to telling him, only that would add a strain between them she wasn’t ready for.
She didn’t expect him to put aside his pride and go home just so she could get paid. No one was that kind-hearted. Especially with a stranger.
“We should come up with a story about why we’re here. Together.” Grayson lightly stepped toward her, a feat for a man so large to move with such grace.
“Ye mean, yer a billionaire with a one-million-dollar bounty on yer head and I’m the foolhardy bounty hunter letting ye drag me across the country and sleep with ye in a tent isn’t what to tell them?”
Grayson held his chest and laughed. “I bet they never heard that one sitting around a fire.”
“Not in a glamping lodge. Deep in the real woods, I bet that’s everyone’s story.”
“You’re very cute, Sabine. I like your sense of humor. Your personality.”
“My da is a card. Always joking. Was...joking. Then Norah... He’s not the same.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I like making people laugh. I have to make people like me, so they’ll let me put them in a car to collect my payday.”
“Are you talking about me?”
“Maybe.” She smiled and tossed her bag on a storage bench in front of the bed. “Oh, and thank ye, Grayson. This is a nice place to stay for the night. I would have paid for it. Ye didn’t have to use the last of yer cash.”
“I have comp options the rest of the way, so why not?”
In a troubled world, a decent and nice man was a gift.
Grayson Hart was the gift that kept on giving. So tall and broad.
He checked his watch. “It’s getting late, I don’t know how long they’ll be out there. Let’s just go make an appearance, chat for a while, and then we’ll say good night.”
“So, am I yer girlfriend? Yer wife?”
“We’re not wearing rings. I could shock the shit out of them and say we’re on a first date.”
“Then I could get away with not touching ye.”
Grayson pranced upon her, his hands closing around her throat, but the touch was seductive as his thumbs brushed against her collarbone. His cool fingers from being outside thrilled her skin. “You don’t really want to not touch me, Sabine. Do you?”
“That’s a lot of double negatives there.”
“You know what I meant.”
“I know what ye meant.” She took a breath. “Ye realize this is business for me. Yer a client’s skip. It’s hard enough being a woman in this business. I can’t let men think they could just...”
“Just what?” He gazed down at her, liquid fire in his hazel eyes.
“Are ye playing with me, or do ye really not know?”
Grayson
GRAYSON WASN’T SURE what he was doing, other than good ole acting on instinct. No pun because he used his instincts in his line of work. Only, he wasn’t playing a role. He was genuinely drawn to Sabine. And life had taught him, irony was a pain in the ass.
The one woman he saw a glimpse of a future with was someone trying to drag his ass home, collect a fee, and then planned to disappear back into the bowels of L.A. The place he didn’t want to go back to.
Maybe it meant he had to work harder.
He got the conflict of interest thing. But he’d felt they were more of a team at this point.
He checked his watch again and said, “Do you believe in after-hours?”
She knitted her eyebrows together. “Do ye mean, off the clock?”
“Exactly.” He felt his eyes grow wide.
She tapped one finger against her cheek. “So right now, I’m just a woman ye brought to a glamping park.”
“Can we do that? Pretend. For a little while.”
“Pretend what, though?”
“That we’re not in opposite corners.” He twisted loose waves of her hair around his fingers. “Pretend we’re just two people who like each other. Who want each other. Pretend nothing is stopping us. We can be those friends with benefits. I’m not playing with you, Sabine. I’m not trying to take advantage of you. I just want you so damn much. You confound the hell out of me and I need to figure out what this is.”
He watched Sabine change, rearranged in front of his eyes. Like he’d released a weight from her shoulders.
He’d heard Luke and Lexi joke about something called a two-second rule. Despite his brother being the bossy CEO most people were afraid of, and Lexi being the pink-haired general counsel of the hotel, one of them would say ‘two-second rule’ and next