The Negotiator

by Avery Flynn

  “Look, I know this is unexpected—which you should totally expect from me—but I need you to trust me and just go with the flow on this one.” If anything, her friend should be used to Clover always doing the unexpected. “Sawyer has this big deal he’s working in Singapore, and well, you know I was there to teach English. I didn’t know much about him and he didn’t know much about me,” she continued, hating every word coming out of her mouth. In a few years, they’d all laugh about the crazy that’s-so-Clover prank, but for now, she had to stick with the story she and Sawyer had agreed upon. “We never thought we’d see each other once we got back home, but when I showed up for the job interview and we realized that fate had thrown us together, well…we went with it.”

  Daphne shut her mouth, but there was no missing the worry lines on her otherwise smooth forehead. You couldn’t be friends as long as they had without seeing the hidden signs of trouble.

  “I love you, Clover, you know I’m behind you no matter what you do,” she said, her forehead still crinkled in concern. “But you’ve done some crazy shit in the past, and I just want you to be careful. This is even nuttier than that time you started the sidewalk self-tanning booth business, or the time you went to Egypt to volunteer on a camel farm and realized they spit, or when you thought the kebabs and donut cart was the way to finance your trip to Peru to work on jungle conservation.”

  None of those were things she ever wanted to relive, but this was different. This would work out just as she’d planned. It had to.

  “I know, this is more…” Clover floundered for the right word, “unexpected than most of my adventures, but I need you to go with me on this. Right now, Sawyer and I are perfect for each other.”

  For a long moment, neither of them said anything as the real truth itched its way up Clover’s spine. Then, finally, Daphne gave her a guarded smiled and raised her coffee mug in a toast. “What we badasses form…”

  “May no man put asunder,” she finished the familiar mantra.

  Yeah. Shared history. It mattered. And it made her lie even worse. She opened her mouth to say something, anything that would make this less painful, but the doorbell interrupted her.

  “Your prince has arrived,” Daphne said.

  But it wasn’t her prince. When Clover opened the apartment’s front door, it was Sawyer’s driver, Linus, waiting for her on the other side.

  Chapter Eight

  The back of the Town Car was even bigger without Sawyer inside filing the backseat with pheromones and hotness. Plus, she felt ridiculous sitting in the back by herself while Linus sat by himself up front wearing—not exaggerating—a chauffeur’s hat. The whole situation was making her knee jiggle and her motor mouth rev up. Okay, it wasn’t just that. It was that she was really doing this.

  Having a fake engagement.

  Lying to everyone.

  Living with a man she barely knew.

  But it was for a good cause, right? Fifteen grand, a new wardrobe, and acting as a good Samaritan personal buffer. Could she still be a good Samaritan if she was getting fifteen Gs? What was so different about this? It was an adventure. Her passport had more stamps in it than Daphne had shoes in her closet. This was just one measly trip across town to the land of the rich and home of the snobs. How scary could it be? Her pulse skyrocketed and her thoughts spiraled around her head until all she could focus on was the anxiety making her lungs tight.

  “Linus, I can’t do this,” she said, leaning forward so he could hear her a million miles away in the front seat. “Please pull over.”

  The chauffeur glanced up into the rearview mirror and gave her a quick once-over. “Is everything okay?”

  “I’m not a girl who’s made for backseats.” Her eyes widened at the double entendre. “Oh God, that sounded totally wrong.”

  Linus almost laughed. At least the rearview mirror reflection showed a corner of his mouth twitch. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Linus double parked in front of the bodega where she bought her weekly lottery tickets. She was out of the backseat and opening the passenger’s side door before he even made it around the front of the Town Car. She slid inside. There was a tissue box stuffed between the two front seats and a half empty iced coffee from Ground Out Coffee in the cup holder. It smelled different up here. Less like expensive leather and more like chilled mochaccino, cherry cough drops, and solid working class familiarity.

  Whatever the driver thought about her horning in on his space, he didn’t say a word as he got back in behind the wheel.

  “Thank you,” she said when he shut his door. “This is much better.”

  “Whatever you say, ma’am.”

  That false honorific went across her conscience like a cheese grater. “Clover.”

  Linus avoided saying her first name by nodding as he pulled into traffic.

  Three blocks closer to their final destination and the nerves were back, making her so jittery she felt like a money-eating vending machine that someone was shaking to get the last bag of Skittles out of. The energy built, needing to go somewhere, anywhere before she exploded—which meant only one thing.

  “So I don’t usually drive in the city.” And her mouth was off and running. “It’s usually the subway for me. You wouldn’t imagine all the weirdness you see down there. I saw a rat the size of a small dog last week and managed—barely—not to pass out. Don’t tell anyone, but rats are my weakness. It’s bad. Did you ever see that movie Ratatouille? There’s a scene where all the rats come pouring out of the ceiling. I can’t watch that part—and it’s a cartoon.”

  Linus, looking like he was out of an old movie in his dark suit, hat, and gray hair, kept his hands on ten and two and his eyes on the road. His silence just made her own verbal diarrhea worse.

  “One year for Halloween, my brother Bobby hid an army of remote controlled robotic rats he’d built under my bed. I had just gotten up to go to the bathroom when he started them up and they came rolling out, swarming around my feet. I still have nightmares about that. So, as you can imagine, avoiding the pony-sized rats on the subway today was nice.” She pivoted in her seat to face him, her grin as tight as her nerves. “Thank you for picking me up.”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Bì zuǐ shǔ xiǎojiě!” Oh yes, of all the Mandarin stuffed into her brain, it came up with “shut up rat lady” when it was too late to keep Linus from thinking she was touched in the head. “Sorry, I talk when I’m nervous.”

  “You don’t have to be nervous around me.” Now he did smile. No doubt about it. “In fact, I’ll tell you a secret: you’re not even supposed to notice me.”

  The statement was weird enough to cut through the apprehensive fog blinding her. “Why in the world not?”

  He shrugged and made a left onto Gramercy Avenue. “Because I’m just the driver.”

  “Sawyer notices you,” she said, jumping to defend her fake fiancé’s honor for the second time in less than twenty-four hours. “He said you saved his sanity by taking him to Vito’s.”

  “The Carlyles are different,” Linus said.

  “How?”

  His impossibly stiff back actually straightened another ten degrees. “I’m sure you know.”

  Oh, someone was suspicious—and he had every right to be. Besides Mama Carlyle, no one had more reason to doubt her and Sawyer’s story than the man who spent every day with him. Time to spin this one out, Clover girl, but not too much.

  “Pretend I just met them all yesterday. What would I learn about them?” she asked, keeping her tone light and friendly.

  Linus raised an eyebrow but otherwise kept his neutral expression and his attention on the road. “They’re good people. They’re a family. Mr. Carlyle’s death hit all of them very hard but they leaned on one another. I’d hate to be someone who messed with that bond.”

  “That sounds like a warning.” And a pointed one at that.

  “Only an observation.”

  Uh-huh. She might be from Sparksville, but small town
s didn’t mean small brains. “It was his idea, getting married so fast.”

  Another turn, this time onto Thirty-Third Street. “Mr. Carlyle has never been one to let anyone get between him and his grand vision.”

  “What was he like as a little boy?” she asked, wanting to know the answer more than she expected.

  Linus stayed silent and she thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then that smile of his broke out again.

  “Shorter.”

  “But otherwise the same?” She could picture it. He’d probably been the only four-year-old in his undoubtedly expensive preschool with a business plan in his backpack.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Clover,” she corrected automatically.

  He nodded noncommittally and pulled over in front of a high-rise on the corner of Expensive Avenue and Forget-About-It Street. Okay, those weren’t the actual street names, but it sure felt like it. Craning her neck as she looked out the passenger window, she could almost make out the name “Carlyle” written across the top of the building in giant sweeping font.

  Whip fast, Linus got out of the car, rounded the hood, and opened her door. “Mr. Carlyle is waiting for you in the penthouse. Just have Irving buzz Mr. Carlyle to let him know you’re on your way up.” He held out his hand to help her out. When she didn’t move, he dropped his voice so there was no way anyone heard his words amongst the clatter of Harbor City. “No need to worry, Clover. You’ll do just fine.”

  Were her nerves that obvious? Only if you’re breathing, rat lady.

  She took a deep breath and accepted the driver’s help out of the car, even though she’d been stepping out of vehicles unaided for as long as she could remember. Somehow she knew he’d see it as her being rude, and she couldn’t do that to him.

  “Thank you, Linus.”

  He nodded and closed the door behind her.

  Squaring her shoulders so no one would notice the way they quaked, Clover forced one foot in front of the other toward the opulent glass doors. She’d made it halfway through before she realized she had no frickin’ clue who in the hell Irving was.

  …

  It turned out that Irving was the doorman who had a big, shiny name tag—thank you whoever was watching out for her upstairs. He had a huge fluffy black mustache, perceptive eyes, and a Russian accent as fake as her engagement. She liked him immediately.

  The exaggerated Bond-villain pronunciation he used when he called up to Sawyer’s penthouse and his devotion to smoothing his impressive ‘stasche with his fingertips was a thing to behold. In fact, she was so fascinated watching Irving that she didn’t have any time to double think her life choices. No. Her stupid brain saved all the fun, torturous stuff for the looooong elevator ride up to the top floor of a very tall building.

  The doors whooshed open to reveal…a totally lux open-concept penthouse. It was all grays, blacks, chrome, and cold industrial chic without a living soul in sight. She was afraid to touch anything. Gobsmacked and a little petrified, she must have lingered in the elevator too long because the doors started to close. Leaping forward, she sped through just in time.

  “Hello?” Standing in the foyer, she glanced around the empty space. “Mr. Carlyle?” Still nothing. She took a tentative step forward, her high-heeled boots clicking on the slate tile floor. “Sawyer?”

  “In here,” he called out from somewhere down the hall on her left.

  She click-clacked her way down the hall and through the open doorway at the end before jolting to a stop. The room was massive, taking up the entire length of the building with floor-to-ceiling windows covering three walls, giving him a two-hundred-and-seventy degree view of the Harbor City skyline. Opaque glass block half walls divided the huge space into three distinct rooms: office, sitting area, bedroom.

  Sawyer was in the first one, sitting behind a glass-and-chrome desk, scowling at his laptop. If he was devastating in a suit and deadly in a tux, the man was scorching in a plain white T-shirt. Because he was sitting down she couldn’t see but her fingers were crossed that he’d paired the bicep-baring shirt with a pair of worn jeans that hung low on his hips and clung to his ass. He may have declared that they were hands-off, but he didn’t say anything about being eyes-off and a girl had to get her kicks from somewhere—especially when he hadn’t even slowed down in typing since she’d taken a step inside his domain.

  When he didn’t look up or acknowledge her presence, she cleared her throat. “I really hope you pay the cleaning crew extra for all the Windex they have to use,” she said, breaking the silence.

  Sawyer looked up, took off his glasses, and rubbed the area under his brown-green eyes. Then, he looked around as if he’d never seen the room before.

  After a quick perusal that skipped right over her, he pushed his glasses back in place and dropped his gaze back to his screen. “The doorman should be up with your bags soon.”

  “That’s what Irving said.” Now this wasn’t awkward. Not. At. All.

  “Irving?” Sawyer asked, his fingers poised on the keyboard.

  “The doorman.”

  “Huh.” One dark eyebrow arched upward above the top of his glasses. “I’d always figured him for something more like Vladimir.”

  He went back to typing while she lingered in the doorway feeling as guilty and excited as a teenager loitering outside a liquor store.

  Instead of taking the hint and going on an exploratory mission, her nerves took ahold of her mouth. “So what’s the plan?”

  They had backgrounds to plot, stories to come up with, and an entire secret love affair to create before Sawyer’s mother got a chance to break them.

  He kept typing. “You settle into your suite on the other end of the hall and I figure out what in the hell is sinking this Singapore deal.”

  “You’re working on it from home? On a Friday?” That was…not what she expected.

  “Always.” A soft ding sounded and his fingers made only the briefest of pauses as they clickity-clacked across the keyboard. “That’ll be your bags.”

  Cheeks burning at the obvious dismissal, Clover spun on the ball of her foot and marched back down the way she’d come. Fine. Let Mr. Work From Home pound his frustration out on the poor defenseless keyboard. She’d do the fake backstory plotting on her own. His mom was just going to love hearing about how they met at a wine and paint class where Sawyer had been the nude model.

  …

  “You crackhead!” Clover railed, her voice not needing to be too loud in the all glass and metal penthouse for it to carry everywhere. “Don’t do it. You are waaaaaaaay overspending.”

  Sawyer glanced up at the empty doorway of his office. The television had gone on about twenty minutes ago after what seemed like an eternity of Clover singing along to Top 40. She’d done it for hours, her alto filling up the otherwise silent penthouse. Of course she’d sing as she unpacked and did whatever else she’d been doing for the past few hours. He’d done his best not to picture it. Especially when he’d heard the shower turn on. Nope. He hadn’t imagined her naked and soapy as the water slid down her creamy skin. And he hadn’t hummed along with Clover’s song, he had just…rhythmically cleared his throat…on key. Thank God she’d moved on from singing to yelling at the people on the TV.

  “Ugh. Not pink.” She made a melodramatic groan. “Just because the challenge is make a woman’s bedroom doesn’t mean it has to be pink!”

  Calling himself every word for dumbass he could think of as the setting sun’s light streamed in from the window behind him, he refocused on the gibberish on his screen. Numbers and ideas were thrown together with all the illogical randomness of a monkey throwing shit at the zoo. So much for his sacred work from home time. For the second time that day, he erased the mess he’d been typing.

  The first time he’d hit the delete button had been after his mom had called. He hadn’t picked up. Not the first time. Not the second time. And definitely not the third. If he had, his mom would have known something was up. Fridays wer
e sacrosanct for him and everyone knew it. He worked without interruption from the time he walked out of his post-workout shower to the single glass of single-malt Scotch and the eleven p.m. international business roundup podcast. It was usually his most productive planning and plotting day of the week.

  “Ohhhh,” Clover crooned. “That is a brilliant idea for retooling that ratty chair.”

  The six-hotel job in Rio? The pitch had come to him on a Friday. The idea for ten high-rise office complexes in Dubai? Yep, on a Friday. The missing piece of a proposal for a luxury tower in London? Happened on a Friday. But this Friday? He’d come up with exactly shit even as the clock ticked down on the call for proposals on the Singapore trio of high-rises job. Why? Because instead of being able to concentrate, he’d been quietly humming—okay singing—along to whatever pop crap Clover had warbled.

  “Fuck this.” He pushed back from his desk and strode to the door. This was his house. He could tell her to be silent. Order her, really. He was the boss.

  He got to the door and…hesitated. He peeked around the doorframe. The hallway was long—the penthouse took up one quarter of the top floor of The Carlyle High-Rise. Each of the four penthouses had a unique glass-and-steel extension on the building’s corner that allowed them a two-hundred-and-seventy-degree view of the city skyline. The rest of the penthouse was more typical with an open floor plan that gave him a straight shot visual from his door to the living room. Instead of the market report or the 24/7 business news channel on his big screen, there was a woman in overalls going to town on a chair with a power saw. All he could see of Clover was the back of her head as the screen had her total attention.

  “You are going to kick those douchebags’ patriarchal asses!” Clover said, raising her fist in the air above the back of the couch.