Dirty Deal (A Perfectly Matched Novel) (Entangled Brazen) by Christine Bell Page B

she was cool with this being a one-night hookup, and that she was actually cool with it, but it all felt a little forced.
    By the time they pulled up to her door, she was ready to dive headfirst out of the moving car.
    “So, thanks for the lovely evening.” She pushed open the door and swung her legs out of the limo, holding up a hand to keep him in place. “No need to walk me in, I’m good.”
    He seemed like he wanted to argue but then gave her a reluctant nod. “At least flash the lights when you get in safe, okay?”
    She popped off a snappy salute and wheeled around to get the hell out of Dodge. She was halfway up the stairs before she turned back, motioning for him to lower the window.
    “Can we, uh, keep this between us? The last thing we need is Grace getting wind of what happened. She’ll be all over me about it.”
    A smile tugged at his sexy lips, and he mimicked her salute. “Roger that.”
    She jogged lightly up the remaining steps and tried hard not to glance over her shoulder to see if he was staring after her. Unlikely. When she’d told him the sex was a onetime thing, he didn’t even have the hangdog expression some guys got. He was, for lack of a better word, completely chill with it.
    Weird. But in a good way, she told herself, pushing back the twinge of…something she felt when she thought of how normal he’d seemed after the fact. Because what she’d said to him was true. For all intents and purposes, tonight had never happened. When she saw him again, it would be as though they’d rubbed elbows instead of bumping uglies.
    She closed the door behind her, stepped into the cavernous foyer of her family home, and shivered. Wrapping her arms around herself, she kicked off her heels, making a mental note to turn down the air-conditioning and open the windows before she got into bed. She flipped on the lights and made her way to her bedroom, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror.
    Her mother would be horrified. Her hair was a wreck, her dress was still damp and covered in sand, and she was rocking a little potbelly from all the food she’d scarfed down at dinner.
    By tomorrow, though, all those reminders of her night with Bryan would be gone.
    Why that thought didn’t cheer her in the least, she couldn’t say.

Chapter Five
    “If you don’t quit messing with the props, you’re going to break something, and François is going to be pissed.” Grace snatched a rubber chicken from Serena’s hands and looked into the bird’s expressionless eyes. “Although why this is here, I haven’t the faintest idea.”
    “I think it totally works. We could be like, ‘Don’t be a chickenshit, let Love Will Find a Way pick a match for you today!’” Serena said in her best commercial voice before grabbing the prop and tossing it back into the bucket of other, equally strange items that sat beside the shooting stage.
    “Please, don’t mess with the art.” The photographer sniffed and adjusted his lens for the seventh time. His French accent was so bad that he must have picked it up from a daytime soap opera, and his crappy, condescending attitude grated on her, but it wasn’t worth arguing with him over. She had more important things on her mind, like Dr. Bryan “I’m too cool to show up on time” Metcalf.
    She was usually the one behind schedule, but today she’d been a few minutes early. Granted, that was only because she and Grace had come over together from the office, but still. She was here and ready to go. Too bad the same couldn’t be said of their model. Surely all those years in the army should have taught him punctuality, but he was already ten minutes late for the photo shoot.
    Maybe he’d decided to bail after all.
    She hadn’t heard from him at all in the three days since their “forgotten” night on the beach. Apparently, he’d taken her words to heart. All the arrangements for today’s shoot had been made through Grace. Hell, the one time he’d called the office and