Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2) (4 page)

She hesitated, hovering between my couch and the other one, set at right angles to it. “Maybe I should be over here, to stay…strong, you know. I don’t really know how to do this.”

“Luckily,” I said, “I do. You said we had things to decide. Start by telling me the ones you’ve thought of, and we’ll write them down and go from there. But you need to sit by me so you can see what we’ve got, and what I write.”

She took a breath and did it, and I relaxed a fraction.

“Well?” I asked, once I’d opened a new document.

“Uh…” She was nibbling at her full lower lip, her soft hair falling in a pale, tumbled cloud from the humidity, her perfume delicate and floral, and maybe having her beside me didn’t give me as much of an advantage as I thought.

It was that secret weapon. It was a killer.

I waited, practicing calm and stillness, not betraying my weakness, and she finally said, “Money. That’s pretty much it. It all comes down to money. And Karen. Taking care of her.”

I wrote it down, and she said, “What do you have?”

“Sex,” I said. “Appearance.” I added those to the list.

She stared at me.
“Appearance?
What, I have to look a certain way, or you’re not going to keep me? I’m not a trophy wife, Hemi. I don’t have the body for it, and I’m all done growing.”

“We’ll get to it. No arguing before we get there. We’ll go in order. Yours first.”

“You’re starting out lousy,” she muttered.

I negotiated for the win, and I got it. It was best to have your opponent off-balance, flustered. But this win was different, and to get it, I had a feeling that I had to approach it differently, too. So I told her, “In a negotiation, you don’t tell the other person what you’re actually going for. You ask for everything, and then you work downward. You let them think they’ve won when they get you to accept what you wanted in the first place. But I’m going to break the rules and tell you exactly what I want. I want to put my ring on your finger, and I want you to want it there. I want to change your name, and then I want to go home with you and move you and Karen into my apartment. I want to come home from work and kiss you hello. I want you in my bed every night. And that’s all.”

Her eyes were soft. Her brain, unfortunately, appeared to be completely unaffected. “That’s not all,” she said. “That sounds wonderful—even the name change part, which I should at least be deliberating—but you aren’t telling me all of it. You’re saying you are, but you aren’t.”

She was getting narky, and so was I. What, that hadn’t been good enough for her? “What am I not telling you?”

“How much control you want over what I do.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No? Is it all right with you if I go to lunch with another man? How about dinner?”

“No,” I said immediately.

“See what I mean? You’re possessive, Hemi. Write ‘other people’ down on that list.”

I scowled, breaking another rule—not betraying emotion. “I’m not negotiating that.”

“Fine.” She hopped up. “We can leave.”

I grabbed her hand and tugged her back down with me. “No threatening to walk out. Ground rules. We’re here until we’re done, and we both say that what matters most is being together.”

“Even if,” she said, her blue-green eyes deceptively innocent, “we’re not married at the end of this trip? You’re not saying, ‘My way or the highway?’”

I sighed. “I want to say it. You have no idea how much. But I’m not.”

“Then I agree to those ground rules.”

“Right.”

She said, “So put ‘Other people’ down on the list,” and I did it. I didn’t want to, but I did.

“Money first, then,” I said. “What about money?”

“You have a lot more than I do.”

“Yeh. I noticed.”

“And you could think that gives you all the power.”

“No worries,” I muttered. “I already got that.”

“Good,” she said. “So how does the money thing work?”

I blanked. “Dunno. How do you want it to work?”

She stood up, and this time, I didn’t pull her down. There was a reason this had been the first thing out of her mouth.

She paced to the window, stood looking out at the sea, and didn’t answer. Finally, I said, “Money is power. There’s no use denying it. That’s why I’ve worked so hard to get it.”

“And it’s yours,” she said without turning. “I know that. Obviously.”

“No,” I found myself saying. “It should be ours. It has to be ours. I don’t want you doing everything I’ve had to do to get it, or working as many hours as I have. I want you with me when I’m home. I want your company, and I want to know you don’t have to be exhausted and worried anymore. I want to know that I’m taking that burden off you, and I want you to know it, too, and to trust it. I want…”
Children,
I didn’t say, because we didn’t need any more complication today. Time enough for that later. This negotiation hadn’t been my idea, and if that wasn’t playing fair? Too bloody bad. “How about,” I said instead, “if we set up a joint account with our paychecks, took our expenses out of it—which includes Karen’s—and sat down every month to go through it together? And I set aside that college fund for Karen straight away, too, so you don’t have to think about that anymore?”

She turned from where she’d been staring out at the blowing curtains of rain to stare at me instead. “How could you agree to that? To the checking account, I mean. That’s ridiculously unfair to you.”

“I have investments.” That was one way of describing it. “This would be low risk for me even if you spent it all, which I know you wouldn’t.”

I tensed, waiting for her to ask me how much I had, not sure whether I was willing to reveal that, but she didn’t ask. Instead, she said, “I’m not going to ask you about those, because they aren’t my business,” which more or less took my breath away. “Anyway,” she went on, “what you bring to the marriage is yours, right? Isn’t that how it works?”

“In a divorce,” I said, and her head snapped back at the word. “That’s what you’re talking about, because that’s the only time it matters. Divorce, and inheritance. I’ll be changing my will and showing it to you, and I’ll have my attorney draw one up for you, too, so you can make sure Karen’s safe. I’m thirty-seven years old, but I plan to live at least fifty more years, and to be celebrating our golden anniversary with you. If I don’t make it that far, though, it’ll be yours. And before you ask? I’ll take care of Karen as well. Always. You have my word.”

“Oh. Wow.” She sat again, at the edge of the couch this time, and tucked her hands under her knees. “Death. That one’s…hard to think about.”

That was what she’d focused on. But then, she would. I had all sorts of family. Too much family, in fact. She only had Karen. And me.

Me, definitely, because what she said next was, “What you said about negotiation—all I want is to be with you forever, and to have you want to be with me that long, too. I need that so much it scares me. And you’re thirty-seven?”

“I am. Which is twelve years older than you. Still want to say yes?”

She laughed, though it sounded shaky. “I just…” She ran her hands through her fine hair, disheveling it some more. She was wearing black leggings, a dark-gray skirt, and a cropped pale-blue cardigan with a daisy picked out in darker blue beads in one corner. She looked young, and sweet, and vulnerable, and I wanted her more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. “I said I’d marry somebody,” she said, “and I didn’t even know how old he was. You don’t know anything about me, either, so I’ll tell you a few things. I don’t know how to swim. I don’t know how to drive well enough to actually do it. I could learn, of course, but there you go—I don’t know how. I have a few thousand dollars in the bank and almost no credit, because I’ve never owned anything bigger than a couch, and my couch is nothing to write home about. I have a two-year college degree.” She looked at me, and she didn’t look young and innocent now. She looked steady, and strong. “Hemi. Are you sure?”

“Yeh,” I said. “I’m sure. Because you’re wrong, you know. I know everything about you. I know how much you’ve sacrificed for your sister, and what it took to do that. I know how hard you work, because I employ you. I know how honest you are, and how brave and stubborn and fierce you can be. I know everything that matters.”

She swallowed, and I saw it. I wanted to touch her, to hold her, but instead, I said, “So I’ll put down that checking account bit. I have a feeling that the hardest part is going to be to convince you to spend money.”

“I’m not used to it,” she admitted.

“Got that, didn’t I. Means I’ll have to keep buying you things instead, but I may be able to cope.” I typed a brief sentence into the document and said, “Is that it?”

“That’s the big one. And I get to decide what to do with my job,” she went on. “I don’t mean not do it well,” she added hastily when I looked up sharply. “Or that I get to decide not to have one. I mean that I can still leave the company if I want to.”

“I’m not writing that down,” I said. “Of course you’re entitled to quit. Legally, at least. But it’s not all right with me anyway. I’d be more than happy for you to quit entirely and take care of Karen and me—I won’t lie, I’d be rapt about that—but if you don’t, I want you there with me. I want to be able to have lunch with you when I can get away, and I don’t want you spending your nights working for somebody else.”

“You’re spending
your
nights working,” she pointed out.

“And one of us is enough. Just said that, didn’t I.”

She didn’t say anything, just stared at me, and I sighed and said, “Fine. You have the right to go somewhere else, and to take any job you want. But you’re going to talk to me about it first.”

“All right,” she said. “That’s fair. Write that down. And then tell me your things. Sex and my appearance. I’m getting my fighting words ready right now.”

“Now,” I said, “is that any attitude to take with your husband?’

The word came out of my mouth for the second time in twenty-four hours, and it sounded nothing but right, because Hope’s husband was exactly what I wanted to be. I liked the official sound of it—and, yes, the possessive sound of it, too. Hope was right about that.

“It’s my attitude,” she said. “Apparently.”

“Right, then. We’ll tackle that one first. Appearance.”

“I can’t wait.” She had her arms crossed over her chest. “What? Implants? You weigh me once a week and adjust my portion sizes if I slip up? What?”

I was getting narky again myself. “I’ve never said I didn’t love the way you looked. I’ve never thought it. Thought just the opposite, haven’t I. That’s the point.”

“But it’s still on your list. Why?”

“Because,” I muttered, “I was looking at your hair.”

“My
hair.”
She was staring at me again, and I felt foolish.

“Yeh. I don’t want it to be short. And I
don’t
want you to have implants.”

“Do you get to say that? What if I…” She waved a hand. “Have to have chemotherapy or something, and my hair falls out? What if I have a mastectomy? Is it all over?”

“No. It’s never over. I’m never leaving you. And if anything like that happened? You have to know I’d be there. But let’s turn it around. What if I grow a beard? One of those unkempt caveman ones, eh.”

“No,” she said instantly. I lifted my eyebrows at her, and she offered a reluctant smile in return.

“So no beard,” she said. “Put that down. And how long do I agree to keep my hair?”

“Long enough,” I said, “that I can hold you by it.”

Her lips parted, her eyes widened, and the surge of heat went straight to my groin. I said, “And as for that other thing? Other men? No. No dinners, and I’m not rapt about lunches, either, but I’ll let the occasional lunch slide, as long as it’s a work thing and you tell me about it.”

“And a glass of wine after work,” she said, “if I want to talk to Nathan, or anything like that.”

I scowled. “I hate it.”

“I know you do.” She’d scooted closer on the couch, and now, she came to stand in front of me, blocking my view of my laptop screen, but I wasn’t going to be objecting. “How about,” she said, sinking down so she was kneeling over me, propping herself up with her hands flat against my chest, “if I promise I’ll never kiss another man? You could promise me that, too, about other women, I mean. That would make me very, very happy. And how about…” I could actually see her pupils dilating, swallowing up the sea-blue of her irises. “How about if we agree that you get to do whatever you want to me on those nights to remind me that I’m yours?” Even as I watched, the color rose to stain her cheeks, and she hurried on to say, “I’m just anticipating you on the ‘Sex’ part. Subject to my veto power, of course.”

“You’re saying,” I said, “that you get to make me jealous, so I’ll lose control.”

“No.” She had her hands around my head and was dropping little butterfly kisses around my mouth now, and not touching her was getting harder every moment. “I know you won’t lose control, not all the way. I know I can say no, and that you won’t hurt me. I want to be free to have friends, to live my life, but maybe I want you to…remind me. I love it when you’re fierce, and I want it. That’s what I’ll agree to. And now tell me why you put ‘Sex’ on your list. And then…” She pulled back and looked into my eyes. “Maybe you could start doing some of that reminding. Because I need it.”