by Avery Flynn
Leaving his home office on a Friday was the last thing he planned on doing, and yet that’s exactly what he did, not stopping until he stood next to the couch. Clover sat with her legs crossed, wearing black yoga pants and—God help him—a thin, oversized “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” T-shirt that hung off one shoulder and did absolutely nothing to disguise the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. The hint of nipple brushing against the shirt as she wrote something down in big loopy handwriting into a notebook drew his attention like a tractor beam. He shouldn’t look. He didn’t want to look. He couldn’t look away.
“What are you doing?” “To me” was the obvious ending to that question because whatever it was it had fucked with him greatly.
“Shhhh,” Clover hushed him, not even bothering to turn around. “I’ll catch you up at the commercial break.”
“Catch me up on what?”
“This episode of Flea Market Flip.” The show went to commercial then, and she glanced up at him, narrowing her eyes and giving him a naughty little smile that made his cock twitch. “You’re totally in violation of the contract, but I’ll let it slide since it’s our first Friday night.”
He was so lost. He’d blame the lack of blood in his brain, but it seemed to be his reality whenever he was around Clover. “What violation?”
“To binge-watch HGTV on Friday nights in preparation for hitting the flea market on Saturday morning.” She gave a little cheer and turned her attention back to the TV, which was now showing a commercial for birth control. “We’re totally going to find something fabulous to pop your cherry.”
The mental movie that started rolling at the phrase “pop your cherry” had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with a flea market unless she had a kink for public sex.
“I didn’t think you were serious.” There were a hundred—a billion—things he’d rather do with her—and to her—than go to some dirty flea market.
She shrugged, the move dragging the thin cotton across her full tits. “Too bad, so sad, buddy, because you signed on the dotted line.”
“You’ll never get a judge to uphold anything scrawled on a napkin.”
“Sure you want to gamble on that?” she asked. “Anyway, I already came up with our backstory. I know how you hate dealing with the details. Your mom was a little shocked when I told her how we met, but she took it better than I’d expected.”
There wasn’t a single part of those two sentences that didn’t make his chest burn. “You talked to my mom? What did you tell her?”
“That we met when you modeled for a wine and paint class I took.” She looked up at him, all sweetness and innocence except for the hard glint of trouble in her eyes. “I told her that I was a goner the moment you slipped off your tighty whiteys and were able to hold your pose for so long, even though I could see it was very hard.”
Good thing his family had funded Harbor City General’s new cardiac wing because he and his mom were both going to need it. “You did not say that to my mom.”
Clover let his words hang in the air for a beat before letting loose with a laugh that bounced off the walls. “No.”
“Did you talk to my mom?” he asked, too relieved to be pissed—although that would be coming just as soon as he could breathe again.
She rolled her eyes. “Oh my God, relax Mr. Stuffykins. How would she even get my number?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but the show came back on and Clover shushed him while patting the seat next to her on the couch. If he hadn’t been on the verge of a Clover-induced heart attack, he wouldn’t have followed her lead. He would have gone back to the office and pounded his head against his desk until the perfect solution to the Singapore problem fell out. Instead of doing that, though, he sat down on the couch—making sure to leave a sanity space of at least a foot between them—and settled in to see what kind of do-it-yourself renovating fresh hell he’d gotten himself into.
Chapter Nine
They were four episodes in and, God help him, Sawyer was actually rooting for a pair of DIY weirdos on his TV screen. Two sisters in their sixties—Eileen and Aurora—were taking on their husbands with the challenge being to pick and redo three pieces that worked into a classic boudoir feel. The husbands, Bob and Larry, were—unexpectedly—kicking ass. Was he rooting for them because they were dudes? No. Bob and Larry understood that people didn’t want delicate bedroom furniture. The men had put together a plan for a dresser, a bed, and a mirror each with a solid, rough-hewn feel to them. No matter what happened in that room, that furniture was going to take it and stay rock solid. Bob and Larry knew what they were about.
“No one is going to buy that stuff,” Clover said, holding out the bowl of popcorn she’d made. “It looks like it belongs in a cabin in the woods where you’d go to write your manifesto.”
“Wrong. It’s much better than all the flowers and velvet covered crap Eileen and Aurora put together.” He grabbed another handful of popcorn, buttery enough to make his trainer have a seizure, and watched as the two teams went into carnival barker mode in their efforts to sell their refinished finds.
“That’s called romance and putting people in the mood. It’s the vibe you’re going for in a boudoir.” She sat the bowl on the glass coffee table and, when she settled back against the couch, cut the one-foot sanity zone between them in half. “Not that you would know. Your bedroom is probably all glass and cheerful black.”
The fact that she’d thought about his bedroom made that very male part of his brain wake up and take a bow. It wasn’t like he was pounding his chest and going all caveman about it, but he couldn’t keep the smirk off his face as he stretched out his legs and extended one arm along the back of the couch. The fact that his fingers were now in touching distance of the blond strands that had escaped the messy knot on top of her head was purely coincidental.
Yeah and so is the fact that your cock hasn’t gotten below half mast since you realized your fake fiancée wasn’t wearing a bra. What are you, fourteen?
“Care to make a bet on the outcome?” he asked.
“What are the stakes?” she countered.
His mind filled with all of the inappropriate possibilities, but managed to clamp his jaw closed and stay in his seat until he forced every pornographic image behind a mental steel door. “Winner gets final say on what we get at the flea market tomorrow.”
Shit. That was only marginally better than the first ideas he’d had. Sure, it was more appropriate, but he had no intention of bringing anything home from the damn flea market.
Clover shoved out her hand. “Deal.”
She didn’t look the least bit doubtful. Why did he think he’d just been suckered? Because you probably have been, numb nuts. Still, he shook her hand—even that minor contact sending a jolt straight south. It was just what he needed to jerk him back to reality in a desperate bid for self-preservation. This wasn’t just a silly game. It sure as hell wasn’t a real relationship. The fake engagement was a month and a half of fun and games for her and six weeks of peace for him so he could settle the largest construction bid they’d ever offered. After that, she’d go to Australia and he’d have figured out a solution to the problem of his matchmaking mama. All he had to do was keep his dick safely behind his zipper and everything would work out fine. Only a complete dumbass drank the toxic cocktail of business mixed with sex when hundreds of millions were on the line.
“Oh look, you’re scowling again.” Clover shot him a cocky smile and settled back, this time eliminating the sanity zone completely so they were hip to hip. “Looks like somebody just realized he took on more than he could handle.”
Instead of confirming the truth, Sawyer turned his attention to the activity on the screen and ignored how good her soft curves felt pressed against him.
Twenty minutes later and Sawyer was left slack-jawed at the outcome. Bob and Larry had had their asses handed to them. Not only did they not win, they took the biggest loss in the show’s history.
“This show makes no sense,�
�� he grumbled, reaching out for something to soothe his wounded pride—sore loser, party of one. “If people want a table, why don’t they just go out and get the one they want instead of wasting their time totally redoing an old table?”
Clover snorted and twisted around to face him, the move bringing her even more firmly against him as she gave him a hey-stupid look. “Well, for one, there’s a thing called money and not everyone has as much of it as you do.”
“I know that,” he said, being difficult just for the sake of it—and because he hadn’t stopped thinking about how hot an annoyed Clover was since she’d jabbed him in the chest with her fingernail last night. “But are you seriously telling me you couldn’t find something in your budget range?”
Right on cue, the pink rose in her cheeks. “My budget is none of your business—and it’s not always about the money.” The tip of her tongue darted out and left her full bottom lip glistening. “Sometimes it’s the fun of making something new or refinishing a piece to show the beauty that was hiding underneath that no one spotted but you.”
“So you’re the flea market fairy godmother?”
“Come on, don’t tell me you’ve never experienced a thrill when you’ve built something.”
There wasn’t a damn thing he could say to that. He hadn’t even liked Legos as a kid.
“Oh my God.” She smacked him playfully, square in the middle of his chest. “You’ve never actually made anything, have you?”
He was the CEO of Carlyle Enterprises, he wasn’t supposed to be out there in a hard hat and a leather tool belt. “I make deals. I make plans. I make the big picture fit my goals.”
“None of which are tangible,” she said with just enough blue-collar superiority to hit a vulnerable spot he didn’t even realize was there.
“Really?” He turned so they were facing each other, only inches apart. The air crackled around them as the tension built. “You’re sitting in one right now. The Carlyle High-Rise was my first build.”
She didn’t look impressed. “Did you lay the foundation? Put up any of the beams? Paint the walls?”
“No.” The single word blasted out of his mouth.
“Then you have no idea the kind of fun you’re in for.” Her face broke into a huge grin. “To actually take something, transform it, and give it new life? It’s a little like magic.”
Understanding hit him like a wrecking ball, laying him flat. She’d been winding him up on purpose. Not to knock him down but to blast him out of his own comfort zone and get him to see the adventure ahead of him in the same light she saw it. Damn. For all of his IQ points, he hadn’t used any.
“I never would have pictured you as being so philosophical about stripping paint and rolling varnish.”
A teasing promise lit her eyes. “And I never would have guessed you didn’t have any experience working with your hands.”
Now that was just a straight up lie. “I never said that. You know very well that I’m good with my hands.” He reached out and tucked a stray blond hair behind her ear, letting his touch linger. “Very good.”
Her breath caught, but she didn’t move away as his fingers trailed down the soft column of her neck. Her pulse thrummed under his touch and one glance down at the hard peaks pushing against her thin T-shirt confirmed she was skating along the same fault line between sanity and lust that he was.
“Are you flirting with me?” she asked, her voice breathy.
“No.” He didn’t flirt. That was Hudson. Sawyer was the grumpy brother. He never flirted. Still, his hand didn’t drop from where he was touching her and he couldn’t tear his gaze away from her perfect pink mouth.
“Of course not.” She leaned forward, cutting the distance between them, so close he could feel her soft breath against his skin. “That would violate the contract.”
The temptation to dip his head the few inches to kiss her had his entire body hard and wound tight with anticipation. Lust ran through him like a runaway freight train. The little voice in the back of his head screaming that this was a bad idea suffered the same fate as it had in the supply closet last night: death by ignoring. Clover Lee had that effect on him. It was going to be a very long month and a half.
“The napkin didn’t say anything about flirting,” he said.
No, he was totally free to give himself blue balls the size of watermelons every time he came near his personal buffer.
“Ah-ha!” The triumphant sound escaped her lush lips as she straightened, expanding the space between them and dislodging his hand from her soft skin. “You are flirting.”
Was he? No. He was torturing himself. That was a very different sort of hell. “You take all the fun out of things.”
“No way.” She shook her head, the movement letting a few more silky strands loose from the knot on the top of her head. “I am the definition of fun. If it wasn’t for me, you’d still be in your office banging on your keyboard.”
“I don’t bang.”
“Not me, you don’t.” She shot him a cocky smirk. “It’s in the contract.”
The mental image came complete in full color and sound in an instant. Her blond hair spread out across the surface of his desk. The dusky rose of her nipples, wet from his tongue. Her long legs spread wide. The feel of her ass in his hands as he lifted her upward and sank deep within her. Oh hell. He was not going to get the image of fucking her on his desk out of his head any time soon, if ever. “Now who’s flirting?”
“I’m teasing and teasing is not flirting.”
He straightened his glasses and put on his best I’m-just-here-to-learn face. “Oh really?”
Anticipation zinged between them—as tangible as a touch. Every part of him ached to reach out and caress the full curve of her lips, roll her hard nipples, and slide between her slick folds. He fisted his hands on his thighs, fighting the primal urge to take her and put every fantasy of her he’d already had to shame.
“Most definitely not,” Clover said in a prim teacher voice. “Their meanings are completely different. Definitions are very important. Like this—” Quick as a blink, she pushed him back against the couch and pivoted so she straddled him, her hands on either side of his face. Her mouth was on his in the next instant, too soft to be what either of them wanted and too real to be a fantasy. Then, as fast as her sneak attack was, she pulled back but remained hovering over his lap, her breath coming in shaky, gasps. “Is not sex so it was most definitely not covered in our contract.”
Sawyer had never been so happy for someone to point out a loophole in his entire life.
There were practically angels singing a hallelujah in three-part harmony. The 0.2 percent of his brain that dealt in details immediately pulled together a list of not-technically-sex things that involved Clover naked.
“It was a bunch of words scrawled on a napkin that wasn’t witnessed or notarized, not a contract. But you’re right, it did not cover that…or this.”
He slipped his hands free from where they were trapped between their legs and grabbed ahold of her hips, yanking her down against his hard cock at the same time as he turned them both so she was beneath him on the couch. Any lingering voice of reason echoing in his head was obliterated the moment she opened her mouth and his tongue swept inside.
Soft and hard they melded together. Touching. Seeking. Getting lost in each other. He hadn’t made out fully clothed on a couch since…fuck he couldn’t remember right now. He barely recalled his own name. Her T-shirt that had seemed so thin and inconsequential before was like an iron wall between them. Still, he glided one palm up from her glorious ass, over the flare of her hip, and between their bodies so he could cup her breast, flicking his thumb across her hard nipple. She gasped against his mouth and groaned as her body arched beneath him.
The move left the long column of her throat exposed. He kissed and nipped his way down, loving every moan, every soft sigh she made as he did so. Echoing his mouth’s direction, he released her nipple and skimmed his fingers across her flat
stomach, past the waistband of her yoga pants, and to the juncture of her thighs.
“You are so hot and wet for me that I can feel it through this sorry excuse for a pair of pants,” he murmured against the spot where her neck met her shoulder as he fought the urge to give in to his primal side and rip the damn pants in two.
“It was the show,” she said, her own hands busy roaming his chest. “DIY gets my motor all revved up.”
Caught between his frustration at the lack of skin-to-skin contact and his refusal to stop touching her any way he could, Sawyer stilled above Clover. She was a hot, seductive mess. Her hair was half out of her bun. Her brown eyes had gone hazy, and her kiss-swollen lips were parted, waiting for more—and he wanted to give her everything she wanted.
“Does that mean you’re going to scream out ‘paint stripper’ when I make you come so hard your toes curl?” He rubbed the heel of his palm against her core, making sure to angle it so he hit just the right spot as he circled.
Her teeth came down on her bottom lip and she made a mewling that sounded like a mix of torture and bliss that he was way too familiar with at the moment.
“You’re just going to have to find out for yourself.” She took a long, steadying breath, then pushed a hand against his chest. “But not tonight.”
If his cock could have cried out in protest at that moment, it would have. Instead, Sawyer raised himself up and off of her, too many questions in his head to verbalize a single one of them.
She rolled up into a sitting position, looking disheveled and way more satisfied than a woman who hadn’t had an orgasm should. “We’re going to need to adjust the contract.”
“Napkin doodles aren’t a contract,” he said, reason roaring back to the forefront as blood started pumping north again. “And this wasn’t a good idea.”
“Maybe not, but it was hot,” she said, unabashedly. “Look, I’m attracted to you. Unless there’s a bazooka in your jean’s pocket, I’d say you’re attracted to me. So why not have a little fun and enjoy ourselves until I leave for Australia?”