Sold Short (Sidelined Book 3) Read online

  Sold Short

  Sidelined Book 3

  Ainslie Paton

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are the product of the author’s vivid imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations or people, living or dead is purely co-incidental and beyond the intent of the author and publisher. Copyright © 2016.

  Offensive Behavior

  Ainslie Paton

  Friendship is Overrated

  This is the story of a woman moving on with her life and the man she needs to leave behind

  Sarina Gallo is on a timeline. Graduate with a top degree and start a business with friends. Check. Rock that business so hard it’s made her a Silicon Valley identity and seriously wealthy. Check. Fall in love and start a family. Wait. Because the man she’s been in love with forever is more comfortable falling asleep in front of a movie than making a move on her.

  Dev Patel has been friends with Sarina Gallo since he tripped over her in college and they started a business together. He likes to cook. She likes to eat. It’s the perfect relationship for two busy people, and if he’d rather fall asleep on the couch next to her than sleep with her, it’s because he’s not willing to risk their friendship over sex he can have casually with others.

  Until Sarina announces she plans to have a baby with a donor and her decision challenges everything Dev thought he knew about their relationship.

  Question: How do two people who love each other find a way past friendship to become family?

  Answer: A rip-your-heart-out argument, a make-up session that’s almost too hot to handle and sheet scorching sex.

  Chapters

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  About Plus

  Offensive Behavior

  About Ainslie Paton

  ONE

  He looked like his hot guy Tumblr image, without trick lighting or airbrush wizardry. That was a relief. But his photo hadn’t made her breath catch like the way he entered the bar did. As if he belonged wherever he chose to be.

  As advertised, he was tall, broad, likely cut where she couldn’t see and sun-bronzed where she could, including his perfectly symmetrical face and strong forearms. He had one of those just got out of bed, overlong and all tousled haircuts that made your fingers twitch to tidy, and then mess up again.

  He was gorgeous. But of course he was. It was part of his job spec.

  The talent wrangler in her could see he’d mastered the looks could kill department. He had swoon-worthy dialed up to fever pitch and that should’ve made her happy, because she was allowed to touch all that, play with that sun-bronzed hair, slide her knuckle into the divot created by muscle at the edge of sleeve, press chest to chest.

  The thought made her shiver, but more from nervousness than excitement.

  He was searching for a woman with a blue streak in her hair. He’d find her in a second, but right now the woman with the blue streak in her hair had a white-hot streak of panic zipping up her spine. What the hell was she doing?

  He paused in the doorway of the bar and took the scene in. She was a what you see is what you get, beer and billiards girl. Give her a jukebox, awesome wall art and heavy pours, or an excellent java brew and she was cool. Give her takeout from Jade Palace with extra wontons and she was rolling in happy. But this had called for being somewhere she didn’t normally hang out so that’s what the as promised on the box man was looking at, the bar of 55 South, where the woman with the blue streak in her hair sat, wondering if she’d made a terrible mistake along with ordering a craft beer.

  And yet he was a sure thing.

  And that should’ve given her confidence. She didn’t have to stress about him making conversation because he secretly wanted a job, or pretending to be her friend because he was more interested in networking than dating.

  Not that this was a date. It was a . . . what did you call it when you had an arrangement with a man? Technically, it wasn’t a booty call because they didn’t know each other. It was something else entirely. A rendezvous, an assignation? That sounded businesslike. We’ll rendezvous at the café. We’ll have an assignation over contracts. And it wasn’t an affair either. Affairs were complicated, intense and involved arrangements. This was as uncomplicated as could be. It was tailor-made. It was point and shoot, plug and play, stand and deliver.

  It was also screamingly daring, even for a woman with a blue streak in her hair, who was a founder of one of the Valley’s hottest tech firms, had piercings no one ever saw, and who could buy this bar and turn it into a petting zoo if she wanted.

  He’d spotted her. A big glittery smile and a wave, as if they’d known each other for ages, were simply friends meeting up after the work week. He was coming over. Easing through the room with the kind of assured masculine grace she couldn’t help admire.

  He stood in front of her. “Sarina.” He said her name without any doubt about who she was, and she wasn’t the only woman in here with hyper-color hair. But then he’d seen her photo, the same as she’d seen his.

  She put her hand out. “Colby.” He grasped it and they shook. See, businesslike. This needn’t be like eating exotic insects and pretending they’re the latest gourmet-to-go.

  He took the stool beside her. She liked that he didn’t move it closer. “Have you been waiting long?”

  She shook her head. She’d wanted to watch him arrive. If it felt wrong, she’d planned to slip out without making contact and send him a text to apologize for standing him up. It didn’t feel wrong, although it was some people’s very definition of the word. “Not at all.”

  “Good. What are you drinking?”

  The beer in front of her really needed a lemon gelato to go with it. “The honey beer.”

  “Hmm, I’m more a California Common kind of guy.”

  There was nothing common about Colby.

  He ordered and then turned his mega wattage on her. “How was your week? Give me a score out of ten?” For a wild moment he reminded her of Reid. He did the directly unwavering eye contact thing Reid did. She was so used to it from Reid it didn’t put a ripple under her skin, but she could see how it might melt a woman, especially if Colby was wearing less clothing when he did it.

  “Seven.”

  “Did you pick that number because it’s safe? Not spectacular and not terrible.”

  That was another Reid-like thing, mind reading, because she had. “You got me.”

  “I do have you, Sarina. You’re completely safe with me and if there’s anything that bothers you, I’ll do whatever I can to make you feel comfortable.”

  And that was so completely a Dev thing it was unnerving. “Except be less attractive.”

  He laughed. “You’re not seeing me first thing in the morning.”

  “You’d look equally amazing.”

  He shook his head and took a sip of his beer. “I gather we’ve got basic attraction on lock.”

  “What’s the basic level for you?”

  “Pretty superficial when it comes down to it. We like the look of each other.”

  She
’d chosen him from a website so she’d known what to expect. “You have to say you like the look of me.”

  “I don’t have to lie. And I didn’t expect you to be one of those women who needed to be assured they’re attractive.”

  That was a backhanded compliment and also a light slap. She was no catwalk model, no homecoming queen, sash wearing, self-congratulatory selfie-posting babe, but she wasn’t a bush pig either, and she had that on the authority of the last Australian who’d tried to chat her up with the aim of scoring an interview at Plus. Colby wasn’t just a pretty face and a desirable body. And he knew she wasn’t a fragile flower. Attraction locked. Mental faculty engaged.

  Colby watched her, nothing falsely predatory or too practiced in his expression. “This works better if you trust you’ve done the homework and made the right decision and that I won’t let you down. You can also call a stop at any time and it’s no big deal.”

  “I’m sorry, you’re right. I’m nervous.” Not quite game on.

  “It’d be odd if you weren’t. Everyone is at first. Is there anything specific you want to ask me?”

  She interviewed people for a living. She wanted to ask him about everything his profile didn’t say, get behind the official public person and into what cranked his gears, but they weren’t going to be colleagues and the whole idea of this was to learn to be a person outside of work and that meant not grilling him about why he chose to do this when he might’ve done anything else. At least in the first five minutes.

  Still, it was hard to resist. “How was your day?”

  He smiled and it was more cheeky boy next door than man she intended to leave this bar with. “I’d give it a solid nine.”

  “Impressive.”

  “But then meeting you here.”

  “Oh please don’t.” If he was cheesy, he’d ruin the whole fantasy.

  “I was going to deduct a point.”

  Interesting. “Go on.”

  He leaned in. “You’re not a honey beer kind of girl, are you?”

  He wore cologne, a warm citrusy spice. He was very touchable and that was as delightful as it was liberating. She wanted to touch him. That was the attraction thing locked and the key tossed. “What kind of girl do you think I am?”

  He looked around. “Not the kind that would normally pick this place.”

  Not this place, not this thing she was about to do, except nothing would change unless she did something to change it. Reid had Zarley, Owen had Cara and once Dev had started spending more time with Shush, she’d known it was time to rescue herself.

  The three men were her colleagues and her best friends. And they were moving on with their personal lives and leaving her behind. They’d all worked hard to get Plus established, to make sure it didn’t self-destruct under the weight of their own mistakes and kept thriving. It was a thrill ride and the best part of her, but if she wasn’t careful, it’d become the only part of her. She’d wake up in another five years, she’d be in her mid-thirties and single and no closer to having her own family and even less inspired to do the work of finding someone to have that family with.

  It was a classification of desperate she had time to avoid if she acted now.

  The whole time-crunch thing had never worried her before seeing Reid and Owen fall in love, before Dev got too comfortable, and she was full of resentment that for them there was no looming personal deadline. They were never going to be held hostage by their reproductive cycles. That’s what sucked most about being a woman. A form of inequality she had no certain way to address. It was hard coded into her femininity and it didn’t matter how many other gender divides she stomped across, this one was an unbridgeable chasm. On one side was work life and on the other was family and she didn’t have a single handhold on the rope ladder of dating, and without that she had no chance of making it across.

  It was only lately she’d realized she wanted that enough to do this.

  Stop waiting and start something new.

  She’d been effectively off the market for years, more from a lack of incentive than anything else. More from false hope, as it turned out. There was always something more amazing to do than pretend meeting people outside work was fun. The Valley was supposedly a dating paradise for women, outnumbered as they were by men, but being on the prowl, going to bars and clubs and hooking up had never been appealing. When she had put herself out there, her job had gotten in the way. Men wanted to be employed by her more than they wanted to take her to bed, even if one was the route to the other. She’d been caught out by that twice and then simply stopped trying.

  A friend with benefits would’ve been nice. A specific friend would’ve been perfect. All the good bits, none of the drama, but it’d never happened, and it wasn’t going to now and somewhere along the way from casual dating to workaholic status she’d lost her mojo.

  She had to start somewhere that wasn’t likely to be a social disaster, or turn into a job interview she hadn’t seen coming. She had to start somewhere or it would all be too late. What better way to get started then call on some professional help?

  Colby was right. She wasn’t a cocktail bar kind of girl, but change started where you made it. “Thought I’d try something different.” Colby was jump out of planes, backflip off a desk, learn to pole dance different. A low-risk form of the deep end. A place she’d always loved to test herself against.

  He smiled. “Have always liked a woman who’s not afraid to mix it up.”

  The deep end had her remembering what it felt like to put your body on the line, what it felt like to shut the world and all its deadlines down to find respite in pleasure.

  Game on.

  What did you call it when you’d paid for a man’s hands and lips to be on you? For him to pretend to be interested in you and then work his magic on you after you handed over your credit card details.

  Most people would call it prostitution.

  Sarina called it practice.

  TWO

  Sarina wasn’t in her office. She wasn’t in the canteen, or the training rooms, or in any of the meeting rooms. She wasn’t at the BBQ on the rooftop. Dev had checked. He’d checked everywhere she’d normally be on a Friday night including the parking garage, and her god-awful car was missing, which meant she really had left work for the day.

  Which, of course, she was entitled to do. Totally. It was good. Great even. She was out there having a life. She worked too hard and Owen had been on her case about taking vacation time, so this, being gone from the office at 7.30 p.m., on a Friday night was excellent. Impressive. Truly.

  But damn. What was she doing?

  He’d been going to suggest they hit a sushi bar in Japantown together. No matter, he could call Shush. But he’d just had the talk with Shush, the one that went, I love you, but I’m not in love with you and it’s probably not a good idea that we hang out too often. He’d be the king of mixed signals if he called Shush now.

  But you know. Bored.

  He could go back to the BBQ, they were always fun and it was good for the Plus leadership to show up, but Owen was there tonight so that was covered. Home and Netflix it was. He went back to his office, got distracted by email and it was past nine before he shut everything down. He was sitting in Gita with her engine doing its throaty V8 rumble when Sarina rang.

  “Hey, where are you?”

  “In the car. Gita and me are about to hit the road. Where are you?”

  “Oh, I had an appointment.”

  It had to be some girl thing because Sarina was never vague. He shut the engine down, because there was a hitch in her voice he couldn’t get a read on.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Me? Sure. Wanna come over?”

  More of that weird in her tone. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  He heard the sigh. “Yeah, yeah, of course. Just, I’m tired, that’s all.”

  Maybe. She sounded upset, not tired, and now he was worried. He went to the market and picked up the basics for a beef stir
-fry and when Sarina opened her front door he scanned her, looking for whatever it was that gave her voice that unsettling edge. Bare feet, sweatpants, over-sized Plus ad campaign t-shirt that said Breaking Up’s Not Hard To Do. She looked normal except for the lipstick.

  Sarina was wearing lipstick, in the house, with sweats. “What happened?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She turned her back on him and he followed her inside. “You’re wearing lipstick.”

  “I wear lipstick.”

  “Yes, but in the morning and it doesn’t survive the first coffee.” He put the bag of groceries on the kitchen counter. “If you’re doing a big staff meeting maybe you put it back on, but sometimes it’s just lip gloss, not proper lipstick. You wear it if you’re going out, the proper stuff. So you went out. And now you’re not out. You weren’t out long enough to wear off lipstick. What happened?”

  She opened and closed her mouth and then said, “It’s just lipstick.” She sat at the bench. “I don’t know whether to be impressed or creeped out that you know so much about my lipstick habits.”

  Better not to tell her he had all her obvious habits down. He’d known her all of his adult life, since wondering if he’d survive the pace at Stanford and tripping over a hot learning design and technology student in Koret Park who didn’t judge him for stressing out and became his go-to person for feeling like he wasn’t going to fail. It would be odd if he didn’t know what she did with lipstick.

  Wouldn’t it?

  He fired up the hotplate and fished a pan out of the dishwasher.

  “I’ve eaten.”

  “Really. You’ve eaten?” But lipstick. This was confusing, until he worked it out while heating oil to coat the pan. “You went on a date and it went bad?”

  She curled forward so the crown of her head hit the countertop. “Can we just watch a movie and not talk about it?”

  He browned the beef. “Sure.” He sliced vegetables. He ate a mushroom to stop himself asking a hundred questions. A date, she’d been on a date. That did something to his pulse. It was wholly terrifying.