by Avery Flynn
“Leave her dining choices to me, Jacobson,” Sawyer said to her dance partner, but the smoldering look in his eyes was all for her.
And for once, her mouth stayed blessedly shut.
The other man stiffened, all the teasing drained out in an instant. “I’m just entertaining the lady while you’re busy.”
“I’ll take over from here,” Sawyer said.
“Of course.” Tyler released her and executed a deep, mocking bow. “Until next time… you know, I didn’t ask your name…”
Brain catching up to the fact that she’d ended up in the middle of a pissing contest that she highly doubted had anything to do with her, she ignored Sawyer’s scowling, caveman presence and reached out to shake the other man’s hand. “Clover Lee.”
Instead of shaking her hand, he brought it up to his mouth and brushed a kiss across her knuckles. “An unforgettable name for an unforgettable woman.”
It was sweet, but there wasn’t any heat behind it—from either of them—and he walked off the dance floor without a parting shot directed toward Sawyer. Whatever the story was behind this little bit of dick wagging, it had the feel of a long-running feud, and Clover promised herself to play it smart and stay the hell out of it.
She took a step toward the spot where she and Sawyer had been standing before, but his hand slid across her hip and he turned her into his arms in one fluid, confident move. It only took a few beats of the music for that socially-acceptable space between their bodies that had been so easy to maintain with Tyler to disappear between her and Sawyer as if it had never existed. His long fingers splayed across the small of her back, the tips of two fingers warm against the strip of bare skin above the skirt’s waistband and set off sparks that tightened her nipples and weakened her knees. Suddenly, her Cinderella-at-the-ball fantasy dance didn’t feel so kid-appropriate anymore.
“What were you doing with Tyler?” Sawyer asked, his palm pressing more firmly against the small of her back at the other man’s name.
“Dancing.” True story. Also, it was about the extent of her conversational skills at the moment, since she was fighting against a determined tide of desire from the touch of only two of his fingers on her skin. Pitiful. She really needed to get laid more often, if this was all it took to knock her brain loose.
“He’s trouble,” Sawyer said with disgust as if the words tasted like day-old radiation. “Stay away from him. That’s an order.”
Clover craned her neck to get a look at Sawyer’s face from this close angle. His jaw was concrete and his dark eyebrows were pinched together in an angry V.
Holy shit. He was serious—and he expected his “order” to be followed.
That. Was. It.
Her feet froze, jerking them to a stop in the middle of the dance floor. Other couples whirled around them as indignation bubbled up inside her to the surface, sizzled along her skin, and decimated her very feeble verbal filter.
“I don’t know what’s going on with you and Tyler, but I am not a fire hydrant.” She kept her voice low and her face serene but jabbed a finger into his unyielding chest to bring her point home. “I am not a bone.” Jab number two. “I am not a grubby tennis ball covered in dried mud.” A third for good measure. “I am not a thing for you two dogs to fight over. I am a woman with my own brain, my own will, and my own determination. Sawyer Carlyle, you might be giving me a paycheck, but you sure as hell didn’t buy me and you definitely don’t have the right to tell me who I can and cannot dance with—especially not when you are obviously more interested in your phone than the rest of the world around you.” Shit. That last part got a little too close to the truth hiding in her soft, caramel center. Bring it home, Clover. “My job is to be your personal buffer, and your mom has kept her distance. Was there someone invisible that I couldn’t see who was bothering you?”
She sucked in a breath as the rush of adrenaline pounded through her, practically lifting her off her aching feet. Oh, if only it didn’t feel so good to let loose like that, she totally would have learned to keep her mouth shut by now. God knew that skill sure would help her keep a job for longer than five minutes.
Job.
“Goondu,” the word rushed out. Her former landlady in Singapore was right. She was an idiot.
Her lungs clenched and her stomach dropped into the great unknown abyss. She’d just told the man signing her paycheck to go fuck himself. Well, not exactly in those words, but that was the gist of it and she needed this job.
Clover Lee, you are a self-sabotaging asshole.
She didn’t want to meet his gaze. All the saints and angels above knew she didn’t want to, but she forced herself to look up at Sawyer. She’d been in front of the firing squad often enough to know it didn’t hurt any less if she closed her eyes and thought of Australia.
But his glower was gone. He was…smiling? Yep. It wasn’t a big one, but one side of his mouth was definitely curved upward.
“Uh…” She gulped. “Sawyer…Mr. Carlyle…Umm—”
Before she could get any further in her often tried, and often failed, begging-for-her-job presentation (she really needed PowerPoint slides at this point), the ding-dong-ding of a xylophone sounded.
“Everyone, if I could have your attention.” Helene Carlyle stood on a small dais, looking at ease in that regal way that people who grew up with old money always seemed to have. “My son, Sawyer Carlyle, would like to say a few words in appreciation of Harbor City General’s amazing staff and all the great work they do there that you good people are helping to fund by being here tonight. Sawyer…?” She looked around as if she didn’t already know where her son was. Clover didn’t buy it for a minute. “Please join me on stage and afterward, I know Cecilia Dowers of the Chicago Dowers would like ten minutes with you, dear.”
Everyone in their vicinity turned to look at them, but Sawyer was still only looking at Clover.
He dipped his head down so his lips nearly brushed her ear. “We’ll finish this later.”
Then, he lifted her hand, flipped it over, and placed a searing kiss in the center of her palm before striding to the front of the ballroom while Clover fought tooth and nail not to melt into a puddle in front of Harbor City’s elite.
…
Walking through the crowd to the raised platform at the other end of the ballroom, Sawyer tried to remember the last time he’d had his ass handed to him on a silver platter that matched the spoon he’d been born with and came up blank. He definitely couldn’t remember a time when he’d enjoyed it quite that much.
Seeing Clover with righteous fury turning her cheeks pink and making her eyes sparkle as she stood there in that teasing slip of a top had been a clarion call to his cock—so much so that this walk across the room was a little more bowlegged than normal.
She was pissed and she didn’t back down from it. Even his mom chose well-meaning, if totally deranged manipulation, over direct attack. It wasn’t their way to face things with so much open emotion or derision. Good or bad, they all danced around the topic. He could have a giant glob of mustard on his chin dripping a river down onto his tie and no one would have said anything beyond that he might want to excuse himself for a minute. If they wouldn’t be straightforward to help him, they sure as hell wouldn’t call him out when he was acting like an ass.
But Clover? There were bulldozers that would have a harder time flattening someone. That woman did not hold back. She was everything the women—including tonight’s candidate, Cecilia Dowers—that his mother was throwing at him were not.
The idea smacked him right between the eyes and by the time he climbed the three steps to the top of the dais, he knew exactly what he was going to do next. The anticipation of Clover’s reaction was almost as enticing as his mother’s.
He squeezed past the band leader and took the mic from his mother, ignoring the speculation gleaming in her eyes. Oh yes, she’d been watching him with Clover and had timed this little announcement to perfection.
“Thank you
, Mother, and thank you to everyone here. I don’t need to tell anyone about the amazing work that Harbor General does. Our family’s biggest hope is that, with the addition of the Michael Carlyle Cardiac Wing, they will be able to continue to do what they do best—save lives.” He paused as the crowd clapped on cue, most of them probably only listening with half an ear. “But that’s not the only announcement I have to make tonight. In addition to celebrating the opening of the new cardiac wing, I have news of another kind of matter of the heart.” The silence after that line had a different feel to it. Everyone here might play at polite, but the uber rich loved gossip almost as much as they enjoyed caviar and champagne—and they’d been watching his mother’s Marry Off Sawyer campaign like they monitored their stock dividend results. “I’d like to introduce you all to my fiancée, Miss Clover Lee.”
As if controlled by an unseeing hand, the crowd turned to look at Clover still standing in the middle of the dance floor, and then everyone started talking at once. Clover stretched a wide smile across her face, clearly as excited as he to everyone in the room, but Sawyer could see the daggers she was shooting him from her eyes. He was going to pay for this later. Why did that bring an answering smile to his face? Out of the corner of his eye he spotted his mother. Unlike the others, she wasn’t looking at Clover. She was looking straight at him, shocked disbelief shining in her eyes for a moment before years of training took precedence and a placid look took its place.
She couldn’t call him out. She couldn’t keep pushing her candidates at him. As long as his new fiancée was in the picture, he was free to attend to the big picture of Carlyle Enterprises and Helene knew it. For her to do anything else wouldn’t be the Harbor City elite way. Mission accomplished.
Now all he had to do was manage the minor detail of getting Clover to agree to an adjustment in her job duties.
Chapter Five
Clover was finally going to learn how to fold a fitted sheet. Of course, she was going to gain that skill in the prison laundry after she killed Sawyer. She hadn’t agreed to lie to the entire world—and even if she had, the pompous ass should have given her a heads up first that it was coming.
The Prince of Carlyle Enterprises didn’t seem to realize that though, judging by his shameless grin as he accepted congratulatory pats on the back while making his way through the crowd. By the time he finally got to her, 90 percent of Harbor City’s one percenters had shaken his hand—with one glaring exception. Helene Carlyle had stayed back on the dais, armed with a barely touched glass of champagne and an assessing look directed at Clover. Before she could translate the look in the other woman’s eyes, the man they had in common stopped in front of her and the band started up again.
Playing the good fiancée, she sparkled up her smile and hooked her arm through the crook of Sawyer’s elbow before raising herself up on the tippy toes of her torture device shoes. “We need to talk. Now.”
She had to give him credit, Sawyer didn’t hesitate in dancing with her, right out of the ballroom. He took a quick left, followed by a right, and then opened up an unmarked door and pulled her inside. In the dim light filtering under the door, she took stock of shelves, filled with toilet paper, towels, tiny hotel soaps, and mini shampoo bottles, lining the walls of the space barely big enough for the two of them. Considering he’d found his way here as easily as a kid in a fairy tale following a breadcrumb trail, it didn’t take a huge leap of logic to realize he’d been in here before.
The fun answer as to why would be this was where Sawyer took his dates for some hot are-we-going-to-get-caught public sex. The real answer was probably more along the lines of him seeking out privacy for another of his never-ending business calls. Mr. Adventure, he was not.
She walked the three-step length of the supply closet before whirling around to face him—arms crossed and unimpressed expression in place—determined not to be the one to crack first. He’d tried that silent negotiating thing with her in his office earlier today. Little did he know that she’d honed her skills in the Turkish bazaars. He was way out of his depth.
“You’re pissed.” He held up his hands, palms forward.
Ding. Ding. Ding. “You think?”
He shrugged his broad shoulders. “It’s just a minor detail.”
“A minor detail? Are you nuts?” He had to be. How else could he talk to her in such a calm tone about an insane idea? “This is not what I signed up for. I’m not lying to everyone I know for you.”
“Don’t think of it as a lie,” he said, leaning back against the door and blocking off the one exit. “Think of it as a temporary truth.”
“You’re certifiable.” He had to be. A fake engagement to one of the most eligible bachelor’s in Harbor City so he could avoid his mom’s matchmaking attempts? Now that was an adventure to write home about. Not that she could because of…all the reasons in the world. It was hard to come up with a specific one when he was standing so close, smelling so good, and looking so much better than even the sexiest paparazzi photo. “Anyway, it’s not part of my job duties.”
“The ad did state that you’d do anything within the law to act as my buffer.”
She re-crossed her arms, mimicking his arrogant pose. How typical that he’d think she’d go along with his plan. She wasn’t some naive hick he could just lead around. “No one would believe we were engaged. I can’t fake attraction, and ‘uptight’ is just not doing it for me.” She was a liar, but that was beside the point.
Sawyer raised one eyebrow as if to say so that’s how you want to play this. Pushing away from the door, he took a step closer to her, all cocky confidence. “Don’t mistake me for one of the small-town boys you’re used to.” He took another step until they were practically pressed up against each other in the small space “Faking it…” He lowered his head, coming close but not quite touching her and making her breath catch. “Is not going to be an issue.”
True story, but she’d pack that admission in her hand basket and take it to hell with her. “Of course it will,” she halfheartedly denied. When his gaze narrowed, she rushed on. “And besides, everyone out there saw you ignoring me for two hours then fighting over me like a favorite chew toy with Tyler. Everyone’s going to assume it’s just a stunt to continue this feud and not real attraction.”
“They won’t,” he said and dipped his hand down, tracing a fingertip across the hem of her crop top. “Not if we play it right.”
He never dropped his touch below the material, never made skin-to-skin contact, but he didn’t have to. She felt his touch anyway, and it made her entire body crackle with anticipation.
“You just met me.” It came out breathy, but she was mostly shocked she was able to get it out at all.
He dropped his hands from her shirt and raised one to lean against the wall behind her head as his gaze slid up, locking on hers and nailing her to the spot with some unspoken command her brain couldn’t process but her body understood immediately.
“Everyone knows I’m not a man who waits when I’ve decided what I want.”
And there went her panties—and most of her brain, because instead of reiterating her hell no all that came out was, “You don’t know anything about me.”
“So I’ll learn.” He lowered his head, coming close enough that she could feel the brush of his words across her cheek. “I’ve always caught on fast.”
Oh God. This was either so bad it was good or so good it was bad. She couldn’t decide and her body didn’t fucking care. Her brain, though, wasn’t quite ready to give up the fight. “I can’t keep a job, my bank account’s almost empty, and I live in an apartment with a roommate. Everyone will think I’m a social climber.”
“Unimportant details.” His fingertips traced across her jawline.
“No one will ever buy that you’re attracted to me.” Okay, that argument sounded ridiculous considering what anyone would see if they walked in on them right now, but the thinking part of her knew this had crossed the line from fun adventure to ba
d idea and was desperate.
“If they think that,” he said, hooking a finger below her chin and tilting her face up so her mouth was just inches from his. “Then they’re idiots.”
His lips came down on hers and her brain gave up the ghost. This wasn’t about thinking. It was about sinful promises, wild nights, and knee-knocking lust—the kind that had her pulse going from sixty to light speed in the span of two heart beats. Dominant and focused, he teased her with his tongue, playing along the seam of her lips before slipping inside. Desire, hot and slick, settled low in her core as the kiss went from tempting to exploratory to mind blowing—and she gave back as good. What could she say? He might be her stuffy uptight boss, but he was an amazing kisser—the kind that made her want to fall into the moment and never climb back out. And she wasn’t the only one. They couldn’t get enough of each other, tongues pushing against one another, the occasional nipping when one of them tried to catch a breath, and even frustrated grumbling when clothes got in the way of their needy hands.
With a groan, he released her mouth, leaving her lips kiss-stung and hungry for more, and turned his attention to the line of her throat and that one spot right behind her ear that had a direct lust line to her clit.
“Sawyer,” she moaned as soon as he hit it. Her toes curled and her nipples stiffened with the lightest nip and lick from him.
He mumbled something against her skin that she didn’t catch as he dropped his hands from her face and let them glide down her curves and around to her back, dropping lower until he cupped her ass and lifted her upward. Thanks to the loose cut of her skirt, she didn’t have any trouble wrapping her legs around his lean hips and pressing her most sensitive spot against him. As soon as she did, she rubbed herself against his hardness—fuck, Sawyer was packing significant heat.