“What am I doing here, exactly?”
What am I doing in the same room as this man again?
Robert smiles. “As I was saying, do you know Mr. Horn personally?”
“No, she doesn’t,” Landon growls from behind me. I whirl back to him and his brow wrinkles as those emerald eyes pierce into me again.
“You don’t, do you?”
“No!”
We glare at each other for a minute, eyes searching the other’s face as if we’ll find an explanation there.
“Well, he knows you.”
We both manage to tear our eyes away from the other’s again as we turn to Robert in unison.
“What?”
It comes out at the same time, in a way that would be funny if this weren’t surreal and utterly mortifying.
He was supposed to be a one-time thing.
Robert clears his throat. “This won’t be on the news, and I’ll be having you sign a non-disclosure before you leave here today-”
“Damn straight,” Landon mutters.
Robert gives him a look but continues.
“Five days ago, Sam Horn had a stroke. He’s currently in a medically induced coma, and per the terms of his estate, we have some things to go over with you concerning his will.”
“I already told you, I don’t know Sam H-”
“I’m afraid that’s irrelevant, Ms. Roth.” Robert shrugs, his eyebrows rising. “As I mentioned, he apparently knows you.”
“Robert, what the hell does this have to do with her?”
“Landon, this has to do with both of you, actually.”
“How-”
“Because as of five days ago when Sam was declared in a state of non-responsiveness, control of his full estate landed in the hands of the two individuals listed in his will.”
The room starts to feel smaller, and the walls start to close in as I watch Robert Lehman sit at the table and open the file folder in front of him.
“That would be you, Landon, as well as Ms. Roth here.”
I blink, swallowing the lump in my throat. “I’m sorry, what?”
“What?” Landon repeats, striding forward and placing his knuckles on the table.
Robert nods.
“Until such a time when he can be brought to responsive consciousness, full control of Samuel Horn’s wealth and assets lies with the two of you.”
This isn’t real. This isn’t happening. This is a dream.
“And that does include his ownership and majority stakeholder share in the Rattlesnakes, of course.”
The dots are right in front of me, but I’m struggling to connect them as I shake my head.
“I’m sorry, what exactly does that mea-”
“It means you own half my fucking team,” Landon says icily. I turn, and immediately shiver as those eyes of his lance right into mine, holding my gaze.
His lips go thin, the hollows of his cheeks growing darker as that green fire flashes in his eyes.
“It means we’re fucking teammates now.”
Oh fuck.
I slept with the enemy.
And now we’re teammates.
Chapter Two
Landon
The first thing I notice is the girl.
I mean that quite literally. When I step off of the elevator and into the waiting room of Standish, Lehman, and Harris, she’s the first thing I see.
It’s sort of unavoidable.
I mean the wall to the conference room is glass, and there’s all of two people sitting at the table in there. One of them is Sam Horn’s fifty-five-year-old, grey haired, pot-bellied attorney, and the other one is her.
Her - the girl with her back to me, with the long dark hair and the movie-star sunglasses perched on her head. One leg crossed over the other showing just a glimpse of toned, defined leg and classy heels under her skirt.
The first thing I look for is a ring.
Always look for a ring. That’s gotten me in hot water before, and besides, that is nothing I need to screw around with. She’s at a bit of an angle, her face turned away from me, but she’s got her left hand up and propped against her cheek.
No ring.
That’s good.
Actually, there’s a lot good about her. Rich, golden tanned skin, legs for days, that long, silken dark brown hair cascading down one shoulder, and just the hint of full red lips when she turns her head for half a second. To the untrained eye, there are a hundred different reasons she could be sitting here, and she could be anybody. But I’ve made my career off of training my eye, and knowing how to read people. And I know exactly why she’s here.
The fresh manicure, the new-looking haircut and blowout, the clothes and the heels that look like they just came off the shelf – not the sales rack - at some high-end store an hour ago. She’s in her, ‘I look good, and I don’t need him anyways,’ phase, and I’ve known Sam’s attorneys here at the firm long enough to have seen this a hundred times before.