Rhett’s eyebrows rose. The bartender laughed.
“You’ve got to appreciate a woman who can shoot whiskey.”
“Well, my grandfather’s name was Jameson. It seems disrespectful not to be able to handle his namesake, you know what I mean?” Shawn suddenly felt melancholy. God, she missed Pops.
The bartender fist-bumped Rhett. “You’re a lucky man, brother.”
“Not yet, but I’m hoping,” Rhett told him.
“Ah. Well, good luck.” The bartender winked at Shawn. “Make him work for it, hon.”
Except the truth was, she needed Rhett Ford more than he needed her, so she wasn’t going to be forcing him to dance on a string. If anything, it was about to be the other way around. Or more like her crawling on the floor for him with a gag ball in her mouth.
Oh, God. There were going to have to be some ground rules on this fake marriage thing. Which she really needed to discuss with him. Her palms started to sweat, the liquor heating up her extremities. In her mind, one way or another, it was already a foregone conclusion. That’s how she was. She made a decision, and everyone else needed to fall in with it. Somehow she didn’t think Rhett Ford was the falling-in type.
Not having any idea how to reply to the bartender, she cleared her throat, wishing she were like Eve, who was never at a shortage for words.
“Where did you go to college?” Rhett asked her as the bartender moved on to other customers.
Not that Milt’s was jumping. There were only a couple of guys in their fifties at the end of the bar. Good. Fewer witnesses when she asked Rhett to marry her and he started laughing.
“I went to the University of South Carolina.” Then, because it would be expected, and because she already had a slight buzz from the whiskey she added, “Go Cocks.”
She expected Rhett to laugh or make a crack in return. It’s what people did whenever she referenced USC’s mascot, the gamecocks. It was funny. Juvenile humor, yes, but funny. It was the only legitimate way to say “Go Cocks” in a conversation in public ever.
But Rhett didn’t laugh. In fact, his eyes darkened. “Say that again,” he told her. It wasn’t a request, it was a demand.
Shawn felt her face and chest burn, from the alcohol, from desire. “What?” she asked him, bewildered. “What do you mean?”
“Say ‘cock.’ I want to hear you say it.”
It could have been a creepy request. But somehow it wasn’t. It was just a complete and total turn-on. It was the oddest thing to her, that all Rhett had to do was look at her, his gaze trained on her and only her, and he commanded her full attention. Commanded her.
“Cock,” she whispered, licking her lips nervously.
“Louder.”
“Cock,” she said more confidently, aware of how he subtly shifted toward her, his body firm and masculine, his knee brushing hers.
He made a sound, in the back of his throat, that told her what she’d just said was as effective as if she’d gripped his c**k itself with her hand. Her ni**les beaded, and she realized that he might be younger than her by more than a couple of years, but he was fully mature and in control of himself and his desires. Possibly more so than she was.
It was so sexy, so hot, that she did exactly what she had been hoping she wouldn’t. She blurted. Instead of approaching him with a business proposition, the words just spilled out of her mouth like ice water on a flame.
“Will you marry me?”
CHAPTER FOUR
RHETT blinked at Shawn. All the blood had gone south to his c**k just watching the dirty word roll off Shawn’s plump lip, so maybe he was at less-than-full mental capacity, because he could have sworn she had just asked him to marry her. Which could not be what she had said. Hell, he’d had to talk her into a beer.
“What?” he asked, wanting to shake his head and rattle it into a reset like they did in old-school cartoons. “What did you say?”
Shawn blushed. She looked down at the bar, fiddling with her empty Guinness glass. “See, here’s the thing. I need a husband. I’m offering money. Are you interested? A business deal, pure and simple.”
He was not following her at all. “Why the hell would you need a husband?” This wasn’t the fifties. If she was knocked up, no one was going to think anything of it. It couldn’t be for any sort of tax advantage. God knew, she was better off being single if she wanted a break from the IRS, so he didn’t understand.
Her eyes finally met his, and she looked emboldened, determined. The shift was dramatic, and it had his body responding again. There was something so damn sexy about her, vulnerable yet strong at the same time.
“Let’s just say that if I don’t get married, I’m going to lose something that means a lot to me. It’s ridiculous, but there it is. I’ll give you a hundred grand if you stay married to me for a year.”
Rhett actually felt his jaw drop open. A hundred thousand dollars? Was she serious? That was more money than he could ever hope to see at once. While he had made a decent living on Evan’s pit crew, he’d taken a pay cut to switch to Eve’s crew, and he’d be lucky if he made five grand off his dirt track racing this year. There just wasn’t a lot of cash at this level, and he wasn’t expecting to win right out of the gate. He was aiming more for breaking even on his car and expenses. A hundred grand. Damn. That was a lot of cheddar.
But he shook his head. “I need more details. That’s a lot of money, and this doesn’t seem above board to me, Shawn. I don’t want to get involved in something illegal. Or be some sort of pawn to make a boyfriend jealous.”
Now it was her turn to look surprised. “I would never involve you in something like that! Either of those things! I wouldn’t ever do anything illegal. Hell, I don’t even jaywalk. And I am not the kind of woman to play games in relationships.”
She looked so indignant that Rhett instantly trusted what she was proposing was something that, while not exactly typical, wasn’t sketchy either. “So then tell me what it really is.”
Shawn sighed. “I guess I can’t expect you not to have questions. I shouldn’t have just blurted it out like that. But the thing is, I’m desperate. I’m not sure if you heard, but my grandfather died in November.”
She paused, jaw working, he suspected both from grief and from struggling to find the words for what she needed to say.
“I’m really sorry, Shawn. That must be very difficult.” His own grandparents were all still miraculously alive, and he knew he was fortunate in that regard.