Page 58 of Charming Deception

I don’t mean to offend him. Or seem ungrateful or foolish or untrusting. But maybe I am all those things.

I’m just not ready to forge ahead into some new relationship—any type of relationship—with a man I’ve just met.

Even if he is my brother’s best friend.

And even if he’s ridiculously hot.

But what did he really expect?

He “proposed” to me, if you could call this a proposal, to please his family. What he’s proposing is a fake engagement—never to turn real. Because, clearly, men like Jameson Vance don’t fall in love with women like me.

What they do is offer them business proposals, apparently.

First the room in his guest wing, then the gardening job, now this. What next, he offers to impregnate me with his firstborn, just to make his brother happy?

Maybe he can’t know it because he doesn’t know me, but this is hardly the proposal scenario of my dreams.

Dinner with a sophisticated, gorgeous man? Sure. That’s dreamworthy. But a proposal for a fake engagement where we pretend to be in love, for money?

I don’t even know where to start explaining how wrong that is for me and my hopes of future happiness.

“You don’t mean that” is his growly response to my rejection.

Good lord, he’s bossy.

“I assure you, I do. And I’m not into games. I won’t mislead you. I won’t mislead the whole world about a fake engagement either.”

A muscle slides along his jaw. “I’m not one to back down from something I want, Megan.”

Oh, boy. I tell myself not to get tingles over those words. I want.

He doesn’t want me. Just a fake fiancée.

But too late.

The tingles are rising, spreading across my skin as he informs me, “I’m looking at what I want right now. And, fair warning, I will try to get it.”

“Well, fair warning… You might fail.”

“Maybe I will,” he concedes, but his eyes burn with the challenge, making my core tingle with heat.

This whole conversation is suddenly feeling less and less like a business negotiation, and more like a proposition for filthy, possibly incredible sex. Or maybe it’s just me.

“Tell me why,” he demands.

It really shouldn’t turn me on like it does when he talks to me like that.

“Because it would never work. We’re complete opposites.”

He calmly counters, “We’re not that different.”

“Honestly, we are. No one would even believe we’re a couple.”

“Why not? You’re my best friend’s sister. We’re close in age. We’re both single and attractive.”

I clear my throat as my response to that catches. Yeah, okay. I’m attractive. Sure. But you’re…

Is there an adjective that means “so hot, I didn’t even know it existed in a fantasy sense”?

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