“You could call the office,” she suggested.

This is so sus. Send him a text. Or an email? Try his assistant, even. Why are you bothering me with this?

“But you’re right here.” His tone became cajoling. “I’ll make it worth your while. Hell, if I had my way, you’d be on my arm, brightening up every room you enter. You wouldn’t need to work another day in your life.”

Wow. I just threw up a little in my mouth. Did this bastard seriously just ask me to be his trophy wife? Well, he hinted at it anyway.

She counted to ten because if she told this asshole off, he’d complain to Mayor Anderson, then the mayor would find creative ways to make her life worse. Nothing actionable, of course. He was too crafty for that, even if he wasn’t brilliant in other ways.

The lesser of two evils was to comply with this request and end the conversation. “What days and times work for the golf meeting?” she asked briskly.

“That depends on you,” he said with what he likely intended to be a flirtatious smile. “When are you available?”

Just as she’d suspected, this was an excuse to ask her out. “I don’t play golf, but thanks anyway. If you need to check your schedule first, I suggest contacting the mayor via text. He tends to dodge actual phone calls.”

Rutherford let out a booming laugh. “You’re feisty. I love that. Never mind, then. I’ll get in touch with him sooner or later. Man can’t run forever—he owes me money.”

Uh, what? That was way more than she wanted to know about their personal business.

“I have a meeting. If you’ll excuse me…” Leanne strode off, taking that permission for granted, mostly because she didn’t care about Dan Rutherford’s response.

I can’t believe that jerk represents my district.

Without looking back, she hurried to her car, feeling vaguely grimy from that interaction.

According to the time, she should return to the office for an hour, but if she did that, they’d suck her into some other crap that wasn’t part of her job description. It didn’t seem so bad, suddenly, to go have a margarita with Junie. Fudging the truth a little, she called the receptionist to say, “I’ll be out of the office this afternoon. Let anyone who might be looking for me know that I’ll be in at the usual time tomorrow.”