Chasing Temptation by Payton Lane Page B

of business. Maybe it was just a slow day.
    Nate emerged from the back with a satisfied grin on his face. Lorelei stood at his side. Great. That also meant Lorelei would have firsthand knowledge about the date. Information the older woman would use for the wager likely going for Nate and Lynne.
    “Why am I not surprised,” Lynne muttered.
    Lorelei smiled. “Because you know I don’t like to lose. Plus, my husband needs a new suit, anyway.”
    “What would she lose?” Eloise asked and moved closer to Lynne’s side.
    “Trust me. You don’t want to know,” Lynne said.
    The older woman spoke for Lynne. “A city-wide bet these two are going to be an item before long. It seems they’re playing right into our hands, as they have a date for tonight.”
    At that, Lynne blinked, having assumed he'd bragged about the dinner.
    While Nate asked, “How do you know that?”
    “Jeremy,” Lorelei said. “He put down three weeks, but he came to me a half hour ago with a change of mind. Two days, he says now.”
    Lynne’s cheeks flushed from embarrassment. “I need to–”
    Nate put up his hand. “Give me an hour. I’m running a little behind myself.” His gaze strayed to Eloise and then back again to Lynne. “A nice volunteer?”
    She didn’t answer but turned on her heel. As she suspected, her mother wasn’t at her side any longer.
    “I’m her mother,” Eloise said, exasperation clear in her tone. “Is that what you told him? A volunteer, Lynne Marie Kelley?”
    Lynne winced, but faced Eloise. “It’s none of his business who you are. He knows too much about me as it is.”
    Her mother frowned. “Why does he know too much about you?”
    Nate opened his big mouth. “I’m trying to convince your daughter it’s in her best interest to sell the store to me.”
    Her mother pursed her lips. “Give me a run down of the proposition.”
    Nate began his spiel with enthusiasm. If it were possible, time had to have stopped and gone backward. Lynne was back at the day she graduated from college. They had yet to clear the seating area and her parents had started speaking about the future as though it were already carved in stone.
    She'd work for her father, a year or two, to ease any fears that Lynne hadn't earned a promotion to head executive assistant for her father's company. During that time, Brandon, her boyfriend, would finally propose, and then she could quit her job and raise beautiful babies.
    Had anyone asked what she wanted then? Did anyone care to notice the horror and fear plain on her face? Had anyone stopped to notice through all her fashion and life choices, maybe, just maybe, she wasn't cut out to be head executive assistant?
    She shook the memory out of her head. “Excuse me, but I need to get ready.”
    Lynne didn’t wait to see if her mother would follow as she made her way home. She hoped her mother didn't while she stormed down the sidewalk. She felt a little petty and it would gratify her to hear Eloise knocking on the locked door.
    Then again, from the way Lynne's back teeth ground against one another, it might be best if she wasn’t alone with her mother until the anger dissipated. She always let it go eventually. Life was too short.
    She loosened her hold on the garment bag. It would be wrinkled, but at this point it didn’t matter how she looked for Nate.
    Lynne knew their relationship so far was mostly business, sometimes heated attraction—not something precious or something that needed to be protected from the public. She wanted to bite his head off because Nate crossed a line if he thought he could use Eloise against her. There were some lows you didn’t stoop to, ever, in the name of closing a deal.
    Oh, yes. Nate was going to get chewed up and spit back out. She might even do it with a smile.
    “Lynne!” her mother called.
    She slowed her step. Her mother caught up a few seconds later.
    Lynne kept her tone cool. “Thought you were going to stay and chat with him for a