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“What’s so damn funny?” he said.
“You.”
He tossed the cup in his trash.
“Don’t get shitty,” she said.
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“Don’t tell me what to do,” he snapped.
She laughed again. “I want to do this because I’m sick of feeling like a victim. I can’t do anything to make up for what my dad did. It’s going to take a long time before the Bradshaw name isn’t mud. But I can do this.”
Ah, Lenny. “You have nothing to make up.”
She looked at the ceiling. “Tell the world that. I need this. I need to be seen, and it will help to have a you as my handsome handbag. Please don’t make me beg.”
“We do have to pretend we’re together by choice.” It wouldn’t work if they were arguing all the time.
“I can deal with that.”
“There are going to be lies told.” Lots of them.
“I’m on board with telling a few strategic lies myself, if it gets us what we want.”
“Cookie Jar thoroughly disgraced and bankrupted, then removed from power.”
She nodded. “It will be the start of the Lenny Bradshaw rehabilitation tour.”
That made sense.
“So we’re clear, I’m using you as much as you’re using me,” she said.
Now that he understood, it was as unromantic as sweeping up broken glass. But it might work.
“What happens to the money you take from Cookie Jar?” she asked.
This was firmer ground, straight operational practice. “You get your donation back, and we refund all the other organizations and government entities Cookie Jar ripped off. Anything left over after costs goes to a fund to benefit Ossovian kids.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. For the next six weeks, we run a sting to disgrace Sonny Ozols that his party can use as leverage to get him dumped from the leadership, tried, and sent to jail.”
She stood and held her hand out across his desk. “After it’s done, we’re done.”
He shouldn’t make this deal; it had irretrievably stupid written in every rectangular box of it.
“We agree I’m long gone before you put a choke hold on Cookie Jar, and no whiff of scandal sticks to me.”
He stood and slipped his hand around hers. It felt right. “I promise to let you break up our fake relationship before that.”
“I’ll hold you to it.”
They shook on it because he couldn’t think of any other pieces of objectionable fine print to throw at her, aside from the big one.
None of it would feel fake to him.
Chapter Twelve
