Free Negotiation Tactics by Lori Ryan [romance/suspense]

Would it be fast and dirty or would he take his time despite the fact that anyone could spot them at any time?
    “Truth or dare?” Chad asked.
    “Truth.”
    “What’s your biggest fear?” Chad asked.
    Jennie opened her mouth to answer, but Chad quickly amended his question.
    “Besides fish,” he said with a grin.
    Forgetting my husband? Falling in love again? Losing my entire life, my reason for being – again?
    “Pass,” Jennie said, invoking her one pass they’d negotiated for at the start of their game.
    Jennie continued before Chad had a chance to comment. “Truth or dare, Chad?”
    “Truth,” Chad said, raising his beer bottle to his lips again. Jennie’s eyes fell to Chad’s mouth involuntarily, before she ripped them away.
    “What’s your biggest fear?” Jennie asked.
    Chad turned to face her, answering without hesitation. “That I’ll turn out like my father.”
    Chad’s father had left Chad’s mother when he was in his early twenties after twenty-five years of what everyone thought was a perfect marriage. He didn’t cheat on her, didn’t leave because he fell in love with someone else. He simply left one day and didn’t even bother to seek anything in the divorce. Kelly had told Jennie once that the last anyone heard of him, he was living on a beach in New Zealand or something.
    Jennie started laughing, drawing a look from Chad that might have scared any other woman. Or, at least sobered them enough to stop laughing. For Jennie, it only made her laugh harder.
    “I tell you my greatest fear and you’re laughing at me?” Chad seemed truly offended as Jennie shook her head at him, trying to catch her breath so she could explain.
    “I’m laughing because it’s not even remotely possible.” Jennie wiped at tears under her eyes. “It’s so far from possible it’s…well, it’s just laughable. There isn’t anything in you that would let you walk away from your family like that, Chad. I don’t know what happened to your dad, but it’s not in you to do that. When you love, when you commit, you’ll do it forever, Chad.”
    Jennie turned to face the ocean as Chad seemed to process what she said. After several minutes, he resumed the game.
    “Truth or dare, Jen?”
    “Truth,” Jennie said. When Chad didn’t respond right away, she turned to look at him through her lashes and found him watching her.
    “Truth,” she said again.
    “Why did you back off that time we kissed? Was it because of your husband?” Chad’s voice was quiet now. His question made Jennie freeze, her beer halfway to her mouth. She knew exactly what he was asking about. She’d kissed him once. And, for a minute, she’d forgotten about Kyle. For one glorious, wonderful, breathtaking minute. One gut-wrenching, tortuous, heartbreaking minute she’d forgotten the man she loved.
    The realization that Chad could make her forget her husband both broke her heart and scared the hell out of her at the same time.
    Jennie lowered her beer and kept her eyes on the ocean. “I didn’t know you knew about…about Kyle.”
    Chad’s eyes were gentle but they bore into her the same as they always did. “Background check. I always run them when someone joins Sutton. I never said anything because it wasn’t really related to the job. And, you never talked about him so I figured you didn’t want anyone to know.”
    “Yeah, that makes sense. I guess I never thought about that.”
    And then she recited the facts about her and Kyle’s marriage and his death. She recited them as if they were nothing more than facts. Not as if they were the fundamental pieces of her life that had been torn apart, never to be put back together again.
    Chad was quiet while she told her story, and for several minutes afterward, and she was glad. Most people gasped and told her how sorry they were. Which did nothing to help her. There was nothing that could fix her pain and Chad seemed to know this. After a minute, he took her hand and laced his