“Look, I know this is unexpected—which you should totally expect from me—but I need you to trust me and just go with the flow on this one.” If anything, her friend should be used to Clover always doing the unexpected. “Sawyer has this big deal he’s working in Singapore, and well, you know I was there to teach English. I didn’t know much about him and he didn’t know much about me,” she continued, hating every word coming out of her mouth. In a few years, they’d all laugh about the crazy that’s-so-Clover prank, but for now, she had to stick with the story she and Sawyer had agreed upon. “We never thought we’d see each other once we got back home, but when I showed up for the job interview and we realized that fate had thrown us together, well…we went with it.”
Daphne shut her mouth, but there was no missing the worry lines on her otherwise smooth forehead. You couldn’t be friends as long as they had without seeing the hidden signs of trouble.
“I love you, Clover, you know I’m behind you no matter what you do,” she said, her forehead still crinkled in concern. “But you’ve done some crazy shit in the past, and I just want you to be careful. This is even nuttier than that time you started the sidewalk self-tanning booth business, or the time you went to Egypt to volunteer on a camel farm and realized they spit, or when you thought the kebabs and donut cart was the way to finance your trip to Peru to work on jungle conservation.”
None of those were things she ever wanted to relive, but this was different. This would work out just as she’d planned. It had to.
“I know, this is more…” Clover floundered for the right word, “unexpected than most of my adventures, but I need you to go with me on this. Right now, Sawyer and I are perfect for each other.”
For a long moment, neither of them said anything as the real truth itched its way up Clover’s spine. Then, finally, Daphne gave her a guarded smiled and raised her coffee mug in a toast. “What we badasses form…”
“May no man put asunder,” she finished the familiar mantra.
Yeah. Shared history. It mattered. And it made her lie even worse. She opened her mouth to say something, anything that would make this less painful, but the doorbell interrupted her.
“Your prince has arrived,” Daphne said.
But it wasn’t her prince. When Clover opened the apartment’s front door, it was Sawyer’s driver, Linus, waiting for her on the other side.
Chapter Eight
The back of the Town Car was even bigger without Sawyer inside filing the backseat with pheromones and hotness. Plus, she felt ridiculous sitting in the back by herself while Linus sat by himself up front wearing—not exaggerating—a chauffeur’s hat. The whole situation was making her knee jiggle and her motor mouth rev up. Okay, it wasn’t just that. It was that she was really doing this.
Having a fake engagement.
Lying to everyone.
Living with a man she barely knew.
But it was for a good cause, right? Fifteen grand, a new wardrobe, and acting as a good Samaritan personal buffer. Could she still be a good Samaritan if she was getting fifteen Gs? What was so different about this? It was an adventure. Her passport had more stamps in it than Daphne had shoes in her closet. This was just one measly trip across town to the land of the rich and home of the snobs. How scary could it be? Her pulse skyrocketed and her thoughts spiraled around her head until all she could focus on was the anxiety making her lungs tight.
“Linus, I can’t do this,” she said, leaning forward so he could hear her a million miles away in the front seat. “Please pull over.”
The chauffeur glanced up into the rearview mirror and gave her a quick once-over. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m not a girl who’s made for backseats.” Her eyes widened at the double entendre. “Oh God, that sounded totally wrong.”
Linus almost laughed. At least the rearview mirror reflection showed a corner of his mouth twitch. “Yes, ma’am.”
Linus double parked in front of the bodega where she bought her weekly lottery tickets. She was out of the backseat and opening the passenger’s side door before he even made it around the front of the Town Car. She slid inside. There was a tissue box stuffed between the two front seats and a half empty iced coffee from Ground Out Coffee in the cup holder. It smelled different up here. Less like expensive leather and more like chilled mochaccino, cherry cough drops, and solid working class familiarity.
Whatever the driver thought about her horning in on his space, he didn’t say a word as he got back in behind the wheel.
“Thank you,” she said when he shut his door. “This is much better.”
“Whatever you say, ma’am.”
That false honorific went across her conscience like a cheese grater. “Clover.”
Linus avoided saying her first name by nodding as he pulled into traffic.
Three blocks closer to their final destination and the nerves were back, making her so jittery she felt like a money-eating vending machine that someone was shaking to get the last bag of Skittles out of. The energy built, needing to go somewhere, anywhere before she exploded—which meant only one thing.
“So I don’t usually drive in the city.” And her mouth was off and running. “It’s usually the subway for me. You wouldn’t imagine all the weirdness you see down there. I saw a rat the size of a small dog last week and managed—barely—not to pass out. Don’t tell anyone, but rats are my weakness. It’s bad. Did you ever see that movie Ratatouille? There’s a scene where all the rats come pouring out of the ceiling. I can’t watch that part—and it’s a cartoon.”
Linus, looking like he was out of an old movie in his dark suit, hat, and gray hair, kept his hands on ten and two and his eyes on the road. His silence just made her own verbal diarrhea worse.
“One year for Halloween, my brother Bobby hid an army of remote controlled robotic rats he’d built under my bed. I had just gotten up to go to the bathroom when he started them up and they came rolling out, swarming around my feet. I still have nightmares about that. So, as you can imagine, avoiding the pony-sized rats on the subway today was nice.” She pivoted in her seat to face him, her grin as tight as her nerves. “Thank you for picking me up.”
“Of course,” he said.
“Bì zuǐ shǔ xiǎojiě!” Oh yes, of all the Mandarin stuffed into her brain, it came up with “shut up rat lady” when it was too late to keep Linus from thinking she was touched in the head. “Sorry, I talk when I’m nervous.”
“You don’t have to be nervous around me.” Now he did smile. No doubt about it. “In fact, I’ll tell you a secret: you’re not even supposed to notice me.”
The statement was weird enough to cut through the apprehensive fog blinding her. “Why in the world not?”
He shrugged and made a left onto Gramercy Avenue. “Because I’m just the driver.”
“Sawyer notices you,” she said, jumping to defend her fake fiancé’s honor for the second time in less than twenty-four hours. “He said you saved his sanity by taking him to Vito’s.”
“The Carlyles are different,” Linus said.
“How?”
His impossibly stiff back actually straightened another ten degrees. “I’m sure you know.”
Oh, someone was suspicious—and he had every right to be. Besides Mama Carlyle, no one had more reason to doubt her and Sawyer’s story than the man who spent every day with him. Time to spin this one out, Clover girl, but not too much.