Chapter 8: Card of Contention

Maddison's POV 

"There was an accident," Grant clarified, not looking away. "I was in the vicinity. I saw what had taken place and knew that it was you, so I brought you here."

He had made it look so easy; A man sees a crash, he helps, but he was not just any man, he was a billionaire who had made her a job offer a some hours before she was hit. The chance was too big and too strange.

"Fuck," The voice came out sharper than she meant.

"Why would you do that?"

A brief flash of shock passed across his face before it vanished. "You needed my help, Maddison. That's all."

"Nothing is ever that simple," she snapped, the pain of Tyler's betrayal making her voice tart. Men don't act for simple reasons, there is always some strategy or ulterior motive, and she had just discovered that the hard way.

"What do you want from me?"

He stayed quiet for a long time, watching her. She felt his eyes on her, studying and judging which made her skin itch. His calm felt worse than anger, It was the calm of someone playing chess who had already seen all the moves she could make. He was not angry at her; he was watching her carefully and this made her feel small in her thin hospital gown, her body hurting with her heart raw and open.

"Right now…'" he said slowly, "I want you to rest. The nurses will come and talk with you soon."

"I don't need you around," she spoke softly, her eyes cast away from the window but the gray sky offered no solace.

She could hear him stand up, soft creaks of expensive shoes on the floor, and then he went back to the window, and for a second she thought he was going away. Then she could hear the soft beep of a phone opening up and his deep voice, hushed and serious, illuminating the room. He must have thought that she was dozing off with her eyes closed due to the light.

"Melissa, it's me," he announced in his business voice. "Clear my schedule for the next 48 hours. All of it! Yes, even the Zurich call, tell them it's a personal matter and not flexible because something arose."

Her eyes snapped open when she heard 48 hours, and that he was clearing his entire schedule for her, a stranger. The alarm bell in her mind began to clang with a desperate rhythm and within her she thought that this was not a rescue, it felt as though it was something else entirely.

The silence following Grant's call felt heavier than before and flattened Maddison, who was speechless. 48 HOURS! He had let go of his life for two whole days for her. And now, the fresh, clean smell in the room now felt too overwhelming for her too, and the incessant beep of the heart monitor was like a countdown to something she could not name but still deeply feared.

“Forty eight hours is too long to clear for a stranger," she grumbled low but with the bite of a razor, then she struggled to look at him, hiding the shake within her.

Grant moved back into the chair and sat down guardedly with reserve, he did not seem shocked by what she had said. "I don't see you as a stranger, Maddison. I see you as an investment for the future."

The word hung in the air. "An investment?" she replied, on the verge of laughing with bitterness. "You met me for five minutes at a graduation ceremony, you don't even know me."

“I recognize you graduated at the top of your class in a challenging course. We discussed already remember. I am aware you were team captain when your team took the national concrete competition as a junior, I am aware of your extensive senior thesis on resilient tension structures being termed 'groundbreaking' by Professor Albright and I always go out of my way to learn about talented people.” He explained her achievements so well she shivered, and it was like he had not only met her, he had looked her up.

It made her uncomfortable that this dominant, controlling man had been watching her had be following her little wins from far away. It felt wrong to her, it was like he was taking control when she was already weak.

"So this," she indicated the luxurious room, the machinery whirring and him sitting there, "is a recruitment strategy?

“This,” he said, his own voice soothing but still kind of infuriating, "is to solve a problem, the recruitment later."

He shoved his hand into the inner pocket of his suit, he moved smoothly, and then pulled out a small, rigid bit of card and extended it to her. It was another business card, just the same one she had flung into the trash at her graduation ceremony.

"My offer is still on the table," he continued. "A job at my company, a chance to work on some projects that will beautify this city's skyline for years to come."

Maddison stared at the card, then his open hand, and at that moment, all the pain and fury of the past hours from Tyler's betrayal, Brooke's disdainful smile, the ruin of all that she had striven for, came surging within her. Grant Harrison was not just giving her a job; he was giving her a lifeline, a fancy cage dressed up as a chance, and she thought once again that it was not just coming from a man, it was coming from a strong, controlling man who thought he could buy her future because he had paid for her hospital bed.

Then, she pulled away, as though the card were a snake and the sudden movement gave another twinge of pain to her hip, and she bit her lip to stop a scream.

“No,” she said. The word echoed loud in the quiet room. "Take it back."

Grant's hand did not move, his gaze did not shift, his eyes stayed on her, firm and calm. "Maddison…"

"I said no!" she snapped, her voice breaking. "I don't need your job, I don't need your sympathy, I don't need anything from you, or from any man."