A/N So easy love was originally a one shot but I've decided to write a few more chapters, I'm weaving them around season 4 canon with a Klaroline twist. This one takes place mostly in 4x06. Hope you enjoy.

Simply business

When she meets Hayley the first thing she feels is relief. Tyler is a cheat and her hidden sins are expunged. The weight of guilt she's been lugging around with her is becoming unbearable and when her eyes fell on the sexy brunette she thought she'd seen a get out of jail free card all wrapped up in sneering bravado and skinny jeans.

But Haley it turns out is just a friend and a good one at that it seems, not just to Tyler but to all and any hybrids ready to try and break free of Klaus' sire bond. She smiles tightly when they tell her about their plans and she knows that Tyler misreads her unease as doubt in him.

He looks into her eyes and tells her again how Haley is not his lover and she feels wretched. So Haley was there for him while he was been breaking bone after bone all over the Appalachian Mountains for her and what was she doing? Flaunting diamond bracelets and hording pencil sketches.

And then Elena goes bat shit crazy and Klaus snatches her and she thinks maybe an unkillable hybrid with first hand experience of the hunter's curse and a thousand years of street smarts is probably the best bet for keeping Elena safe. But she keeps silent and wonders if she's failing her friend because she's too terrified that if she speaks up someone will, somehow, infer from it her guilt.

So off she goes again, the little blonde distraction, to find him in the Grill drinking wine in the low light and looking unassumingly gorgeous and uncharacteristically subdued.

She plays the role they gave her, plays it as only she can with a queen bitch flourish and a secret relish. She will never tell anyone how much she actually enjoys the game, the tightrope walk between too keen, where he'll smell a rat, and too harsh where he might call her bluff and walk away.

She hits the right note with a haughty "That's none of your business" when he eludes to Tyler's fictional infidelity. When the hell did she get so good at manipulation? Maybe the lies of omission she's been telling Tyler and her friends since that day in the woods with him have honed a natural talent for deceit.

"Yes, well, just know that if Tyler was still sired to me he never would have hurt you" he says with a sincerity that troubles her, it hints at a connection between them she'd sooner deny. "I wouldn't have let him."

The silent declaration that he would never hurt her if she were his hangs momentarily in the air and she feels unease crease her face before he breaks the moment like snapping a twig. "Can I at least offer you a drink?"

Even though she's here on Tyler and the gang's orders, she still feels treacherous as she accepts. She should not be drinking with him, talking with him, looking at him with his small pleased smile and his deceptively boyish eyes. She should not be nervous in a way that feels only half like battle nerves and half like date nerves. She should not notice that the mass of beads and leather necklaces beneath his crisp military style jacket are not the same set he wore last time she saw him.

They sent her yes but she can't honestly say she's sorry to be here, that the game isn't enticing, that he isn't, in his strange forbidden way, enticing.

He takes a noticeable breath and her heart speeds up, instinctively realising where he's about to go. "Caroline," he says carefully and flashes his eyes briefly to meet hers before dropping them nervously back towards his drink. Oh god how can he be nervous? Doesn't he know he's the devil? Doesn't he realize that a thousand years of wickedness should long ago have turned him to unfeeling stone? "We-"

"No" she snaps a little louder than she intended and the barmaid glances curiously in her direction, she gives the girl a tight smile and continues in a low hiss. "Seriously, don't. Ever!"

He nods and swallows and once again she sees that she has hurt him. Someone needs to clue him in on the fact that evil villains do not get to look like a kicked puppy not even for the millisecond it takes him to cover it with feigned indifference. "So sweetheart" he says with a dashing smile, the charming shallow smile she imagines he gives any pretty girl be she ally, enemy, or victim. "How's school?"

She looks at him skeptically and rolls her eyes. "Seriously?" she asks. "You want to hear about school?"

What she has just decided to call his "sweetheart smile", cheap and charming, falls away and he looks sincere and determined.

"Is that so strange?" he asks with a hint of challenge in his eyes. "To be interested in you?"

No, she tells herself, it's not strange. But lately what with the drama of Elena's transition and Tyler's sire bond she has felt distinctly like supporting cast and it's nice to be the centre of attention, even if it's his.

So she tells him about boring mundane stuff like her classes and assignments and he listens, like it matters, and asks which authors she's enjoyed and what subject she'll do at university.

In the end she gets so comfortable, and perhaps a little buzzed on Cabernet Franc, that she's ranting about the bitches that constitute her cheer squad and he's chuckling, bemused and endeared by her indignation at their lack of team spirit and work ethic.

She cringes when she notices the cozy laughter in his gaze. "Wow" she says with a self-conscious grin. "I've been talking a lot haven't I?"

He smirks. "Not at all love, you're a vampire now, taking a breath is optional. And clearly overrated" his eyes glint teasingly and though in the low light they're barely blue at all she still loses herself in their captivating sparkle for a moment that is long enough to feel awkward when she breaks it.

"Another drink love?" he offers and she nods and glances at her phone while he orders.

Stefan's messages fill the screen and she curses herself for not paying better attention, she's supposed to be the distraction not the distracted. Elena is gone, they're in the shit, and her stomach goes into free-fall.

She tries for an innocent smile that feels like a crack across her face. "So, here's the thing, I didn't just come here to try to get you to release Elena."

Klaus looks knowing and amused, he's no fool he knows she's there to play him. He's not taken in, he plays along simply because it pleases him, because she pleases him. "You don't say."

"I came here to distract you so that Stefan could go to your house and break her out, which he did. And, don't get mad, but then he lost her." As she speaks she sees his fury settle like a black storm in his eyes. He turns to go with vengeful intent written in every movement.

"Klaus." She tries to call him back, to tell him the rest but he's lost his appetite for indulging her

"Caroline, you're beautiful, but if you don't stop talking, I will kill you." Even his threats are charming when it comes to her and she relaxes minutely into the hope that he'll listen to her.

"They figured out how to stop the hallucinations." She calls to stop him in his tracks and he spins to meet her eyes with a hard demanding stare.

"Okay, you have ten seconds to tell me."

It comes out in a rush and she doesn't realize until she's finished that she's gripping his arm, as if she could hold him there by force.

"You want what?" he still looks angry and she still hasn't let go but her grip has changed from desperate to light and without conscious thought her thumb has begun to turn cajoling circles through his sleeve.

"As soon as Jeremy kills a vampire the curse is broken," she insists.

"And you think I might have a hybrid spare for this proposed killing" he asks in a disparaging tone.

"Well it was Stefan's idea, but yes I'm asking you to help my best friend" she sees a tiny flicker of indecision in him and ploughs on as her hand slides up from his forearm to his bicep. "Please Klaus, its what you want right? Elena, the mark, the cure. Those are the things you want, so help us"

He glances at her hand on his arm and pointedly mirrors the action. Her bare skin tingles under his touch and every hair on her arm stands up. "Not all the things I want" he says in a low voice that makes her swallow nervously. She doesn't drop her gaze, partly because she has to make him help Elena and partly because looking away just doesn't feel like an option right now.

"What else do you want?" she asks hoarsely, knowing the answer and buzzing with excitement and dread at hearing it said aloud.

He tips his head down and looks up at her through his lashes. "Caroline" he chides in a low intimate voice that makes her feel frightened and powerful at once. "You know the answer to that"

A voice, the voice she listened to in the forest, whispers in her mind that there is an opportunity here. That if the price for saving Elena is sleeping with him then who could blame her for paying it? No one would know and even if they did she could claim, believably, that she had no choice. She licks her lips and moves closer her eyes drawn to his mouth for an instant before her better, saner, self exerts control and demands that she stop.

"Seriously" she tears herself angrily away from him. "You think I'm going to sleep with you for it, like some kind of prostitute. You're disgusting!"

He should look hurt again at her rejection but he looks decidedly smug and she realises she misread his intention and in so doing gave herself away. There's no way he missed that moment of indecision or that flash of desire. She curses herself and crosses her arms defensively

"Not at all Caroline, I was merely going to ask you to allow me to take you on a date." He says smoothly.

"What?" she's not sure what she was expecting but it wasn't that and she shakes her head in confusion.

"I do want more from you than simply to sleep with you again" he tells her with gentle determined honesty. Her lips part, perhaps to speak and maybe just because he's stepped in close again and his proximity disorientates her as much as the word 'again' that sets off memories of him like fireworks in her belly.

"One date Caroline. Just one date" he steps back smiling mischievously and spreads his arms. "For Elena"

When she tells Tyler about the arrangement he's already angry about how cheaply they sold out his fellow hybrid and her attempts to give the situation a selfless spin by claiming she thought it would help him and Haley maintain the ruse they think will fool him into not realizing the are freeing his hybrids form under his nose, fall on justifiably deaf ears.

The glass shatters over her shoulder as it hits the wall and she goes without another word