I shut the door before he could say a thing and returned to the kitchen, where Katie was gingerly eating her omelet. “This is really good,” she said. Then her eyes narrowed as they met mine. “So what else did you learn about me while I was all drunk and vulnerable?”
I pulled up a stool and joined her at the bar. “Not much. Just that you like to snuggle.” She blushed something fierce and I decided to let her off the hook. “Already found out everything I need to know anyway.”
“Such as?”
“Your standard stuff. Criminal record, background check, known associates.”
Katie started to laugh, but then gathered I was serious. “Really?”
“I’ve had you looked into.”
“Come again?”
“I’ve had Jude run a security check on you. On your ex-fiancé too.” Unfortunately the guy was clean, criminally speaking. I flexed my fingers, playing with my rings, distracted by the thought of that asshole hovering over Katie at the club, doing up his fucking belt.
I attacked my omelet, irritated as fuck that I didn’t clock the dude when I had the chance.
Katie was staring at me. “Why would you do that?”
“Because there are things I need to know before I get involved with you. That might sound cynical, but it’s my reality.”
“You could’ve just asked me. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
“Not the way it works,” I said. “If we do this, we do it my way.”
She made a cuteharrumphnoise that made her sound like an uptight old lady. “Who says we’re doing this?”
“If we weren’t, I wouldn’t still be here.” I stared her down for a few seconds, then cut the flirting and leveled with her. “Look, Katie. It’s a lot of money. And I don’t see you having any problem telling me to go fuck myself if you don’t want me here, but you haven’t done that yet. Which tells me I’ve already won you over, or at the very least, I’m about to.”
“Maybe I just want the eggs,” she said. “And this beautiful burnt bacon.” She munched her bacon and smiled.
Damn. The girl was cute even when she was busting my balls.
Cuter, even.
“Don’t think so, babe,” I said. “But nice try.” I didn’t love this part, but I pulled the folded letter envelope from my back pocket and handed it to her. “While you’re deciding to say yes… I didn’t want to lay this on you last night, with everything else, but we should go over it.”
Katie opened the unsealed envelope and peeked at the papers inside.
“It’s a contract. An NDA,” I said. “Brody insisted.”
She examined the papers in her hand, scanning over the legal contract.
“It’s a Non-Disclosure Agreement. It means—”
“I know what an NDA is,” she said, leafing through to the last page, where the signature lines were. “I’m not signing this.” She handed it back to me.
Damn. The girl had backbone. “Brody won’t like that.”
She ate her omelet in silence, in careful little bites, like she was still afraid she might hurl.
“You realize I’m being asked to go on a six-week tour in a foreign country with a man I barely know, pretending to be his lover, surrounded by other men—giant men, incidentally,” she added, eying me, “who all work for him. I need to know that I have some protection. If this thing goes bad, if you turn out to be the world’s biggest creep, I need to know I can say that to whoever I need to say that to.”
She had one hell of a point.
I folded the envelope and tucked it away. “I can live with that.”
“What about Brody?”
