Kara Lennox - Reluctant Partners

She took a long sip of her coffee, watching him carefully over the rim of her cup. “What are you getting at?”

“Say the judge awards you the boat. You’ll have to hire someone to help you handle all the cruises we’re booking. The same is true of me-because frankly, though my cousins are enthusiastic about the boat, Reece gets seasick and Max is going to be too busy with his new ad agency to help me much.

“But if you and I continue our partnership indefinitely, we can share the work and the profits.”

“So what you’re thinking,” she said slowly, “is that once the fishing business is legally yours, I’ll be your employee. Not interested.” She took a bite of toast and chewed it furiously, staring out the window.

“That’s not what I meant. I said partnership.”

“So, what, you’ll offer me a small percentage of the profits?”

“Damn it, Allie, are you going to keep trying to read my mind-and doing it badly, I might add-or do you want to hear the proposal?”

“Sorry.” But she didn’t look sorry. “I’m listening.”

“We’re good together. We each have skills the other lacks.”

“You mean, I can navigate, find fish and cook, and you can drink expensive beer and talk about the stock market with the good ol’ boys?”

“You’re not doing a very good job listening.”

She clamped her mouth shut.

He started again. “What I propose is a full, fifty-fifty partnership. My cousins and I won’t contest Johnny’s handwritten will if you’ll agree-”

“You want me to just hand over half my business?”

“Look at the big picture, Allie. With my input, and that of Reece and Max, Remington Charters will earn twice as much as it did before.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I’ve worked in business for a lot of years, Allie. Reece and Max and I-we know what we’re doing. We’ve turned several businesses around. Of course we don’t have guarantees, but we can make an educated guess.

“But there’s another reason a partnership makes a lot of sense.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s this thing between us. We’re good together in more than a business sense, and you know it. I want to see where it goes.”

“Oh my God.” She stared at him with a dawning look of horror on her face.

“What?”

“So that’s what all this is about. I should have known.”

“All what?”

“This!” She stood and made a sweeping gesture with her hand, encompassing their breakfast and the entire suite. “You planned it from the beginning-the fancy clothes, the fancy hotel suite. You set out to make me feel like Cinderella at the ball. Then, when you got me all softened up, you spring this partnership thing on me.”

Her attack was so blatantly unfair, Cooper was for once in his life utterly speechless. He was known for his ability to cleverly negotiate no matter what kind of nasty surprises the opposition lobbed at him, but this one feisty redhead had rendered him mute.

“With you lawyer types, it’s all about the bottom line. Win at any cost. You know you’re going to lose your bid to crack Johnny’s handwritten will, so it’s on to Plan B. Fifty percent is better than nothing, plus you get a built-in galley slave and free sex. And when you get tired of me? You’ll find some legal maneuver to get rid of me.”

She walked right up to him and poked his chest with her finger. “I have been down this route before. I fell for it once when I was a teenager, but I won’t be a sucker again. So you can just keep your generous offer. I will take my chances with the courts.”

By the time Cooper came up with a defense, she’d already flounced out of the room and into her own bedroom. He stood in front of the door she’d slammed in his face, devastated.

“It was a generous offer!” he yelled. “Because I’m going to win. I was trying to save you some heartache, but it appears you don’t have a heart!” He paused and listened, but all was quiet on the other side of the door. “Allie?”

He heard the shower go on.

With a sigh he returned to their half-eaten breakfast, but he certainly had no appetite for it now.

After what they’d shared, how could she believe the whole thing was a calculated scheme? He would have to be the coldest, most soulless bastard in the world to cook up a plan like that.

In his experience, innocent people assumed others were as honest as they were. It was only the crooks and cheats who believed everyone was out to get them.

What did that say about Allie?

ALLIE SOMEHOW GOT THROUGH the rest of the day. She did all her crying during a very long shower, so that when she emerged from her bedroom an hour later she was dry eyed, showing as little emotion as possible.

Cooper was obviously angry, too. His every movement was filled with tension, his mouth nothing but a thin, tight line and his eyes sparkling dangerously if she so much as looked at him.

At the trade show they spoke to each other only when absolutely necessary, each of them alternating between the booth and the floor so they didn’t have to be together.

It was the longest day of Allie’s life.

Unfortunately, they didn’t repeat their success from the previous day. Maybe it was the fact that outside the gorgeous spring weather called, or maybe it was the tension in the air, but they signed up fewer than half the number of people they’d attracted on Saturday.

Max showed up to help them pack up at the end of the day. “So, how’d it go?” he asked.

“Fine,” Allie and Cooper said in unison, each of them sounding as if they’d just been through a root canal.

“Gee, sorry I asked.”

Allie was immediately contrite. She didn’t know if Max was in on the plan, but she shouldn’t automatically assume he was. “Sorry, Max. It’s been a long day. We did well yesterday but today was slow and I’m afraid Cooper and I got on each other’s nerves.”

“Hey, it happens.”

Allie busied herself taking down the fish cutouts. From the corner of her eye she saw Cooper and Max conferring about something, and she guessed it was her because Max glanced her way every now and then. She wondered what sort of spin Cooper was putting on the weekend’s events.

It was dark as they climbed into Cooper’s car for the drive home. “Do you want to stop somewhere for dinner?” Cooper asked, his tone grim, telling her exactly what he thought about sharing a meal with her.

She was hungry, but she wouldn’t be able to eat a bite sitting across the table from him. “No, thanks.” She put on her seat belt, reclined the cushy leather seat, and closed her eyes. If she was lucky, she would fall asleep and the drive would be over in no time.

But Cooper had other ideas. “How are we going to run the cruises if we aren’t speaking to each other?”

“I can do it alone,” she grumbled.

“That’s not what we agreed to do.”

“Cooper, surely by now you know I’m not going to make off with the boat.”

“I don’t think I know you at all. And you clearly don’t know me if you think I would seduce you just to get my hands on your boat. If I wanted a boat that bad, I could buy one.”

“Then why don’t you? Why does it have to be this boat?”

“It’s a matter of principle.”

Allie hooted at that one. “Principle? You’re a lawyer. You don’t actually expect me to believe that, do you?”

“No, I don’t. Because you’re determined to believe the worst of me no matter what the evidence says. Some people think I’m jaded and overly suspicious of everyone, but lady, you take the cake.”

“I have every right to be suspicious. My uncle stole my birthright from me. He took my father’s boat, left to me in his will, and he sold it without my knowledge or consent. I won’t let that happen again.”