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“No, Hudson,” she says, the fire in her voice stirring my blood. “You don’t give up. You need me to do this.”
I did. Like it or not, if I walked now, with half the time gone, finding a replacement would be beyond suspicious and— Shit. I’ve got myself in deep.
“We’re not on the same page, Scarlett. And we have to be if we’re going to move it along. Yet here you are, lying about something simple.”
“Where I live doesn’t matter. This isn’t for the government or the police.”
I need time that I don’t have to think this through. I need her to play my game. I need…I need Scarlett. “It matters to me. If I can’t trust you over that, or you can’t trust me enough to tell me where you actually live, then it won’t work. I demand total honesty, I told you that.”
She scoots closer to me on the big, wide leather car seat. We’re in our own private cocoon here, one of the benefits of my own bespoke town car. Scarlett searches my face. “No one is totally honest, that’s not how things work.”
It is in my world. Relationships are messy. Fake ones, it seems, included.
“It does here,” I say quietly. “It’s who I am, Scarlett. To do this properly, I need that from you, because they’ll sniff out something wrong in this fucking interview.”
“Hudson…”
“Scarlett, just tell me. What’s it going to be?”
Chapter Twenty
Scarlett
It’s the perfect opportunity to tell him. Everything. To just come clean and hope for the best.
Okay, not hope, because that’s the kind of wishy-washy thing he doesn’t like. Hudson likes plans and smart moves, and coming clean would normally be just that. And with everything that’s happened between us, by the way he’s touching me, looking at me like he wants another taste, I could work that.
Use my actual brain, solve the problem by coming up with a smart answer for him.
But I can’t.
All actions like that come with a risk, and risk is one thing I can’t do. Not now. Not after what Danny told me.
If Hudson turned me down, broke the contract, then I’d have zero money. I’ve read the fine print. Oh, I’d get the pay for the work at the office, but the rest? The real payout, the one I want for Danny? The one I now need for him? No. Not a cent.
And, just as bad as that is this: we’re in this now. Deep enough that the time count to what he wants doesn’t leave him room. He can walk away, yes, but he won’t have time to find someone else to do this now. I’m trapped.
And I need not to be.
I need to think. I slide my hand up from his thigh, over his hard chest that lies beneath the elegant suit, and twist my fingers into the tie and draw myself up close. His fingers are still cradling my face, but no longer doing that sublime and distracting dance against my lips.
“Are you trying to seduce me, Scarlett?”
His voice is low, dark velvet, quietly dangerous, and it’s a calling to my blood. I know this can get away from me, fast. “No.”
If I was a different kind of woman, a femme fatale, one of the sleek, effortlessly elegant women he no doubt slept with, I’d ask if he wanted me to.
But I don’t have the chutzpah for that. Instead, I close the gap and kiss him slow.
And he lets me.
A quiet exploration of a kiss, where I taste his lips, lick a path of my own, dip inside, pressing into him. He lets me. But he doesn’t kiss me back. My heart thumps hard in my chest, my pulse lurching. I’m not glamorous or powerful. I’m just me. But I know he wants me. The dark and hungry looks he’s given…his kisses and touches and the sex. Oh my God, the sex.
I know he wants me for some reason.
I don’t know why.
He could have his pick of any woman. And maybe it’s because I’m different or maybe it’s because I’m there and time is short and it’s smarter for him to use my attraction to make this seem real. I don’t know. But I’m ashamed to say, even if it’s the latter, then I’ll take it.
