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your consideration. Jerk.
    And she’d been so suave, too.
    She sighed. She really hadn’t thought it would be that easy to get Russell Mulholland to accept her invitation to Clementine’s party. But she hadn’t thought it would be as difficult as Finn Guthrie wanted to make it, either. She’d thought he would at least offer some vague assurance that he’d give the invitation to Mr. Mulholland, not Mr. Mulholland’s assistant. And then, you know, actually pass it along to Mr. Mulholland. Not that Natalie didn’t appreciate the offer of a donation, mind you, since it would up the buck and a half Clementine’s take was looking to be at this point. But she had thought Mulholland’s bodyguard would at least help get the invitation physically into the billionaire’s hand. And then the billionaire would read the wittily written inscription, see the wittily conceived theme, and be unable to resist coming to the affair, if only for a little while.
    Thirty minutes, she thought. If she could just get a commitment from Russell Mulholland to stop by Clementine’s party for thirty minutes, it would be enough for her to spin it into a major event that would bring people out of the woodwork to attend.
    She looked at the door through which Finn Guthrie had just exited and marveled again at what a very disagreeable man he was. Not only had he been rude, but he was unkempt. He’d gone so long without shaving that the lower half of his face was shadowed like a Mack truck. His blue jeans were more rip than denim, and his T-shirt had barely fit. Okay, so maybe that last was because they probably didn’t make T-shirts in size XX OMGX B—X-tra, X-tra, Oh-my-God-X-tra Brawny—but that was beside the point. The point was . . .
    She sighed heavily. The point was that she had once again been dismissed as if she were no more important than a piece of lint. And this time it was by a guy who had smoky gray bedroom eyes and silky brown tousled hair and arms cambered with swells of muscle. No, wait. That wasn’t why she felt so hurt. It was because this time it was by a guy who was a worse dresser than Larry the Cable Guy. And he hadn’t even offered the slightest indication that he wanted to git ’er done.
    How could someone of Russell Mulholland’s stature trust his security—or, even more surprisingly, his son’s security—to a man like that? And why hadn’t she been able to find out more about either of them on the Internet? It was as if neither of them had existed prior to the launch of the GameViper. What was up with that? Even Natalie, when she Googled herself, showed up in links to websites where her name was on the guest list of a party she attended years ago, or on the committee of some function she had helped organize. But Mulholland and Guthrie? Nothing.
    She glanced down at her watch and looked up at the door again. He only had a few minutes’ head start on her. And he’d said he was going out for a bite. She did some quick mental math. There were probably a dozen restaurants between here and Fourth Street Live, and Fourth Street Live claimed more than a dozen more. Still, considering the way he was dressed, that narrowed the choices some. Maybe if she hurried . . .
    Tugging her purse strap snugly over her shoulder and rising up on the balls of her feet, Natalie took off after him.

· Three ·
    FINN HAD JUST ORDERED SOMETHING CALLED A HOT Brown and an American pale ale at a place called the BBC Alehouse when someone sidled up on the stool immediately beside him at the bar, even though nearly all the other stools were empty at this hour between lunch and dinner. He didn’t have to look over to know it was Natalie Beckett. No, he knew that by the soft scent that surrounded her—and then surrounded him, too. And also by the way his body responded to that scent. And even more by the way his body responded to the fact that she had sidled up on the stool beside him at the bar.
    He swore silently to himself. Russell