I knew that look he wore. He was serious. Nothing would persuade him otherwise. Out of all our differences, in that way we were alike—both of us stubborn to the core.

He turned to go but I held out a hand. “Hold up.”

Dean stiffened but waited.

I pocketed his phone, the move so casual he didn’t see it. “If you insist on doing this…”

“I am doing this.”

My back teeth met with a click. Relax. Take it easy. “Then you should probably meet her without gunk in between your teeth.”

Dean’s look of horror would have been funny if I wasn’t so pissed. “There’s something between my teeth?” He ran his tongue over them.

His teeth were clean, but Dean snacked constantly. The threat was real enough.

“Yep. You didn’t get it.” I inclined my head toward the private office bathroom. “Go clean yourself up.”

He didn’t wait to be told twice but hurried toward the small room.

I followed at his heels, grabbing one of the wooden visiting chairs from the side of the desk as I went. He was too distracted to notice. “So, where you meeting this girl?”

“Yvonne’s.”

“Swank.” I’d walked by it once. The place looked like a social club for the ultrarich.

Dean chuckled. “Not like I’m paying.”

I rolled my eyes.

“We’re having dinner drinks in thirty so I’ll have to hustle.” At the mirror, he made a grimace, inspecting his commercial-worthy teeth. “I don’t see anything…”

I didn’t hear the rest. Swiftly, I pulled the door shut, turned the handle down, and wedged the chair under it. Just in time too. The door rattled fiercely.

“Rhys! What the fuck? Open the fucking door!”

Yeah, not likely. It would hold until someone let him out. I’d let Carlos know… In an hour.

“Rhys!” Dean’s muffled shout followed me out of the office. “This isn’t funny. Are you kidding me?” A hard thud rang out. “You fucking bastard!”

I was. But I didn’t feel an ounce of remorse. Dean was too good for this. He could hate me all he wanted. But I would make it crystal clear to this Parker Brown that she wasn’t going to go anywhere near my brother again.

A fine fury worked its way through my system as I got on my bike. Parker Brown. She wasn’t going to know what hit her.

Two

Parker

It wasn’t my first time dining at Yvonne’s. However, it would be my first time dining at Yvonne’s with the guy I’d paid to pretend to be my date. My stomach roiled as I sat on the plush bar stool closest to the entrance. Opposite the bar ran a long, marble-topped, low divider wall between the bar area and the restaurant, where chatter and laughter from the diners had become white noise.

I was so short my feet dangled off the bar stool, and I impatiently kicked against a bar that probably cost more than my annual salary.

Speaking of which… I glanced nervously at my watch. Dean was supposed to be here already. We’d arranged for him to come ten minutes earlier than my boss and his boss so we could go over our game plan again.

Throwing back the cocktail the harassed bartender had put down in front of me, I tried to quell the aggressive flutter of butterflies in my belly. Seriously, it felt like they’d escaped my gut, swarmed all over my lungs, and were now intent on suffocating me. I wiped a clammy hand across my forehead. “Get it together, Parker,” I muttered, probably looking and sounding like I was about to commit a felony.

Was lying to your boss a felony?

No, definitely not.

Immoral?

Yes, definitely yes.

But really it just proved how much I loved my job and just how far I was willing to go to get a permanent contract with Horus Renewable Energy. I’d joined the fledgling three-year-old company after I’d earned my PhD in “Dynamic Modeling of Generation Capacity Investment in Electricity Markets with High Wind Penetration.” Say that five times fast.

I was ecstatic to find a job as a data analyst with a company that had developed a market dispatch model that forecast future power prices and the impact of renewable power generation of market dynamics.

It was everything I’d ever wanted out of a job and I was feeling good about it until Pete in payroll told me with a smug smirk that I was only hired to meet the diversity quota and I’d probably be let go after my six-month contract was up.

And why?

Because the big boss with all the money, the main investor, Mr. Franklin Fairchild, was only interested in hiring employees who had proven their commitment in their personal lives. It was some 1950s retro bullcrap. Unless an employee was in a serious relationship/married, a parent and/or living in their own home and not a rental, Fairchild considered them a bad investment. Where was the commitment? If we couldn’t commit in our personal lives, surely we’d up and run from the company at the first sign of a sweeter deal elsewhere.