Asking for Trouble (5 page)

She ran a shaking hand over her slightly mussed hair. “So. W-we never discussed payment. What is this going to cost me?”

Had he just heard her correctly? “Excuse me?”

Even Hayden looked surprised at herself, but she quickly recovered. “I know your time isn’t free. We’re not friends. I don’t expect any favors from you.”

Brent wanted to be upset. A small part of him
definitely
resented the offer. Still, her flushed cheeks and downcast eyes told him that, while she never hesitated to insult him, this time she hadn’t truly meant it as a put-down. He leaned back against the desk and crossed his arms. A wisecrack about taking sex as a form of payment hovered on the tip of his tongue, but he held back. If they ended up in bed together at some point—and right at this moment it seemed like a distinct possibility—he didn’t want any confusion over why they’d ended up there. Either way, he had no intention of accepting money from her. “I don’t know. What’s the going rate for an escort nowadays? I hear they’re all the rage with high-society girls.” Hayden narrowed her eyes, but he held up his hand when she started to respond. “Why don’t we just see how satisfied you are with my performance tonight? We’ll decide then.”

Hayden turned on a heel. “Dinner is at eight o’clock. I’ll text you the address. Please don’t be late.” She pursed her lips. “On second thought, please be obnoxiously late and don’t apologize. That ought to set the right tone.”

“Oh, I’m going to set a tone. Don’t worry.”

“Fine,” she responded with a healthy dose of suspicion. She turned to leave.

“Duchess?”

“Hmm?”

“You’ve got a little grease smudge on your nose.”

The door slammed on his laughter.

Chapter Five

Hayden stood outside the luxury high-rise on Park Avenue, letting the September breeze cool her fevered skin. Sometime in the last hour, this little stunt she’d hatched with Brent had started to feel like a
really
bad idea. She checked her watch for the third time in under a minute, hoping he’d just blow her off and watch a baseball game or something instead. What had she been thinking? Brent, sipping wine and rubbing elbows with members of Manhattan high society?
She
could hardly manage it some nights. Brent would be like a bull in a china shop.

He probably thought he could waltz in, make a few jokes at their expense, and laugh his way back to Queens. What he didn’t realize—what she
herself
had forgotten to take into account—was the fact that these people were vultures. They didn’t let just anybody infiltrate their world. She’d been brought into it as an
infant
and she’d still never felt fully accepted. Now, Hayden was beginning to worry that she might be setting up Brent to be the butt of
their
jokes, instead of the reverse.

It shouldn’t bother her. She shouldn’t care one bit if he got a dose of his own medicine. But when she thought about Brent facing the firing squad also known as her parents’ friends, she felt ill. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, intending to call him and cancel. Make a lame joke about rich people being so flighty. Tell him he’d been let off the hook, but she’d pay him anyway.

Pay him. She still couldn’t believe she’d offered to do that. After he’d sufficiently scrambled her brain on that desk, kissing her in a way that made her ache, she’d sat there like an overinflated blow-up doll, mouth in round
O
.
O
as in
Oh, yes please. I’ll take an
O
for the road
. For that moment, she’d forgotten who he was. Hell, she’d forgotten her own name. But nothing had prepared her for what came after, for the way he’d looked at her, let his mouth roam softly over hers as if he’d been…looking for something in her. She’d felt the pressing need to banish whatever she’d felt as he kissed her so reverently. So she’d blurted the first thing she could think of to redraw the battle line in the sand.

If she could go back in time and take back the offer of money, she would. Hayden didn’t make a habit of wielding her privilege unnecessarily. Especially since it had never felt like
hers
to begin with. Then again, he hadn’t exactly turned down the cash, had he? Hayden was pondering that confusing realization when she felt a warm hand curl around her elbow. She gasped and spun around to identify the hand’s owner, dropping the phone in the process.

And landed hard against Brent.

“Whoa. Easy.” He steadied her on her feet, then bent down to pick up her phone. “I know I’m tough to resist but save the fun stuff for later. We’re in public, woman.”

She glared up at him, still thrown off by his sudden appearance. “How about announcing yourself? You can’t just go around grabbing women’s arms on dark streets.”

“I’m pretty damn easy to see coming if your face isn’t buried in your phone.”

“I was calling
you
.”

“What for? I’m right on time.”

“I see that.” She bit her bottom lip, noticing for the first time how well he wore the suit. Never having seen him dressed in anything besides street clothes or his uniform, she had to admit he cleaned up well. Really well. His powerful chest and shoulders filled out the black jacket perfectly, the snug white shirt beneath tapering down into his matching dress pants. He looked every inch the gentleman. Too bad she knew better.

“See something you like?” His voice dropped low. “I’d be happy to skip this little shindig and let this suit spend the night on your bedroom floor.”

“That’s not happening.” Her body’s reaction didn’t match her words, however. Toes curled inside her high heels, belly heated, skin prickled. “This thing between us ends now. In fact, I was calling you to cancel. I think avoiding each other for a while might be a good idea.”

He came closer, backing her toward the building. “If you think you can get me into Manhattan on my day off in this fancy getup, then send me home before I’ve had a chance to make an impression, you’re crazier than I thought. This is happening, duchess. I didn’t shave twice in one day for nothing.” The doormen held open the glass double doors as he walked her backward into the lobby and straight into an elevator. She looked at the doorman indignantly, but he merely cast an eye at Brent and shrugged as though to say, “As if I could stop him?”

When the elevator doors rolled shut, she reached over to punch the button for the twenty-third floor, but he caught her hand. “Let go of me.”

Ignoring her command, he tugged her closer. Against her will, she breathed in his fresh-from-the-shower scent. He braced his hands above her, trapping her against him and the wall. “Are you wearing that garter belt? Show me before we go in. I need a little motivation.”

Hayden laughed in disbelief. “Motivation for what, exactly? I just told you that
this
”—she gestured back and forth between them—“isn’t going to happen. Even you can agree it’s a bad idea. If for no other reason, we need to knock it off for Daniel and Story’s sake. It’s bad enough we can’t stand each other. If we add sex to the equation, it’ll make things twice as messy.”

“Our friends have nothing to do with this and you know it.” He leaned in and sniffed—
sniffed!
—her neck. “Why don’t you admit the real problem? You don’t think you can make it through the night without jumping my bones.”

When his tongue flicked out to taste the sensitive skin of her neck, she involuntarily tipped her head to the side to grant him access, which he immediately took advantage of, kissing and rubbing his lips over her damp flesh. “N-no. You can rest easy. I want no part of your bones. I’m just not so sure any more about embarrassing my parents.”

Brent stilled his mouth’s movements. “That embarrassment being me, right?”

“That’s not—” Hayden cut herself off, reminding herself she didn’t owe him apologies or explanations. “That’s right. Color me shocked that you managed to show up looking halfway decent. I thought you might ditch the suit and show up in a bolo tie.”

“I’d thought about wearing my Spider-Man costume, but it’s at the cleaners.”

With a snort, Hayden pulled away to search her phone for the private security code Stuart had texted her earlier, then punched it into the elevator’s keypad. Brent stayed silent until the doors opened to reveal the foyer of Stuart’s palatial penthouse, soft music and candlelight drifting toward them. Farther inside, she heard laughter and the clinking of glasses. The appetizing scent of a surely delicious dinner greeted them.

She would have rather been anywhere else at that moment.

Hayden started a little when Brent took her hand. He smiled tightly and led her out of the elevator. “Let the fireworks begin.”

“Brent—”

“Hayden, is that you?” Her mother’s voice rang out from the living room. “Dear, you’re right on time to hear Stuart talk about his new investor for the com—” Her mother broke off as she and Brent rounded the corner, her eyes going wide as silver dollars. Hayden tried not to fidget as six other pairs of eyes, including her father’s and Stuart’s, landed on them. As always, her mother recovered quickly. “Well, well. Who is this?”

Drawing on years of practicing social niceties, Hayden smiled and drew Brent forward. She might feel like hurling, but no one else had to know. “Everyone, I’d like you to meet Brent. My date for this evening.”

She watched her mother’s nails dig into the white leather couch. Beside her, Brent let out a low whistle and she squeezed his hand to shut him up. “Date? You didn’t mention you were bringing a date.”

Hayden started to respond, but her father, who had been eyeing Brent speculatively, spoke up first. “Oh, uh, darling. This is all my fault. Hayden phoned me earlier at the office and told me.” He turned to Stuart with a contrite look that deserved an award. “She asked me to call and let you know, but I got tied up on a conference call. My apologies. I trust there’s room for one more?”

Stuart, who until now had been watching the proceedings with poorly veiled disappointment, rose and started toward them. “Sure, why not? Hayden, you look beautiful as always,” he said, kissing her cheek. When he lingered, Brent cleared his throat, drawing Stuart’s attention. He held out his hand. “Stuart Nevin, nice to meet you.”

Eyeing each other, they shook hands. “Brent Mason. Likewise.”

If her stomach wasn’t tied up in knots, Hayden might have laughed at the physical differences between the two men. Brent towered over Stuart, his giant hand all but swallowing the other man’s smooth, elegant one as they shook longer than the introduction warranted. Stuart pulled back first, running his hand through his jet-black hair, looking less than thrilled.

Hayden’s father stood to shake Brent’s hand. “My daughter failed to mention she was bringing one of the Jets linebackers to dinner,” he joked, with a wink in Hayden’s direction. All at once, she felt horrible. She’d brought Brent with the intention of thwarting her mother’s incessant matchmaking efforts, but any minute now Brent would say something intentionally offensive in front of her father. Whom she loved with all her heart. Who’d just covered for her, no questions asked.

Brent laughed. “With all their preseason injuries, the Jets need all the help they can get this year. Maybe I should take a chance and try out.”

Her father brightened. “I take it you’re into fantasy football?”

Brent confirmed with a nod. “Had my draft last week.”

“Come sit,” her father insisted, leading Brent away from her and toward the couch. “I need some advice on a trade. My office pool is so competitive…”

Hayden stood on the landing, watching in stupefied wonder as her father and Brent’s discussion continued, growing more animated by the second.
What the hell just happened here?
The two other gentlemen, apart from Stuart, gathered around her father and Brent to join in their discussion. When they all laughed uproariously over something Brent said, Hayden turned to Stuart and asked him for a whiskey, neat.

By the time dinner was served, Brent had offered to dismiss everyone’s parking tickets, told several riveting police stories to his now-captivated audience, and even performed the Heimlich maneuver on one of her father’s associates, dislodging a green olive and earning the man’s undying gratitude.

Hayden speared a perfectly cooked scallop with her fork when something Brent said made one of the older champagne-drunk socialites break out in high-pitched laughter.

As he launched into another story, he looked over and winked at her.

She’d been had.

…

“So I loaded him into the back of the squad car and told him, ‘Next time, bring ski boots.’”

Around him, the men dissolved into laughter and Brent tossed back the remains of the girly drink he’d been handed after dinner. Storytelling could be thirsty work. Especially when you could practically feel daggers being stared into the back of your head by a certain someone in sexy stockings.

“So how does one become an explosives expert?” Hayden’s father asked, leaning back in an antique chair that cost more than Brent’s mortgage. “It seems like a dangerous choice, running toward the bomb when everyone else is running the opposite direction.”

“It definitely requires a certain level of insanity. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s listed in the job description.” Brent shrugged. “At least there aren’t people lined up to replace me.”

“I’d imagine not,” Stuart commented absently as he sipped a glass of wine.

Amused, Brent let a beat pass before filling the silence. “I was lucky. My father was a cop, too. He recognized that I had a knack for it. Most parents get upset when you blow up your sister’s Barbie Dreamhouse. My father took me to an explosives demonstration instead.”

The older woman he’d been mentally referring to as Socialite Number Two laughed. “Is your father…
tall
like you?”

Grr-owl. One ticket to Cougartown, please.
Brent glanced in Hayden’s direction, swallowing a laugh when she tossed back most of her drink. “Nope. Got the height from my mother. My parents met for the first time at a bar.” He leaned forward as if imparting a secret. “When the bartender asked my father for his drink of choice, he infamously responded, ‘Nothing for me. I’ve already got a tall drink of water right here.’”

Hayden burst out laughing, but quickly reined it in when she seemed to realize all eyes were trained on her. “Um. Where is your father now?”

“Retired in Florida. Last time I went for a visit, he was rebuilding the engine on a sixty-eight Pontiac Firebird in the driveway. Mom calls it his playtime.”

Stuart raised a lazy eyebrow. “You know cars?”

Brent watched as Hayden’s drink paused halfway to her mouth. She was obviously petrified of him revealing his second profession, embarrassing her in the process. Reminding himself he didn’t give a damn what anyone else thought, Brent cleared his throat, keeping his eyes squarely on Hayden. “Yes. Actually, I moonlight as a mechanic.”

Two seats away, her mother’s fork scraped along the expensive china. Stuart, however, couldn’t have looked more pleased. “One of my Aston Martins needs a new alternator.” He propped his ankle on his knee, smiling smugly at Brent. “Can I trust you with it?”

Brent saluted him with his drink, ignoring the pang in his chest when Hayden rose quickly and left the room. “You can trust me to overcharge you.”

Stuart smiled on cue, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Brent forced himself to remain seated when the man got up a moment later and followed Hayden from the room. Just as he made the decision to go after them, Hayden’s father threw another question his way, but he could barely focus on it.

Last night, when he’d been handcuffed and blue-balled within an inch of his life in Hayden’s foyer, he’d let her think he was going to show up and act like the big clown she perceived him to be. Instead, he’d prove to her that she didn’t have the first clue about him or what he was capable of. That using the right fork and shooting the shit with millionaires was a breeze when compared with dismantling a pipe bomb or rescuing injured civilians from a structural collapse.