Page 10 of Knot for Sale

“You totally would,” he countered—and apparently, we were both twelve again, engaged in a game of ‘yes you would, no I wouldn’t’in the schoolyard.

“I wouldn’t,” I insisted.

A stubborn look crept over his angular features. “Fine. I’ll call my agent first thing in the morning and ask her to get me an invite.”

I swallowed the involuntary screech of ‘What?’ that wanted to escape, and nearly choked on my salad. He was clearly bluffing. Wasn’t he?

“Sure,” I said, trying to sound casual. “It’s the first week of December, though. D-don’t you have conflicts with another photoshoot?”

“Nothing that pays as well,” he jabbed back. “And certainly nothing on a big-ass yacht floating in the Mediterranean. I can work on my tan.”

When the hell had this conversation gone off the rails? I stared at him, not sure if continuing to argue would make things worse.

“You’re okay with ‘glorified escort work,’ then?” I asked, unable to resist.

His eyes narrowed. “I don’t plan on taking any. Because unlike you, I don’t need the TSB contract.”

“And you prefer to be the one paying for ‘company,’ rather than the one getting paid for it?” As soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted them.

“Yeah,” he said flatly. “I do. Because the person paying for services is the one who’s in control. Which you should already know if you’re as savvy as you seem to want me to believe.”

God, did I know that. Sometimes it felt like learning that lesson had been my life’s work.

And yet, here I was...again.

“Stay home,” I said tiredly. “Get your tan at a salon, Elijah. You know you don’t actually want to do this.”

He wouldn’t follow through. Not really. He was just trying to make a point.

I managed to convince myself of that, too—right up until I found him packing bags the night before our red-eye flight to Athens.

SIX

Elijah

I WAS NORMALLY smarter than this, at least when it came to my career. I needed an image modeling job for a shopping mall underwear retailer like I needed a venereal disease. The twelve-thousand-dollar paycheck only succeeded in making the whole thing look more dodgy, rather than less.

Frankly, I was surprised Annie, my agent, had managed to get me an invite. There was a certain subset of alphas and male betas who got off on dressing up a male omega in something sweet and frilly in the bedroom, but that particular kink was far from the main focus atThe Secret Boudoir.

Which probably means there’s some rich old codger on the yacht who gets off on it, I thought sourly.