Brain catching up to the fact that she’d ended up in the middle of a pissing contest that she highly doubted had anything to do with her, she ignored Sawyer’s scowling, caveman presence and reached out to shake the other man’s hand. “Clover Lee.”
Instead of shaking her hand, he brought it up to his mouth and brushed a kiss across her knuckles. “An unforgettable name for an unforgettable woman.”
It was sweet, but there wasn’t any heat behind it—from either of them—and he walked off the dance floor without a parting shot directed toward Sawyer. Whatever the story was behind this little bit of dick wagging, it had the feel of a long-running feud, and Clover promised herself to play it smart and stay the hell out of it.
She took a step toward the spot where she and Sawyer had been standing before, but his hand slid across her hip and he turned her into his arms in one fluid, confident move. It only took a few beats of the music for that socially-acceptable space between their bodies that had been so easy to maintain with Tyler to disappear between her and Sawyer as if it had never existed. His long fingers splayed across the small of her back, the tips of two fingers warm against the strip of bare skin above the skirt’s waistband and set off sparks that tightened her nipples and weakened her knees. Suddenly, her Cinderella-at-the-ball fantasy dance didn’t feel so kid-appropriate anymore.
“What were you doing with Tyler?” Sawyer asked, his palm pressing more firmly against the small of her back at the other man’s name.
“Dancing.” True story. Also, it was about the extent of her conversational skills at the moment, since she was fighting against a determined tide of desire from the touch of only two of his fingers on her skin. Pitiful. She really needed to get laid more often, if this was all it took to knock her brain loose.
“He’s trouble,” Sawyer said with disgust as if the words tasted like day-old radiation. “Stay away from him. That’s an order.”
Clover craned her neck to get a look at Sawyer’s face from this close angle. His jaw was concrete and his dark eyebrows were pinched together in an angry V.
Holy shit. He was serious—and he expected his “order” to be followed.
That. Was. It.
Her feet froze, jerking them to a stop in the middle of the dance floor. Other couples whirled around them as indignation bubbled up inside her to the surface, sizzled along her skin, and decimated her very feeble verbal filter.
“I don’t know what’s going on with you and Tyler, but I am not a fire hydrant.” She kept her voice low and her face serene but jabbed a finger into his unyielding chest to bring her point home. “I am not a bone.” Jab number two. “I am not a grubby tennis ball covered in dried mud.” A third for good measure. “I am not a thing for you two dogs to fight over. I am a woman with my own brain, my own will, and my own determination. Sawyer Carlyle, you might be giving me a paycheck, but you sure as hell didn’t buy me and you definitely don’t have the right to tell me who I can and cannot dance with—especially not when you are obviously more interested in your phone than the rest of the world around you.” Shit. That last part got a little too close to the truth hiding in her soft, caramel center. Bring it home, Clover. “My job is to be your personal buffer, and your mom has kept her distance. Was there someone invisible that I couldn’t see who was bothering you?”
She sucked in a breath as the rush of adrenaline pounded through her, practically lifting her off her aching feet. Oh, if only it didn’t feel so good to let loose like that, she totally would have learned to keep her mouth shut by now. God knew that skill sure would help her keep a job for longer than five minutes.
Job.
“Goondu,” the word rushed out. Her former landlady in Singapore was right. She was an idiot.
Her lungs clenched and her stomach dropped into the great unknown abyss. She’d just told the man signing her paycheck to go fuck himself. Well, not exactly in those words, but that was the gist of it and she needed this job.
Clover Lee, you are a self-sabotaging asshole.
She didn’t want to meet his gaze. All the saints and angels above knew she didn’t want to, but she forced herself to look up at Sawyer. She’d been in front of the firing squad often enough to know it didn’t hurt any less if she closed her eyes and thought of Australia.
But his glower was gone. He was…smiling? Yep. It wasn’t a big one, but one side of his mouth was definitely curved upward.
“Uh…” She gulped. “Sawyer…Mr. Carlyle…Umm—”
Before she could get any further in her often tried, and often failed, begging-for-her-job presentation (she really needed PowerPoint slides at this point), the ding-dong-ding of a xylophone sounded.
“Everyone, if I could have your attention.” Helene Carlyle stood on a small dais, looking at ease in that regal way that people who grew up with old money always seemed to have. “My son, Sawyer Carlyle, would like to say a few words in appreciation of Harbor City General’s amazing staff and all the great work they do there that you good people are helping to fund by being here tonight. Sawyer…?” She looked around as if she didn’t already know where her son was. Clover didn’t buy it for a minute. “Please join me on stage and afterward, I know Cecilia Dowers of the Chicago Dowers would like ten minutes with you, dear.”
Everyone in their vicinity turned to look at them, but Sawyer was still only looking at Clover.
He dipped his head down so his lips nearly brushed her ear. “We’ll finish this later.”
Then, he lifted her hand, flipped it over, and placed a searing kiss in the center of her palm before striding to the front of the ballroom while Clover fought tooth and nail not to melt into a puddle in front of Harbor City’s elite.
…
Walking through the crowd to the raised platform at the other end of the ballroom, Sawyer tried to remember the last time he’d had his ass handed to him on a silver platter that matched the spoon he’d been born with and came up blank. He definitely couldn’t remember a time when he’d enjoyed it quite that much.
Seeing Clover with righteous fury turning her cheeks pink and making her eyes sparkle as she stood there in that teasing slip of a top had been a clarion call to his cock—so much so that this walk across the room was a little more bowlegged than normal.
She was pissed and she didn’t back down from it. Even his mom chose well-meaning, if totally deranged manipulation, over direct attack. It wasn’t their way to face things with so much open emotion or derision. Good or bad, they all danced around the topic. He could have a giant glob of mustard on his chin dripping a river down onto his tie and no one would have said anything beyond that he might want to excuse himself for a minute. If they wouldn’t be straightforward to help him, they sure as hell wouldn’t call him out when he was acting like an ass.