Page 80 of Square Deal

Rarely, but that was my little secret.

A dancer, covering her breasts with only a feather boa, twirled by. She didn’t stop or stumble, but the smirk on her face as she danced away told me she knew exactly what Isaac was up to.

Pinpricks of heat flooded my body from the soles of my feet to the top of my scalp.

He pinched my clit and my nipple at the exact same time. “You know what turns me on the most about you?” he began as he pressed his erection into my lower back. “The fact that you have no problem sticking your finger in my face and yelling at me. Not a lot of people do. The first night we met, you spent most of it yelling at me for one thing or another.”

He had me teetering on the edge, and the show was coming dangerously close to the end. I whimpered and squeezed my eyes shut, quietly begging for release. “Are you asking me to yell at you?” I choked out.

“I’m telling you to demand whatever it is that you expect out of life. The Hannah Jane Hayes I fell for while she was bossing me around at my best friend’s wedding doesn’t accept anything less than exactly what she wants. You don’t need help opening up. You’re a fucking force of nature, and it’s about damn time you remember that.”

My orgasm crashed into me with the strength of a tidal wave. He wiped his hands on a cocktail napkin and straightened out my dress as the house lights came up.

I followed him out of the club and into the waiting car. The warning thud that had been steadily beating in my heart for weeks turned into a drum roll.

20

ISAAC

Hannah was silent except for the thank yous that she doled out to my staff, ever the picture of well-bred manners. I didn’t have much experience with this whole monogamy thing, but even I knew that a silent woman was a deadly woman.

I watched a nuclear bomb in stilettos walk into my apartment and disappear down the hallway.

I opened the refrigerator door and stuck my head inside. Perhaps this was where I left my common sense.

I fell for you at my best friend’s wedding? What was I thinking?

The cool air was a momentary reprieve as Hannah slipped into the bedroom and closed the door. I slammed the refrigerator shut and went straight for the liquor. With a glass of brandy in hand, I retreated to the couch.

My phone buzzed and lit up with Luca’s name.

“Well, well, well,” I said, tossing back a healthy gulp of my drink to fix my roiling mind. “Look who crawled out of his marital cave and figured out how to use a phone again. How’s the old ball and chain?”

Luca snorted. “Maddie will castrate you if she hears you say that.”

Somewhere in the distance, Maddie shrieked, “Is that Isaac? IloveIsaac! He’s my bestie! Hi Isaac!” Maddie was practically singing. A gaggle of feminine voices and twangy music blared in the background.

“She isn’t sober, is she?” I guessed.

Luca chuckled. “Girls’ night. I’m chaperoning.”

I glanced at the closed bedroom door and felt a little guilty for pulling Hannah away from her friends. A slip-up at Thanksgiving was the only reason any of them knew where she was or what she was actually up to.

The poker club, as Hannah called them, was a tight-knit bunch, but I understood her hesitance to tell them about us. I chased the guilt down with another gulp of brandy. Alcohol never let me down.

“If you’re out playing babysitter, what are you doing calling me? Regretting your decision to get hitched already? It’s barely been a month.”

Had it only been a month since Han and I first hooked up? And when the hell did I start calling her ‘Han’ instead of teasing her with Hell Yes Ma’am?

Luca chuckled. “One day you’ll get it, Lawson.”

“That day is far in the distance—if ever, DeRossi.”

He cleared his throat as if to signal a transition from the personal to the professional part of the conversation. “You got plans the week before Christmas?”

I thought about the beguiling woman on the other side of the closed bedroom door. The week before Christmas was when our deal was supposed to end. I had planned on kidnapping Hannah and taking her out of the country so that we could go out with a bang.

Hannah Jane and I need to have a talk.

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