I’m not going to let him coo to me and cleverly maneuver his way out of this. Even if he’s standing there with a peace offering, he’s still the reason our livelihood has taken a hit.

“I don’t want anything you have to give me,” I say. “You have no idea how much every client means to us. To lose even one is going to set us back…” I choke on this. I can’t talk to him about Mom.

He glances at the run-down convenience store, its innards exposed because of the crumbling wall. It looks better than the rest of the neighborhood, but Eli seems to know this is actually my community, and I was only pretending when I had him take me a few blocks over to that nicer condo complex.

“Besides everything else you’ve presumed to do today,” I say, “you seem to have followed me here.”

“No, I just did a quick online search. It wasn’t tough to find out more about you.”

I can see something that passes as compassion in his gaze. Even though I don’t spill my life out online for the world to devour, my sister exuberantly over-shares, and I’m cyber-connected to her. She even has a blog about Parkinson’s since she’s taken it up as a personal cause.

“Goddamn, Jenna,” Eli says. “You didn’t say anything to me about your mother today.”

I tense up. “Why would I tell you?”

He looks at the ground. “True. You’ve got some pride. You’ve got a lot of qualities that make you into the woman you are.” Then he squarely meets my gaze. “And that’s exactly why I want you.”

I want you. It’s as if hot bubbles are popping over my skin, sliding down and down, gnawing at me until I’m stripped and utterly exposed. What girl wouldn’t want to be told she’s wanted?

But his meaning encompasses so much more than anything physical.

He still hasn’t looked away from me, and it feels as if there’s a live wire connecting us, sparking at our energy and awareness.

“I’m going to make everything better for you,” he says.

“I’ve heard this before, and what do you know? Thanks to you, things are pretty much worse now.”

“I’ll pay you fifty thousand dollars to pretend to be my fiancé for three months. Fifty thousand dollars to do nothing but hang out and live like a queen.”

I can feel my mouth starting to gape, but I force it shut. Did he say what I thought he just said?

Numbers dance in my head, blinding me for a tempting moment. Fifty thousand would change everything. It would wipe away so many of the things that keep me awake at night. It would brighten my dad’s gaze again. It would give Ivy a future. It would slow Mom’s symptoms.

And you’d sell yourself for that? Asks a tiny voice.

I manage to shake my head, denying him. He says nothing. It’s only then that I find my voice.

“I won’t be a prostitute.”

When he laughs, I don’t know whether to be offended or bewildered.

“You’re thinking I’m going to make this proposal contingent on having sex with me,” he says.

“Wouldn’t it involve that?”

He saunters out from his side of the car, his hands in his pockets. “Babe, don’t get me wrong. This is a simple business transaction—at least during the term of our agreement.”

Babe? Business? And what about the hallway this afternoon? Is he seriously saying that he’s not that interested in me and can be abstinent for the duration of a fake marriage?

Then I realize that Eli Brennan wouldn’t be abstinent. An alpha warrior like him wouldn’t be able to handle that, and I’d be a fiancé in name only, unless…

Unless he’s serious about changing his image. Then he might be faithful to this scenario until the three months are up and we never see one another again. Then it’s back to being a man-whore whose life is a string of wild nights.

“Fifty thousand’s a lot to turn down,” he says.

It is a lot of money, and with every mention of it, I feel myself weakening. In a last ditch effort to resist, I say, “All you have to do is call Preston and tell him to do the right thing, to give my family a job again.”

“So he can fire you on a whim in the future?”

Eli seems stern now and, once again, I can see the man he could be on the field, when the chips are down and a win is at stake. He hasn’t always been that guy so far, but it’s in him. At least, I think it is.

He takes his hands out of his pockets and spreads them out, reasoning with me a final time. “All Randal has to do is make a phone call to replace you.”

And that’s it. He’s right. I’m no superstar like Eli. I’m so very replaceable, and I always will be. This deal he’s offering might be the one and only chance I have to turn things around for my family. I’d truly be a fool to resist.

Replaceable, but I do have some value to Eli. As much as I hate this, I can fix my family with his help.

Common sense is still screaming at me to say no, but I block it out. I fist my hands and bite the bullet then I say the only thing I should be saying.

“Let’s talk details.”

* * *

During the next hour inside Eli’s air-conditioned car, everything passes by in a hazy daze, especially everything he says after I agree to the deal.

You’ll be paid one-third up front, one-third after 45 days, then the rest upon the completion of 90 days of our engagement…

My lawyer will draw up the non-disclosure agreement and the contracts…

By the way, I need you to be seen with me by the paparazzi and press at all times, so you’ll need to move into my place…

Strings are definitely attached to this proposition, and as it turns out, I’m now a willing puppet because there’re fifty thousand wonderful reasons for me to dance to Eli’s tune for what amounts to three short months out of my life.

Fifty. Thousand. Reasons.

During the day’s most surreal moment, I bring Eli to my family’s apartment, where I introduce my “fiancé” and he presents the boxes of flowers and food to them. Dad, who has long since returned from picking up Mom’s prescriptions, quietly assesses Eli with a mixture of fatherly guardedness and pride that his little girl has made a football superstar fall for her. If only he knew.

Ivy is beside herself, and she clutches the flowers the entire time she stares at Eli. Mom only sits in her chair and smiles at him, and I promise all of them that, soon, we’ll have a family dinner so they can all get to know my honeybun.

It’ll never happen though. I don’t want Mom, Dad, and Ivy to form even the slightest personal attachment to Eli, and he has already agreed with me.

After I pack a few necessities, he drives me to his lawyer’s office in downtown Vegas, where the staff is working overtime on the non-disclosure agreement and contracts. I even wonder if Eli started having the paperwork drawn up this afternoon, after he got this wild idea (obsession?) about recruiting me. Then we’re off to his place in Seven Hills, where my family cleans more homes. My head spins as fast as the wheels of his car, because here I am, one of the privileged people now, and not someone who’s invisible to them.

At least it’ll be that way for the next three months.

He parks his car in a garage that holds five other collectible vehicles and then joins me again in the courtyard near the burbling fountain. Under the romantic moonlight, he pulls me over to him, raising his camera to capture another selfie. I put on my best couple smile. I’ll have to get good at that every time we go out in public, so I might as well start now.

Before we enter his house, which looks like a Tuscan villa with a sweet bloom of flowers draped over the walls, he sweeps me up and into his arms.

I gasp, automatically linking my fingers around the back of his neck. My heart beats against his hard chest, our mouths only inches apart. My lips throb as I glance at his, then slide my gaze back up to his pale blue eyes.

“Got to carry the bride over the threshold,” he murmurs.

“I’m your fiancé, not your bride.”

“Tomato, tomah-to.”

And he’s right. There’s no real difference between the two terms for us.

He carries me into his house, and once we’re in the foyer, I unlink my fingers from behind his neck then slip down his body, inch by muscled inch. He’s like marble, cut in beautiful lines, smooth and strong. I ache to press against him, just like I did in the hallway of the Hula Shack.

But I’m not a prostitute. No sex required.

I blow out a breath and survey the massive, curved double stairs, the umber tile, the iron chandelier that hangs over us.

“Want the tour right away?” he asks. “I suggest we start at the bedrooms.”

Bedrooms. More than one.

He chuckles. “I told you. This isn’t a sexual arrangement.” His gaze gets that mischievous glimmer. “Not until you tell me that you want it to be.”

Ah. So he hasn’t given up. Too bad for him.

He only grins, fully confident of his ability to make me say yes to him. And why wouldn’t I after I gave in to the proposal? And when he had me in the hallway, craving him with every electrified cell of my body?

As we go up the stairs, I say, “I’m still surprised you didn’t choose to do this thing with Lulu. After all, she’s a sure thing.”

He raises his eyebrows back at me. “Is that so?”

“It’s pretty obvious she has a thing for you, and I’m guessing that’s why Preston fired my family, in revenge over his little princess not getting the toy she wanted.”

“Interesting theory.”

“Any other disapproving parties I should know about?” I asked. “You’ve yet to mention how your family feels about our sudden engagement.”

“My father texted me, proclaiming his disapproval,” he says. “I’m sure he hates that I went and fell in love without his go-ahead.”

“He thinks you fell in love?”

“Yeah, and Randal agrees that I shouldn’t tell him the entire story. The less people who know about our deal, the better.”

That reminds me—I think there was some kind of story circulating about Eli’s father being incredibly demanding, pushy, and that perhaps they had a falling-out over Eli’s rebellion against his dad’s controlling ways.

But just how bad is his relationship with his dad? Eli’s mood seemed to shift the moment the subject came up.

We come to the top of the stairway. “It almost sounds like Preston is a second dad to you.”

Eli gets very quiet then says, “I’ll have to be careful around you. You see too much.”

The air still feels tight, as if he’s thinking the same thing I am—that I’ve seen something in him that he wishes I hadn’t. The clouds. The shadows.

Then he leads me toward a hallway, and it’s as if the moment lifts, putting us right back to where we were before the subject of Preston and Eli’s dad came up. He’s good at that—changing subjects. Maybe he’s been doing it his entire life.

“I won’t lie,” he says lightly. “Randal’s unhappy with my decision to choose you, but he isn’t really in a position to stop me, especially now that the media and the online universe has snatched up this story and run with it. They’ve already researched you, so they know about how you used to clean Randal’s house. They assume I met you that way, so there’s a Cinderella angle that the public seems to love, a fairy-tale quality they eat right up.”

“I guess everyone likes a good fairy-tale,” I admit.

Eli gives me a long look. “They don’t care if the tale is good or bad, just as long as you give them something to chew on. Maybe I learned that lesson the hard way.”

He brings me into a room where the bed of my dreams awaits me. It’s huge, with sheer material draped over the posts and a white bedspread that has patterns that look as if they’ve been etched in snow. Pillows are stacked one upon the other. There are creamy nightstands, beaded lamps, and even an old-fashioned dressing screen that stands next to a beveled mirror. A boudoir, I think. A fantasy nook for me to hide away whenever I need to.

Or does Eli ultimately have other plans for me and this room?

“This is a pretty sweet guest room,” I say.

“I don’t normally have overnight visitors, not when hotels are so much more convenient.”

Is he talking about the women he sleeps with? Could it be that after creating such public spectacles, Eli prefers to stay alone in his private cave at the end of the day and separate the girls from his home life?

Eli Brennan actually has a home life, I think, marveling at that.

I wander to a walk-in closet and nearly die of delight at all the shoe racks and hanger space. There are even some clothes already there.

“My personal assistant did some shopping,” he says. “She has great taste, and she’s efficient enough to have chosen some sundresses and what she calls ‘necessaries’ to start you off. After you get your measurements taken, we’ll get the gowns for charity events, then other clothing for the games and team functions.”

My gaze catches on a section of the closet where filmy nighties are hanging: pink chiffon confections, blue princess dreams, sexy angelic puffs. I walk over to touch the pink one. It’s so feminine, and I’m…

Well, I’ve never had the chance to be that way. But it’s not as if I’ll be wearing any of these things in front of Eli.

Still, I can’t help wondering if I’m sexy enough for them…

He’s right behind me, so close that I can feel the heat of him imprinting on my skin, making me his without any effort at all. But I’m not his.

No way.

He murmurs, “My assistant Natalie tells me that’s a vintage nightgown from the sixties, something like Betty Draper would wear.”

“It sounds like you and Natalie are very familiar with nightgowns.” Is that jealousy creeping into my voice?

He laughs, because of course he notices. “Natalie’s a grandma. Hip, energetic, and still turning heads, but she constantly keeps me under wing.”

“I didn’t ask who Natalie is.”

“You didn’t have to.”

As I hear him shift behind me, shivers flutter down my skin. Any moment he could touch me, and dammit, I want him to. I want it so bad that it almost hurts.

But this isn’t how it’s going to be with us, and I trail my hand off of the nightie then face him. I have to peer up to do it, but I keep my breathing steady, my heart cool.

“Tell me you’re not flirting with me here in private,” I say. “That’s not part of the deal.”

His cocky smirk says that I’ll change my mind, but I raise my hand to ward off his smugness.

“Remember the lawyer’s office?” I ask. “This is business. Everything that goes on between us is show, so no intimate contact when we’re alone in private. Holding hands, cuddling and kissing will be for the cameras and the public. Otherwise, when we’re alone, we’re just…friends.” Maybe not even that. “Business partners. Whatever.”

“Romance is for Twitter and Instagram,” he says. “Glad you reminded me of that, Jenna.”

There he goes with my name again. It’s between a growl and a purr, and it’s got me in its trap.

But all I have to do is remind myself that he’s a serial carouser, drinker, fighter, and troublemaker. He’s not serious enough to be trusted with anything, especially not my fragile heart. That’s why it’s so easy to walk out of that closet and away from him.

Even if I’m feeling easier than I have any right to be with such a bad boy.