A Business Engagement. Merline Lovelace

might have stunned her with his proposition. That didn’t prevent her from leaping to the defense. Dev suspected it came as natural to her as breathing.

      “My sister, Mr. Hunter, is warm and generous and openhearted and...”

      “Gone to ground.” He drove the point home with the same swift lethality he brought to the negotiating table. “You, on the other hand, are available. And you owe me.”

      “I owe you?”

      “You and that magazine you work for.” Despite his best efforts to keep his irritation contained, it leaked into his voice. “Do you have any idea how many women have accosted me since that damned article came out? I can’t even grab a meatball sub at my favorite deli without some female writing her number on a napkin and trying to stuff it into my pants pocket.”

      Her shock faded. Derision replaced it. She sat back in her chair with her lips pooched in false sympathy.

      “Ooh. You poor, poor sex object.”

      “You may think it’s funny,” he growled. “I don’t. Not with a multibillion-dollar deal hanging in the balance.”

      That wiped the smirk off her face. “Putting you on our Ten Sexiest Singles list has impacted your business? How?”

      Enlightenment dawned in almost the next breath. The smirk returned. “Oh! Wait! I’ve got it. You have so many women throwing themselves at you that you can’t concentrate.”

      “You’re partially correct. But it’s not a matter of not being able to concentrate. It’s more that I don’t want to jeopardize the deal by telling the wife of the man I’m negotiating with to keep her hands to herself.”

      “So instead of confronting the woman, you want to hide behind a fiancée.”

      The disdain was cool and well-bred, but it was there. Dev was feeling the sting when he caught a flutter of movement from the corner of one eye. A second later the flutter evolved into a tall, sleek redhead being shown to an empty table a little way from theirs. She caught Dev’s glance, arched a penciled brow and came to a full stop beside their table.

      “I know you.” She tilted her head and put a finger to her chin. “Remind me. Where have we met?”

      “We haven’t,” Dev replied, courteous outside, bracing inside.

      “Are you sure? I never forget a face. Or,” she added as her lips curved in a slow, feline smile, “a truly excellent butt.”

      The grimace that crossed Hunter’s face gave Sarah a jolt of fierce satisfaction. Let him squirm, she thought gleefully. Let him writhe like a specimen under a microscope. He deserved the embarrassment.

      Except...

      He didn’t. Not really. Beguile had put him under the microscope. Beguile had also run a locker-room photo with the face angled away from the camera just enough to keep them from getting sued. And as much as Sarah hated to admit it, the man had shown a remarkable degree of restraint by not reporting his missing artifact to the police immediately.

      Still, she didn’t want to come to his rescue. She really didn’t. It was an innate and very grudging sense of fair play that compelled her to mimic her grandmother in one of Charlotte’s more imperial moods.

      “I beg your pardon,” she said with icy hauteur. “I believe my fiancé has already stated he doesn’t know you. Now, if you don’t mind, we would like to continue our conversation.”

      The woman’s cheeks flushed almost the same color as her hair. “Yes, of course. Sorry for interrupting.”

      She hurried to her table, leaving Hunter staring after her while Sarah took an unhurried sip from her water goblet.

      “That’s it.” He turned back to her, amusement slashing across his face. “That’s exactly what I want from you.”

      Whoa! Sarah gripped the goblet’s stem and tried to blunt the impact of the grin aimed in her direction. Devon Hunter all cold and intimidating she could handle. Devon Hunter with crinkly squint lines at the corners of those killer blue eyes and his mouth tipped into a rakish smile was something else again.

      The smile made him look so different. That, and the more casual attire he wore tonight. He was in a suit again, but he’d dispensed with a tie and his pale blue shirt was open at the neck. This late in the evening, a five-o’clock shadow darkened his cheeks and chin, giving him the sophisticated bad-boy look so many of Beguile’s male models tried for but could never quite pull off.

      The research Sarah had done on the man put him in a different light, too. She’d had to dig hard for details. Hunter was notorious about protecting his privacy, which was why Beguile had been forced to go with a fluff piece instead of the in-depth interview Alexis had wanted. And no doubt why he resented the article so much, Sarah acknowledged with a twinge of guilt.

      The few additional details she’d managed to dig up had contributed to an intriguing picture. She’d already known that Devon Hunter had enlisted in the Air Force right out of high school and trained as a loadmaster on big cargo jets. She hadn’t known he’d completed a bachelor’s and a master’s during his eight years in uniform, despite spending most of those years flying into combat zones or disaster areas.

      On one of those combat missions his aircraft had come under intense enemy fire. Hunter had jerry-rigged some kind of emergency fix to its damaged cargo ramp that had allowed them to take on hundreds of frantic Somalian refugees attempting to escape certain death. He’d left the Air Force a short time later and patented the modification he’d devised. From what Sarah could gather, it was now used on military and civilian aircraft worldwide.

      That enterprise had earned Hunter his first million. The rest, as they say, was history. She hadn’t found a precise estimate of the man’s net worth, but it was obviously enough to allow him to collect hundred-thousand-pound museum pieces. Which brought her back to the problem at hand.

      “Look, Mr. Hunter, this whole...”

      “Dev,” he interrupted, the grin still in place. “Now that we’re engaged, we should dispense with the formalities. I know you have a half-dozen names. Do you go by Sarah or Elizabeth or Marie-Adele?”

      “Sarah,” she conceded, “but we are not engaged.”

      He tipped his chin toward the woman several tables away, her nose now buried in a menu. “Red there thinks we are.”

      “I simply didn’t care for her attitude.”

      “Me, either.” The amusement left his eyes. “That’s why I offered you a choice. Let me spell out the basic terms so there’s no misunderstanding. You agree to an engagement. Six months max. Less, if I close the deal currently on the table. In return, I destroy the surveillance tape and don’t report the loss.”

      “But the medallion! You said it was worth a hundred thousand pounds or more.”

      “I’m willing to accept your assurances that Gina will return it. Eventually. In the meantime...” He lifted his tumbler in a mock salute. “To us, Sarah.”

      Feeling much like the proverbial mouse backed into a corner, she snatched at her last lifeline. “You promised me another twenty-four hours. The deal doesn’t go into effect until then. Agreed?”

      He hesitated, then lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Agreed.”

      Surely Gina would return her calls before then and this whole, ridiculous situation would be resolved. Sarah clung to that hope as she pushed away from the table.

      “Until tomorrow, Mr. Hunter.”

      “Dev,” he corrected, rising, as well.

      “No need for you to walk me out. Please stay and enjoy your dinner.”

      “Actually, I got hungry earlier and grabbed a Korean taco from a street stand. Funny,” he commented as he tossed some bills on the table, “I’ve