Page 22 of The Problem with Playboys

Now he wondered if she was talking about romance or the part about being spied on. “Not a lot of hot sex by a pool in Miami?”

She shook her head, but he couldn’t ignore the way the corners of her luscious mouth turned up. She’d had those lips all over him last night and he’d be a fool to not want that again. “No. That does not happen to me often. Or ever.”

He took a certain amount of pride at hearing that. “What about your love life, Chloe? Is there one?”

“This sounds like a fishing expedition.”

“I’m just curious. Plus, we’re stuck on this plane together. We might as well talk about something.”

She turned and looked out through the window, seeming deep in thought. “It’s pretty anticlimactic. A handful of boyfriends. One broken engagement. Not much really to say about any of it.”

“Broken engagement?” Now that really got the wheels in his head turning. He leaned forward, eager to learn more. “You have to spill the beans, Burnett. I want the dirt.”

She smiled in a way that made her entire face light up, which in turn sucked the breath right out of Parker. “I like to think of it as a temporary moment of insanity. He asked me to marry him and I said yes, despite my generally terrible image of marriage.”

“He must have been a pretty special guy to get you to even consider making that leap.” Parker disliked the pang of envy he felt toward this man he didn’t even know.

“I think I was caught up in what was going on around me. My friend Alexandra was engaged and planning this totally over-the-top wedding. Her parents were literally spending almost a million bucks on it. It was crazy. And I guess I was just wanting the attention or the excitement of something. This was before I hired Forrest, so work was such a grind and I needed my personal life to be more fulfilling.”

“So what happened that you called it off?”

“Alexandra canceled her own wedding.”

“With a million dollars on the line?”

Chloe nodded. “Yes. I can’t believe you didn’t hear about this. It was in all of the New York tabloids. The press had a field day.”

“What’s your friend’s last name? And who was her fiancé?”

“She’s Alexandra Gold. She was engaged to Henry Quinn.”

Parker slumped back in his chair. “Of course. The Gold–Quinn wedding. I don’t read the tabloids at all, but I definitely heard about that. There were terrible headlines.”

Chloe sucked in a breath. “Yes. Like I said, the press was brutal to her. Of course, she was an easy target. High society girl calls off million-dollar wedding at the last minute. You don’t get much juicier than that.”

“I still don’t understand how that played into your engagement.”

“It was my wake-up call. I had to ask myself what in the heck I was doing getting married. I don’t believe in the institution at all. And I certainly didn’t want to end up like Alex, with my face splashed all over the pages of the tabloids. So I quietly called it off. My fiancé didn’t seem too horribly heartbroken. I think someone else had caught his eye at that point.”

“Well, then he’s an idiot.”

“What are you talking about? You don’t believe in marriage either. That’s one of the few things we have in common.”

“We have a lot more than that in common. We both love our jobs. We both love our parents but think they’re ridiculous.”

“And we both think marriage is pointless.”

Parker worried he might be barking up the wrong tree with pursuing Chloe, but it wasn’t like he was thinking of asking her to tie the knot. He simply wanted a little more than the one taste of her. “Can I call you sometime?”

“Sometime? What does that mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like. Sometime in the future.”

She arched both eyebrows at him, seemingly suspicious of his motives. “I don’t think that’s a great idea.”

Parker was glad he’d been vague. He could save some face. “I was talking about work. You know, if another of my clients gets into hot water?”

“Really? Because it sounded like you were asking for permission to make a booty call. You were hoping for a replay of last night.”