Nicola Marsh - Romance for Cynics

With the threat of his cash source drying up, Cash had turned to Bart. His mate’s solution sounded easy enough but he couldn’t exactly pull a girlfriend out of thin air.

Bart wolf-whistled. ‘Hey, what about her?’

‘Who?’

‘The hottie in the obscenely tight shorts.’

Cash crossed to the window, where Bart had his nosed pressed against the glass like a hormonal teenager.

‘Lucy? You’re kidding, right?’

Lucy Grant, his gardener, would be the last woman he’d ask to be his fake girlfriend for a week.

The woman despised him.

Not that she’d ever said or done anything overt, but she gave off an air of untouchability that made him want to ruffle her.

So he’d tried. Several times. Whenever they crossed paths, he’d flirt with her. Deliberately taunting, trying to get a rise out of her.

Nada.

Her hands-off aura intrigued him a little, but he hadn’t given her aloofness much thought. Except those odd times he’d been taking a business call and found himself at this very window, copping a very nice eyeful of firm ass, long legs and B-cups in a tight tank top.

Watching Lucy stride as she mowed his lawn or bend over as she clipped hedges made working from home that much more pleasurable.

In fact, he timed his rare workdays from home with her fortnightly gardening visits. Maybe she’d crack one of these days and give him a smile? Doubtful, considering the death glare she’d shot him this morning when they’d crossed paths on the back patio.

‘Why not?’ Bart peeled his nose away from the window with reluctance. ‘The firm only has room for one more couple and they’re closing applications today.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘I put in a good word for you and you’re in. Guaranteed.’

‘You’re nuts,’ Cash said, his gaze unwittingly drifting to where Lucy stood near the front gate, pruning with her usual efficiency.

For all he knew, Lucy had a hubby and a string of dirt-smudged rug-rats at home. Though she didn’t wear a ring...not that it meant anything. Probably took it off for safety reasons while working.

Cash shook his head. ‘I don’t know the woman.’

‘No time like the present to get to know her.’ Bart glanced at his watch. ‘I need to head back to the office and I need your answer now. You in?’

Tension knotted the muscles in Cash’s neck. The last thing he felt like doing was parade around for seven days acting like a lovestruck fool.

But his business was everything. He’d worked too long and too hard to let it suffer because of circumstances beyond his control.

He’d approached Bart because he needed positive PR. But Valentine’s Day? Seriously?

‘Three...two...one...’ Bart made a buzzing sound and Cash nodded.

‘Fine. I’ll do it.’

Bart smirked as he shrugged into his suit jacket. ‘So who’s the lucky lady going to be?’

‘Leave that to me,’ Cash said, mentally scrolling through his list of female friends and coming up empty.

Half of them he’d dated and would never go there again. The other half wanted more and would see this week of lovey-dovey crap as a full-blown declaration.

Uh-uh. He needed someone without any romantic illusions.

Someone without any view to the future.

Someone without cunning, ulterior motives or the urge to shackle him to a ball and chain.

As he walked Bart out and Lucy acknowledged him with a curt nod, he knew.

He needed someone like Lucy.

* * *

‘Damn it.’ Lucy’s pruning shears slipped and she hacked off a chunk of ivy leaf violet when Cash appeared at the front door.

The guy had that effect on her. The ability to raise her hackles and make her want to chop something off—not of the flora variety.

Not his fault entirely, that she had a healthy disregard for millionaires in slick suits. It was a personal aversion, one she’d honed to a fine art nine years ago.

And Cash seemed more charming than most, with his ready smile and quick wit. But that was what put her on guard: his ability to flirt without trying, his easy-going approach when she knew it would be a practiced façade presented to the world.

Go-getters like him wouldn’t get anywhere if they were that laid-back all the time. And she knew enough about her number one client Cashel Burgess, courtesy of Google, to assume he would be a tiger in the boardroom.

Self-made millionaire by the time he was twenty-eight. High IQ, skipped a year at high school. Economics degree. MBA. Impressive jobs at elite actuary firms before opening his own financial advisory business to the stars.

He moved in A-list circles, often gracing the social pages and gossip columns in Melbourne media. Par for the course, considering he always had a busty blonde actress on his arm. She half expected to see the entire female cast of Melbourne’s top-rating soap opera stroll out of his house the mornings she worked here, but surprisingly she’d never seen a woman do the walk of shame out of his enviable mansion. Perhaps he spirited them away out the back.

No, she didn’t trust guys who behaved one way in public and another in private. Which was why she preferred ignoring him when they crossed paths every two weeks.

She knew her aloofness was why he deliberately went out of his way to seek her out. He saw her coolness as a challenge. She didn’t let it bother her. If anything, she notched her haughtiness up further. No way in hell would she ever let down her guard, because then she might have to face reality: that a small part of her was super attracted to the whole casually mussed brown hair, piercing blue eyes, chiselled jaw, dimpled smile thing he had going on.

Unfathomable. And wrong on so many levels, considering she’d vowed to never go for a suit again.

Must be her dating drought making her secretly lust after her boss. Maybe she should say yes the next time the guy at the hardware shop asked her out?

Cash’s visitor slid into a Porsche and backed out of the drive with a jaunty wave in her direction. She managed a terse nod in response and gripped the pruning shears, ready to resume work.

However, rather than heading back into the house, Cash started down the path towards her.

Crap.

They’d already done their usual him-flirt-her-avoid dance this morning so what did he want now? An encore?

She opened the shears then snapped them shut with a loud metallic clink that carried clear across the garden and she could’ve sworn she saw Cash falter, wince or both. Probably wishful thinking but she did it again for good measure.

‘Is that a warning?’ he said, eyeing the shears with a mix of wariness and amusement.

The corners of her mouth twitched against her better judgement. ‘No, but it could be if you keep hassling me while I’m trying to work.’

He smiled and the impact of those lips curving hit her somewhere in the vicinity of her solar plexus. ‘Why don’t you put the DIY castrating tool down so we can talk?’

This time, she couldn’t stop the laughter spilling from her lips. ‘About?’

‘Wow.’ He clutched his heart and staggered a little. ‘You’re gorgeous when you smile.’

‘And you’re full of it.’ She waved the shears in his direction. ‘What do you want?’

He flinched. ‘Not that.’

Damn, she loved sparring with a quick-witted guy. And if she were completely honest with herself, she missed it. Missed the fun of swapping banter with a guy who could fire back.

‘I’m busy—’

‘I really need to talk to you.’ His sincerity scared her as much as his overt flirting. ‘Would you like to come inside for a drink?’

‘No thanks.’ She shook her head. Bad enough bumping into him outside. No way would she set foot inside his place and risk pining for what she’d once had.