Page 5

Hope flutters to life in my chest. Maybe I can keep my weekly DoorDash?

And the occasional pair of shoes?

My lungs start protesting so I let the breath out, but do it slowly, quietly, not wanting to break the spell of this man being cooperative⁠—

Something that ends after approximately three more seconds.

He closes the file with a snap. “Nope. She’s not going to work.” The papers scatter as he tosses the folder on my desk.

I grind my back teeth together, seeing a shoe auction in my future.

All my babies packaged and sold, their proceeds going toward keeping Josie’s nephew in Oreos.

Still, I’m not one to give up easily. I turn for my filing cabinet again⁠—

“No,” he says.

I spin back, lift a brow in question.

“It’s you, and only you. Otherwise”—the chair’s wheels drop back onto the floor with a thunk—“I’ll find someone else.”

“I’m not a client.”

He pushes up to his considerable height, takes a step toward the door…

Which happens to bring him considerably closer to me.

I inhale—and have instant regret because he smells good, and seriously, if that’s the fragrance he’s going to sell, I’m buying out the local stock and spraying it on my pillow for all those cold lonely nights.

Hints of clove and orange. Sandalwood and spice.

It’s temptation in an inhale.

Or maybe, it’s just that he’s a temptation.

He bends, bringing that scent closer, near enough to make my head spin. “Last chance, princess,” he growls, leaning so close that I can see he has golden specks in his deep brown eyes, so close that his lips are barely an inch from mine, so close that his nose with the slight bump in the bridge almost bumps against mine. “How. Much. Do. You. Want?”

And maybe it’s the tempting scent of him, or the fact that the golden flecks in his eyes seem to multiply the longer our stares hold…

Maybe it’s that I really want that pair of Manolo Blaniks I’ve been lusting after…

Maybe it’s just that I’m an idiot.

Because instead of ordering him to get the hell out of my office, I blurt out⁠—

THREE

Ace

I watch her blue eyes transform into blocks of ice. Her chin comes up, and I prepare to be told to fuck right off out of here.

I’m not going to go.

I need this woman to agree to be my fiancée, and I don’t have a lot of choices.

But I’m good at a bluffing.

I’m good at finding buttons to push.