no one calls me that. My mom is very stuck in her boring small-town ways out in Sparksville. I mean our dog is named Spot, for God’s sake—and not ironically. So I guess I should be glad to be just plain Jane and not—”
“Do you have any experience as a personal buffer…Miss Lee?” he broke in, sensing she could continue for days with tales of “boring” Sparksville.
“No, but I am a fast learner and have an extensive international background.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a single sheet of paper and handed it to him.
Scanning the sheet, things began to fall into place. Not-a-plain-Jane Clover Lee had an obvious aversion to consistent employment.
She jumped from one temporary job to another almost as if each one was just an excuse to get to the next. She’d gone from weird odd jobs stateside to teaching English in Thailand or helping organize small business cooperatives in Ghana and then bounced back to the U.S. for another round of jobs he’d had no idea existed. Her resume couldn’t be more unlike what was expected of the well-heeled Harbor City elite if she’d tried. That’s what had thrown off his mom and probably him as well—she personified the unexpected. It might just be what he needed for something as ridiculous as a “personal buffer.”
He set the resume aside, the single sheet bre
aking up the clean lines of his otherwise spotless desk. “What are your salary requirements?”
Her cheeks turned a soft shade of pink, but she didn’t drop eye contact. “The other Mr. Carlyle spoke of a range, and I believe I’d be at the high end of that number. Ten thousand for six weeks of work, after that I’m gone.”
He laughed—a rusty bark of a sound that made her eyes go wide. That he, by himself, was worth almost a billion and the company worth a hundred times that didn’t factor into this. He had started out his life at Carlyle Enterprises negotiating with union bosses who were little more than mob henchmen before eventually moving on to brokering deals worth the GDP of small countries. Ten grand? It wasn’t much, but that was never the point of talking money when putting together an agreement. Winning was. If he didn’t have that, then that grand “big picture” vision started to waver, and he wasn’t about to let that happen.
Relaxing against the back of his chair, he let his lips curl into a patronizing smile. “That’s a lot of money.”
“It’s Harbor City.” Her pointed chin went up an inch. “It’s an expensive place, and this is a twenty-four hour, seven days a week demanding job—your ad said so.”
Mark that as another reason to smack Hudson upside the head. “Why a month and a half?”
“I have a prior commitment,” she said.
“Looking at your resume, it could be anything from a golf ball diver to a mattress tester.” His cock gave a happy twitch at the mental image of her out of that hideous suit and spread out on his king-size bed. Why had his brain gone there? Because it wasn’t your brain thinking, dumbass.
Her smile grew until she practically radiated sunshine. “I’m leaving for Australia.”
“What’s in Australia?” And why the hell did he want to know? If he kept getting distracted and couldn’t come up with a plan to submarine his mom’s marriage schemes, then he needed to reevaluate his negotiating abilities.
“Endangered Rock Wallabies,” she responded as if that answered anything.
A thousand more questions popped to the forefront, but becoming fascinated by his personal buffer was not on the agenda. “Five thousand.”
Her smile changed. It didn’t dim with disappointment, it developed an unexpected mercenary edge. “Nine point five.”
Silence was a negotiator’s best weapon and he unsheathed it, wielding it with the ease of years of practice. Most people broke only a minute or two in. The soundlessness made most nervous, it made the doubts in their heads louder. But once again, Clover proved she wasn’t most people. She sat straight in the steel-gray club chair across from his desk, her hands folded in her lap and her legs crossed at the ankle. Put her in different clothes and she’d look like a debutante sitting for her portrait, confident she was about to take over the world.
Clover leaned forward as though about to speak, and Sawyer knew he had her. She’d probably counter at seven and they’d end at $5,500. Not too bad a price to pay for someone capable of keeping his mom at bay.
“I can see working with you is going to be very demanding and, after meeting your mother, a serious challenge. Twelve.” One side of her mouth lifted, and he had the gut-sinking suspicion that he’d just walked into a trap. “Final offer.”
What the…?
Sawyer couldn’t remember the last time someone had surprised him in a negotiation. Or won. Doubling down, he leaned forward and placed his elbows on the desk. No way was he going to lose. She had to be bluffing. “Six thousand. Final offer.”
She let out a lengthy sigh and stood up. “And now you’re showing that you’re just as difficult to work with as your mother. Fifteen thousand or you’d better get used to boring lunches discussing the latest fashions.”
Sawyer blinked. And for the first time ever, he had no idea how to respond in a negotiation. Maybe she actually would be worth the money if she maneuvered his mother as expertly as she bargained. She started to reach for her purse as though to leave, and he knew he’d lost. “Sit down, Ms. Lee. I believe we have a deal.”
“Agreed.” A self-satisfied smile tipped her lips upward as she sat back down. “One last thing, I’ll need to be an independent contractor not an employee.”
“Why?” he asked before he could stop himself, still trying to catch up to the fact that he’d just been out-negotiated by a woman who’d earned a living bouncing from one ridiculous job to another.
Her steady gaze skittered away to the left before snapping back to him. “I don’t like being tied down.”
A lie or too much of the truth? It shouldn’t matter, but for some reason it did. “That explains your resume.”
Up went her stubborn chin. “Is there a document outlining my job duties?”
“There will be.” With a few taps and swipes on his monitor, he opened up a new document and then pulled out the shelf hidden into the frame of his desk where he kept his wireless keyboard. “Obviously you’ll need to be available 24/7.” He typed it out in bullet points. Fast. Efficient. Concise. “When you’re not acting as my buffer, you can help Amara with overflow work.”
“Why do you need a buffer?” she asked, grabbing the heavy chair by its arms and scooting it closer while she was still sitting in it. “Is your mom really that bad?”
His fingers faltered for a second and his mind went blank before the ingrained training fell into place. The first lesson in growing up as one of Harbor City’s elite was that no one talked openly about anything that could even tangentially be considered unpleasant.
“No.” He resumed typing out office tasks such as data backups and scheduling. “She’s wonderful. She’s just a little obsessed with marrying me off.”
Why did he say that? What was going to come out next? That his first crush had been his brother’s math tutor?
Clover leaned in close, as if exchanging this kind of personal information was the same as asking about the weather. “And you’re not the marrying kind?”
He pulled at his tie, his collar suddenly tighter than it had been a few minutes ago. “No. I’m the working kind.” Glancing down at her resume, her international experience caught his attention. “Do you speak other languages?”
She nodded, gliding her fingers across his bare desk as if she was unconsciously searching for something to fidget with. “I can speak Spanish, French, passable Mandarin, passable Thai, and Malay.”
A lightbulb went off. “As in the Malay spoken in Singapore?”
“Yep, I just got back a week ago from six months there teaching English.”
Negotiations for the deal in Pulau Ujong, Singapore’s largest island and the home to most of its population, had stalled with Mr. Lim. Bringing in someone more familiar with the culture and the language might just be what he needed to get to an agreement.
“I’m working to close a deal right now to build a trio of high-rises in Singapore,” he said. “Your insight may be valuable, but mostly I’ll need you for social events and at the office as backup for Amara.”
“She can’t send away your mom?” Clover asked.
He snorted. “Amara can do just about anything, but my mom mows her over. Mom convinced my dad to hire Amara years ago even though she had zero training or experience, and so Amara has a soft spot for her.”
“Why can’t you tell your mom to leave you alone?” she pressed.
God. How many times had he asked himself that same question since she’d started her Marry Off Sawyer campaign? More than he had dollars in the bank. But facing down Helene Carlyle wasn’t about being louder or more stubborn or blowing her off. Like mother like son, that approach just made both of them dig in deeper. Working around the force of will that was his mother took charm and finesse, something Sawyer had in very limited supply, if any at all. Plus, she was his mom, and you didn’t have to be Catholic to have the guilt that came along with disappointing your own mother.
“You met her for about two minutes.” He hit print on the document. The list of job tasks would be waiting for Clover in the
outer office as soon as she walked out the doors. “I’ve known her my whole life. When the woman has the bit between her teeth, it takes a helluva lot to dissuade her. I just need some time to come up with a way to do that. Six weeks sounds just about right.” He stood, needing movement to shove back the uncomfortable questions Clover raised. “Amara will show you to HR so you can fill out all the necessary forms and sign the nondisclosure agreement.” A discreet beep sounded from his monitor’s speaker, and a reminder for tonight’s gala popped up on the screen. “Damn.”
“Problem?” Clover asked, peeking around the edge of his monitor as if that wasn’t intrusive at all.
“I’ll need you to attend the Harbor City General Charity Gala with me tonight.” There was no way he was facing his mom alone after what had gone down today.
Clover jerked upright, her eyes wide. “Tonight?”
“I’ll pick you up at seven.” Gut tightening, he strode to his office door and opened it. “Be sure to leave your home address with Amara.”
Clover walked past him, muttering something he couldn’t quite make out. He should have shut the door as soon as she passed through, but he didn’t. Instead, he watched her turn that bright smile on Amara and wondered what in the hell Hudson had just gotten him into.
Chapter Three
Hands on her hips, head cocked to one side and chewing her bottom lip to the point of pain, Clover stared into the open doors of her small closet and tried to imagine anything inside as being appropriate for a big deal event like the Harbor City General Hospital Gala. Build a house for Habitat for Humanity? She had something to wear for that. A week in the desert working on an oral history of a native tribe? Yep, she had it covered. A party with Harbor City’s richest and snobbiest? That was going to take some creativity.
For that, she needed Daphne. Clover did a quick mental calculation. Her best friend was an airline attendant and in Portland tonight. So that meant it was still early. What the hell, it was worth a try. Clover grabbed her phone.