“Being my official companion for the next few weeks.” His teeth bit down on his broad bottom lip for a second. “And the promotional face of my new product. I want you to be Passion Creek Brewery’s poster girl for my latest launch.”
Piper let out an incredulous laugh. “You’re crazy.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Oh yes, you are.”
“You get to keep your clothes on, if that’s what you’re worried about. No topless shots, just your lovely face smiling over a big glass of my best foaming beer.” He grinned, but the expression was forced and cold like a predator about to take a great big bite out of its prey. “It doesn’t look like you have much choice unless you want me tell the agency how badly you screwed up that payment run this morning. It costs me. I should invoice them for that. I have salaries to pay.”
“The agency will have insurance to cover this, right?”
“Maybe they do, but what are the chances of them placing you in a position of responsibility again? They have a reputation to consider, and I do believe they have a review section on their website.”
“You wouldn’t!”
He shrugged. “Think what you like, but they’ll be pissed when the woman I asked for by name, because she’d been personally recommended to me, is fired on her first morning. Can you risk it?”
“You asked for me by name? How did you know which agency to call? I never told you my last name.”
“In Sanibel, you mentioned you did occasional temp work to make ends meet.” He flicked her business card across the desk. “And that fell out of your purse. You have an unusual name, and there aren’t that many temp agencies in Passion Creek.”
She stared down at the silver scrap of a card and cursed herself for being so careless. “I can live without work from that damn agency, DeLeo. Do what the hell you like because I’m not going to be your poster girl.”
“Pretty name you have for your business. I like it. It must be doing well if you’re willing to flush your temping career down the toilet.” He fixed her with a hard stare. “Not sure it would survive if word got out about some of the things you told me in Sanibel. Passion Creek is a small town when it comes to scandal.”
“Scandal?” Piper’s mind raced as she tried to remember what she’d told him, but almost everything beyond seven that evening in Sanibel was a sparkly blur. “What things?”
Matt laughed. “Seriously? You can’t remember? Piper, all those cocktails made you tell me everything.”
Hell, what had she said? There were so many things lurking in her past that she considered hidden forever. Surely she hadn’t been drunk enough to mention any of them? “Nobody will believe you,” she said in a strained voice. “And nobody in Passion Creek will be interested in what I may or may not have done.”
“Not even the unsolved mystery of who sprayed a big dick symbol on Pastor Zimmerman’s front door?” He grinned wickedly. “Won’t do a lot for your wedding favor sales.”
“I’m beginning to hate you.”
“And I still have a pair of your black lacy underpants. Think I might frame them and put them up behind the bar with your business card.”
Damn, she’d forgotten about those. “You’re insane if you think you can get away with this.” She snatched up the business card and thrust it into her jacket pocket. “You’re seriously threatening to blackmail me if I refuse to be your smiley beer girl?”
Matt DeLeo tipped his head to one side and smiled. “Blackmail?” Then a nonchalant shrug. “I want you as my poster girl, and I want to see you again. So if that’s what it takes to get me what I want, then I guess so. Blackmail. Technically.”
Chapter Two
Her cheeks were flushed pink, just like they’d been after they’d first had sex on the sofa back in Florida, and Matt couldn’t help but silently congratulate himself on reeling her back into his orbit. Poor Piper must have one hell of a guilty conscience, because the only vaguely scandalous thing she’d told him about in Florida was the Zimmerman graffiti. He’d been bluffing about knowing more. He wondered what secrets she had hidden away in that pretty head. He’d love to know more about her, but his victory was her loss, and she was angry. She was also scared and he didn’t want her like that—he wanted her to be having fun again.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” he said. “The blackmail side of things.”
Piper huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “So you’re a decent guy who just does the nice kind of blackmail, not the hard-core extortion type?”
“I am a decent guy, and I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do.” He cracked a smile, but didn’t receive one in return. “We’ll have a blast, just wait and see. I’ll show you things you’ve never seen.”
“I don’t want to wait and see. I want certainty, all the ducks in a row. I want to know exactly what you expect of me as your companion and poster girl, because being financially ruined might be preferable. And, for the record, it sure feels like I’m being forced to do something I don’t want to do.”
He bit the end of the pen he was holding. “Okay, sit down and we’ll talk this over.” He gestured to the chair on the opposite side of his desk and dropped the pen onto the polished wood as she slid onto the black leather chair. The pencil skirt she was wearing pulled tight across her thighs and slid up a few inches to reveal a neat pair of black, hosiery-covered knees. Knees that had been on either side of his head at one point. He coughed. “As you now know, I own this brewery.”
“Not an IT tycoon, like you tried to convince me you were in Florida.”
“You didn’t believe me anyway.”
“I have an instinct when it comes to opportunistic liars.”
He whistled through his teeth and allowed her a second to look smug. “I started up Xtreme Analytics LLC in Boulder. Heard of it?”
Her smile faded. “Nope.”
“They develop software you need for cutting-edge IT indexing and provide consultancy services to some of the biggest corporations in the world. Some say it’s helped make Colorado the new Silicon Valley.”
“And you’re in an office at the back of a Passion Creek brewery now because…?”
“Because I sold out after I made my first few millions, fed my necktie into the shredder, and chased my dreams instead of gathering at the water cooler with the rest of the herd. I do what I want, Piper, when I want.”