His Off Limits Best Friend - Vivian Wood Page 0,68

Particularly that last one. Sandra.”

She looked at him and saw the game in his eyes. Did he know? Should she play dumb, correct him? Act like he thought she got her name wrong? What the hell was he on about?

“You’re a special girl,” he said, and leaned forward. He was dangerously close. Suddenly she felt his hand on her leg. It was close to her knee, perhaps not technically out of line. Still, she opted to cross her legs the other way, away from him, rather than actually remove his hand. He laughed.

“Okay,” she said. She wanted to buy time as she figured out his angle.

“I have a proposition for you,” he said, and her heart sank. She’d heard those words before. They sounded eerie coming from his father just a few weeks after Connor had spoken them. He’s going to ask me to break up with Connor for money. A part of her was thankful, though she wasn’t sure how she should respond.

As she began to tear through options in her head, his hand creeped higher on her thigh. Now it was in dangerous territory. “We both know you’re marrying Connor for his money. But that’s a very big commitment just for a payday. Don’t you think?”

Her eyes widened. How did he know? Did he know the whole thing? She was frozen, unable to swat his hand away. “I—”

“Let’s cut to the chase. Yes, perhaps it’s feasible you’d get a pretty generous cut if you stayed married to him for, oh, I don’t know, seven years or more? But that’s the prime of your life. Even if you got away with affairs, got lucky and he got swallowed up in nonstop work, you’re still throwing your life away for a check.”

She swallowed. He didn’t know. He just thought she was an average gold digger. Part of her was relieved, and part of her raged with anger. A gold digger? Maybe that was what she was after all. “I don’t—”

“Sweetie, let me make this really easy on you. You’ve gotten me hard every time I’ve seen you since day one. I have a separate suite here booked nobody knows about. What do you say you, me, and an hour in the honeymoon suite for twenty thousand dollars? Then you walk away for good. How does that sound?”

“Twenty thousand dollars?” It was the same initial price Connor had offered her, and she couldn’t help but echo it. But she saw his smile and realized he thought that was an agreement. “No! I—”

“Alright, alright,” he chuckled. “You drive a hard bargain! Let’s make it twenty-five. How many times are you going to be offered that kind of change for an hour of your services? And, I must say, I’m being generous,” he said. “It’s not usually my thing to pick up my son’s sloppy seconds. What do you say?”

Her face burned a bright red. Finally, her body started to work with her brain again and she pushed his hand off her thigh. “I say fuck you,” she said with a hiss and stood up.

As she walked off, she heard him laugh behind her. “Honey, that was exactly what I was trying to do!”

Connor jumped when she walked into the suite. He must have thought she’d busied herself for the entire morning. “Hey!” he said. “My, uh, golf game got finished early—”

“Your dad just propositioned me for sex,” she said coldly.

“What?”

“You fucking heard me. Twenty—no, twenty-five thousand dollars for an hour with him. That price sound familiar?”

Connor’s face turned to stone. “Where is he?”

“Last I knew, feeling me up on the breakfast patio.”

Connor blew past her and started down the hall. Shit. What had she done? “Connor! Connor, wait,” she said and started after him. What the hell did you expect?

By the time she caught up with him, he had already reached his father. The son of a bitch had stayed to finish his lemon slice. Sam could make out a few words, but not everything. His father stood, and she realized Connor had a good four inches on him. But his father’s paunch made him seem somehow larger. It also put a buffer between the two of them.

“…just sample the new family goods,” his father finished as she approached.

Connor decked him and Sam gasped. Bright red blood sprayed across the white tablecloth. She heard waitstaff as they ran around behind her. His father wiped his face, saw the blood and laughed. “You just wrote yourself out of a job. And out of