Some Like It Charming (A Temporary Engagement) by Megan Bryce Page B

That my clients would even still be there waiting for me?”
    He was silent, knowing she was right but refusing to agree with her.
    She said, “I can’t work for you now or after. I can’t go work for a competitor engaged to you, no one would hire me. They would be afraid I would spill all their secrets to you.”
    “There’s more to life than working. Take a vacation.”
    She laughed at him. “There’s more to life than working? That really just came out of your mouth?”
    He shrugged. “I’ve had plenty of girlfriends to prove I am not a workaholic. How about you? Lots of boyfriends to prove there’s more in your life than work?” He froze. “Is there a boyfriend right now?”
    Mackenzie mentally kicked herself. Now that would have been an excellent reason she couldn’t go along with his outrageous proposal.
    “Yes, I have a boyfriend. He was understandably upset when he heard I was engaged.”
    “Liar. You would have brought him up before this.” He leaned forward, taking her hand. “Come with me to New York. Whatever you want, I’ll do it. We’ll work something out, just come with me.”
    She knew she would. She’d go with him to New York, disrupt her whole life, and come back to nothing when it was all over. But it had to be worth it to her.
    “I will do this on one condition. I will take my accrued vacation time while we live out this little fantasy of yours. And at the end of it I get a nice severance package. Nice enough that I don’t need to find another job until everyone forgets that I was ever engaged to you.”
    “You won’t have to leave the company. I’ll simply stay away from the L.A. office for a while.”
    “I will have to leave. I will be your ex, Ethan. You said it yourself, your breakups are always ugly. There’s no way I could continue working for you. Are you willing to give up your best salesman for this?”
    He looked her in the eye and said, “Yes,” but she knew he didn’t believe he’d have to pay the price.
    She shook her head. “Let’s write a pre-nup.”
    “Huh?”
    “A pre-nup. I’m sure you’ve heard the term.”
    “You know I don’t actually want to marry you, right?”
    She went to the desk, searching for paper. “It’s an engagement pre-nup. I have about six weeks of vacation time. At the end of the six weeks, we break up and I quit. And that will be the end. I will move to a competitor, probably HGC, and you will go out and get another girlfriend, thereby starting the whole cycle over again and accomplishing nothing except losing all my sales.”
    He slouched in his chair, folding his arms. “Not HGC. Anybody but them.”
    She smiled. “Oh, I think it will have to be HGC. I can just imagine how much Bob Givens would love to hire Ethan O’Connor’s ex-fiancé.”
    “He’s a putz. You’d hate working for him.”
    “Probably. But I doubt I’ll see him as much as I’ve seen you. And besides, my severance package will be good enough that I won’t have to for a while.”
    She spied his laptop and waved towards it. “May I?”
    He nodded, following her as she went to flip it up, and leaning over her shoulder to see what she was doing.
    “You’re willing to give me a three percent share for doing this.” She looked at him. “Which is stupid, and you’re not stupid.”
    “Desperation sometimes leads to the same destination.”
    She turned back to the computer. “Let’s be conservative and say the OC will grow at one percent a year and I will live another fifty years.”
    “You know I really hate it when you call it the OC.”
    “I know.”
    “And one percent per year? That’s not conservative, that’s insulting. Let’s say ten percent.”
    “For fifty years?” She twirled the chair around, forcing him to step back. “I didn’t realize you indulged in fantasy.”
    He leaned back in, resting his hands on the armrests. “Frequently.”
    She whirled back towards the desk and he hopped back before he fell flat on his face. “Mean,