Selling Seduction (Your Ad Here #1) by Allyson Lindt Page A

she went back home.
    “Are we breaking up?” He kept his tone light, despite the sludge creeping inside. “Because I think we’d have to be dating first.” Fuck it. The resolution bounced in his head. He wasn’t letting her do this. There was a connection between them, and he didn’t know how deep it ran, but he wasn’t willing to cut things off before he found out.
    “We would have to be.” She stepped out of his grasp and turned to face him. “And no. This is business.”
    He didn’t have a hard time reading her this morning, but wished he did. Her playful expression was gone, twisted and hidden under furrowed brows. She kept her gaze on his neck, rather than looking him in the eye. Something told him it wasn’t the longer-than-expected phone call causing this. It might not even be her looming departure. “Tell me.” He placed a finger under her chin and raised her head until he had her attention.
    When she clenched her jaw and stepped out of reach, his muscles ratcheted a notch tighter.
    She licked her lips, a motion that wasn’t as seductive when she wore this scowl. “That big account I told you I was trying to land? The one that—” She clamped her teeth together and hissed. “Anyway—the work I’m doing while I’m up here? It’s for KaleidoMation. Jonathan Woodhouse.”
    His brain stalled, but his mouth moved without his permission. “No worries, then. You can come consult for us.” What the fuck was wrong with him?
    “If you think you’re being funny—which I hope is the case—you’re not. If you’re serious, I’ll walk back to the hotel, to prove this conversation is over.” She crossed her arms and took another step back.
    At least he knew how to piss Mercy off in under two-point-five seconds. “Bad joke. Tasteless and not funny in any universe.”
    “But it meant you were thinking it.”
    “Of course I was. You heard me mention it to Woodhouse. I was going to ask you before I had any inkling this was the account you wanted.”
    Her shoulders relaxed, but the rest of her posture stayed the same. “It doesn’t matter. I thought you should know, and I probably should find a ride back to the hotel anyway. I’ll call their shuttle. The storm is easing up.”
    “Stop.” He closed the distance between them, pulled her arms apart, and tangled his fingers in hers. “This doesn’t have to change anything.”
    “Landing this account is huge for me. Career making. I told you that. You being my competition changes everything. ” Still, she didn’t pull out of his grasp.
    “Do you want me to walk away? Because it’s big for me too.”
    She twisted her face into a mask of disbelief. “No. I’m not saying that. Not even implying it. Even if I thought you’d forgive me for making such a request, that’s not how I land clients. It doesn’t matter. We weren’t going to last past this week, anyway.”
    “You really feel that way?”
    “It’s what we promised.” She squeezed his fingers tighter.
    He risked pulling her to him, and stopped with a few inches between them. “Things change. We’ve changed.”
    “Not when something like this pops up, they don’t.”
    “If you hadn’t overheard that call—better yet, if we weren’t competing for the same contract—and I asked you to give us a chance, would you consider it?”
    She scrubbed her face with her free hand. “That’s not a fair question. It’s not reality.”
    “Then answer hypothetically.” Instinct and experience told him to stop pushing the issue. A louder voice insisted he’d never forgive himself if he walked away. “And honestly.”
    “I can’t lie to you, Ian.”
    “All right. Let’s change the hypothesis. We both move forward like we planned to. We don’t talk business with each other—we weren’t sharing details anyway. We don’t pull our punches, but we don’t fight dirty.”
    She raised her brows and pursed her lips. “And at the end of it all, there are no hard feelings or