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Sawyer blinked And for the first tiotiation Maybe she actually would be worth the ained She started to reach for her purse as though to leave, and he knew he’d lost “Sit down, Ms Lee I believe we have a deal”

“Agreed” A self-satisfied smile tipped her lips upward as she sat back down “One last thing, I’ll need to be an independent contractor not an employee”

“Why?” he asked before he could stop hi to catch up to the fact that he’d just been out-negotiated by a wo from one ridiculous job to another

Her steady gaze skittered away to the left before snapping back to hi tied down”

A lie or too much of the truth? It shouldn’t matter, but for some reason it did “That explains your resume”

Up went her stubborn chin “Is there a docu my job duties?”

“There will be” With a few taps and swipes on his monitor, he opened up a new document and then pulled out the shelf hidden into the frame of his desk where he kept his wireless keyboard “Obviously you’ll need to be available 24/7” He typed it out in bullet points Fast Efficient Concise “When you’re not acting as my buffer, you can help Amara with overfloork”

“Why do you need a buffer?” she asked, grabbing the heavy chair by its ar in it “Is your mom really that bad?”

His fingers faltered for a second and hisfell into place The first lesson in growing up as one of Harbor City’s elite was that no one talked openly about anything that could even tangentially be considered unpleasant

“No” He resu out office tasks such as data backups and scheduling “She’s wonderful She’s just a little obsessed withme off”

Why did he say that? What was going to come out next? That his first crush had been his brother’s math tutor?

Clover leaned in close, as if exchanging this kind of personal infor about the weather “And you’re not thekind?”

He pulled at his tie, his collar suddenly tighter than it had been a fewdown at her resuht his attention “Do you speak other languages?”

She nodded, gliding her fingers across his bare desk as if she was unconsciously searching for soet with “I can speak Spanish, French, passable Mandarin, passable Thai, and Malay”

A lightbulb went off “As in the Malay spoken in Singapore?”