Read Online The One in My Heart by Sherry Thomas - Free Book Online Page A

that he was so determined, but I was more than a little freaked out. “What’s the catch?”
    Other than that for six months we’d be working toward a common goal. When my friends talked about falling for their colleagues, this almost always came up—that they were teammates, obsessed with the same objective. I didn’t want to be in the trenches with Bennett. I didn’t want to be his partner and confidante.
    “If I’m going to pay double, I’ll be more stringent in my demands. At two hundred fifty I was willing to prorate. If you can only do four months, then I’ll hand over a check for two-thirds of the agreed-upon sum. But at five hundred it’s all or nothing. If you bail on me before six months is up, for any reason beyond acts of God, I keep the money.”
    It was my turn to look out the window—hope and doubt kept chasing each other in my head and I didn’t want him to see that on my face.
    I wasn’t hurting for cash in my personal life and I’d secured sufficient funding for my research for the next several years. But Pater had been a businessman—an art expert too but a businessman first and foremost—and he had taught me that very few things in life were as eloquent as money.
    Not that I’d describe Bennett’s money as eloquent. It was more like a mysterious artifact, the writing on it in a language I’d never seen before. But its existence was significant enough that I couldn’t dismiss it out of hand.
    “Let me…” I grimaced. “Let me think about it.”
    Bennett exhaled audibly. “Take your time. But while you think about it, can you make me your plus-one at Charlotte Devonport’s wedding?”
    Charlotte Devonport was marrying my second cousin Sam in three weeks. “Are you related to her?”
    “She’s my mom’s goddaughter. So my parents will be there, most likely.”
    “And I just ditch Zelda? She was going to be my date.”
    “You don’t give my evil genius enough credit. She’ll be receiving a ticket to a private concert Annie Lennox is giving in town that night as part of a fund-raiser.”
    Zelda was a huge Annie Lennox fan. She wouldn’t turn down such an opportunity.
    “In which case you can tell people that I’m a last-minute replacement for Zelda,” Bennett went on, “somebody you asked on a whim.”
    I truly hadn’t given his evil genius enough credit. “And you’ll pretend, until you arrive at the wedding, that you had no idea who the bride was.”
    “Unless that claim seems too preposterous. In which case I’ll say that I had some inkling who might be there, but since I didn’t want to miss a chance to hang out with you…”
    My heart pinched. If only he meant it. If only it wasn’t a Manhattan-size pretense. “You should ask a woman who’s more likely to take that six-month gig. Showing up at the wedding with me and then somewhere else two weeks later with another girlfriend might not give the impression you want.”
    “I’ll decide who I want. You just say yes or no.”
    And he wanted me, even if it wasn’t in the way I’d like to be wanted.
    What’s the harm? asked a part of me. It’s just a wedding.
    And this is just drinks at his place , retorted a different part of me. Look at everything that’s happened since you stepped into this apartment. Shut it down now. You can’t leave the door open for this man. Next thing you know, he’ll have taken over your entire life.
    “Please,” he said, his voice so low I almost couldn’t hear him, “I’m asking this as a favor.”
    Had he been looking at me, backed by the full force of his personality, I would have said no. But his gaze was somewhere in the middle of the table, that of a proud man who had run out of options.
    “All right,” I heard myself say, “we can go to the wedding together. Just the wedding.”
    Several seconds passed before his gaze lifted. I couldn’t read his expression, except to know that he didn’t seem glad, or even relieved.
    “Thank you,” he said softly. “You