“While we were having dinner at Per Se. Right after suggesting we should ‘align our public personas for maximum market penetration.’ I nearly choked on my foie gras.”
“Okay, that is legitimately terrible,” I admitted. “But that’s what you said you wanted, isn’t it? A practical arrangement. A business transaction with romantic window dressing.”
“There’s practical, and then there’s treating marriage like a hostile takeover,” he countered. “I may be cynical, but even I draw the line at ‘performance metrics for bedroom activities.’”
“But you’ve turned down all of the candidates!” I exclaimed, frustration bubbling up. “Each one was too something. Too serious, too frivolous, too career-focused, too family-oriented. And now too... businesslike? It’s like you’re deliberately sabotaging this process.”
“Maybe I don’t know what I want,” he admitted, running a hand through his hair.
“Or maybe you don’t want to find it,” I shot back.
His gaze snapped to mine, something dangerous flickering in their blue depths. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” I said, standing up and taking a step toward him, “that you’ve rejected every qualified candidate for increasingly specific reasons. It means you’re running out of time to win your bet. It means I’m beginning to think you hired me under false pretenses.”
“False pretenses?” He took a step closer, his voice dropping. “Please, enlighten me.”
“Maybe you never intended to go through with this arrangement,” I suggested, taking another step forward. “Maybe the whole thing was just a game to you. A way to prove something to your friends, or to yourself.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, closing the distance between us even further.
“Don’t I? Are you trying to lose this bet? We have only a few weeks left!” I challenged, tilting my head back to look up at him.
“Maybe the bet doesn’t matter as much anymore,” he replied, his voice low.
“It’s thirty million dollars and literally why you hired me!” I was almost shouting now, my professional composure in tatters. “I’ve spent weeks finding qualified candidates, creating compatibility charts, orchestrating meetings?—”
“I don’t want any of them!”
“Then what do you want?”
“You,” he shouted, and suddenly his hands were cupping my face and his lips were on mine.
For a millisecond, I froze in shock. Then every rational thought fled my brain as I melted into the kiss, my hands flying up to grip his shoulders. The potential bride folder dropped to the floor at our feet, papers scattering everywhere. In that moment, I couldn’t have cared less.
This was nothing like the businesslike kisses I’d shared with other men. This was a wildfire, consuming everything in its path. His lips were firm yet gentle, commanding yet questioning, like he’d been thinking about this moment as long as I had. When his tongue traced the seam of my mouth, I opened to him with a soft moan, and the kiss deepened into something that made my knees go weak and my insides turn molten.
My hands slid into his hair, reveling in its softness, while his moved from my face to my waist, pulling me flush against him until every hard plane of his body aligned with mine. The evidence of his desire pressed against my stomach, and a whimper escaped me at the contact.
His mouth left mine to explore my jaw, trailing fire along my skin. When he reached the sensitive spot just below my ear, he paused, his breath hot against me.
“I’ve been thinking about this since the moment you walked in here the first time,” he confessed, his voice a rough whisper that sent shivers through me. “Looking at me like I was a problem to be solved.”
“You are a problem,” I managed, though it came out breathy as his teeth grazed my earlobe. “A big, arrogant, impossible problem.”
“But you like solving problems,” he reminded me, his hand sliding down to cup my ass and pull me tighter against him. “It’s what you do.”
The pressure of his arousal against me sent a bolt of liquid heat straight to my core. I arched into him, seeking more of that delicious friction, and was rewarded with a deep groan that rumbled through his chest.
“Callan,” I gasped as his fingers deftly unfastened the first button of my blouse, then the second. “We shouldn’t?—“
“We absolutely should,” he disagreed, pressing a kiss to the newly exposed skin at the base of my throat. “In fact, I can thinkof at least seventeen reasons why we should, and they all involve making you forget words like ‘professional’ and ‘boundaries’ and ‘client.’”
The third button popped open, revealing the lacy edge of my bra—the good one, thank god, not the practical beige one I sometimes wore to client meetings.
“La Perla,” Callan observed, tracing the lace with a reverent finger. “I knew it.”
“You’re insufferable,” I informed him, even as I arched into his touch.
