Chapter 5: The Offer

I didn’t sit down.

I stood just inside the door with my purse clutched against my stomach and stared at the money on his desk, and every clever thing I’d rehearsed on the bus vanished from my head.

“If this is about the fifty dollars,” I said, “I was drunk, and it was a joke, and you can keep it. Consider it a tip.”

“I intend to keep it.” He came around the desk, and the room seemed to shrink. In daylight he was even bigger than I remembered, broad and solid, his shirt stretched across his chest and shoulders, a vein standing out along one forearm. He stopped close enough that I had to tilt my chin up to meet his eyes. “Nobody’s ever paid me before, Ivy. I found it educational.”

My face went hot. “Why am I here?”

“Sit, and I’ll tell you.”

This time I sat. He didn’t go back behind the desk. Instead he leaned against the front of it with his long legs crossed at the ankle and picked up a thin folder.

“Ivy Monroe. Twenty-six. Top analyst at Brennan & Cole two years running. Eight months ago you wrote a report on irregularities in their offshore accounts that your bosses buried, and that report is the reason I was able to buy the company for half its value.” He turned a page. “You were never supposed to be on the layoff list.”

I stared at him. “Then why was I?”

“Because the man who drew up the integration list for your department added your name the night before. By hand.” He held up a printed page. Near the bottom, my name had been added and underlined, with a note beside it: performance concerns, notify recruiters. “He was very proud of his initiative. My HR director forwarded it to me on Tuesday morning.”

I didn’t need to ask whose initials were at the bottom. I already knew. “Jordan.”

“Jordan Pierce. Hired six weeks ago on my daughter’s recommendation, against my judgment.” He set the page down. “He knew you’d lose your job before you did, because he made sure of it.”

Six weeks. Six weeks of Jordan lying on my couch, eating food I paid for, and kneeling at Lake Merrow with a ring, all while he worked for the company that was going to cut me loose. My stomach turned over, and I pressed my hand flat against it.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I need something, and I think you need something too.” He set the folder aside. “In ninety days, my board votes on whether I remain chief executive of this company. My late wife’s mother holds eleven percent of the shares, and she’s spent seven years telling anyone who’ll listen that I’m a cold, unstable widower who’s unfit to raise her granddaughter or run her daughter’s legacy. She’s been counting votes, and she’s closer than I’d like.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“I need a fiancée. Someone the city will believe in. Someone Margaret can’t buy, and someone Sienna can’t scare off, because Sienna has run off every woman I’ve been seen with in seven years.” He held my eyes. “You’ll be engaged to me for one year. You’ll live in my house, attend my events, and sit beside me at the shareholder meeting. In return, you’ll have the executive analyst job on this floor at a salary of two hundred thousand, another five hundred thousand when the year ends, and your rent will never be a problem again.”

The number didn’t make sense. I heard it, but it slid right off my brain without landing.

“And Jordan,” he added, “will report to you.”

That one landed.

I thought of Jordan in the lobby, with his gold lanyard and his waiter smile. Go home and pay your rent. Oh, wait. I thought of my mother asking what I’d done to make him look elsewhere. I thought of Sienna dragging her key down the side of my car without even glancing back.

“Why me?” I asked. “You could have any woman in South Valley.”

“Any woman in South Valley would sign this contract for the money and sell the story to a magazine before the ink dried.” He reached past me and tapped the torn note on his desk. Worth every cent. “You’re the only one who’s ever walked out of my bed and left me cash. You didn’t know who I was, and you didn’t want anything from me. I trust that more than I trust anything else in this city.”

His hand stayed on the desk beside my shoulder. He was close enough that I could smell the same warm cologne from Halloway’s, and my body remembered him before my brain caught up. I crossed my legs, and his eyes followed the movement along my thigh before they returned to my face.

“There’s one more thing you should know,” he said quietly. “On paper, this is a business arrangement. But I’m not going to pretend Monday night didn’t happen, and I don’t think you will either.”

Before I could answer, the doors behind me flew open.

“Dad, what the hell is going on?” Sienna stormed in with her sunglasses gone and her cheeks flushed, Jordan right behind her and Mr. Graves trailing them with an apologetic face. “Security says Graves brought her up personally. Do you know who she is? She’s Jordan’s crazy ex. She’s been stalking him.”

Jordan’s eyes darted from me to Lucien and back again. He’d seen the folder on the desk. He’d seen the printed list with his initials on it, and all the color had drained from his face.

Lucien didn’t move from where he stood beside my chair, and he didn’t raise his voice. He simply reached down, took my left hand in his, and drew me to my feet as though we’d rehearsed it a hundred times.

“Sienna,” he said. “Jordan. I’d like you both to meet Ivy.”

He slid his arm around my waist, his palm warm through the thin fabric of my blouse.

“My fiancée.”

Nobody spoke. The only sound in the office was the hum of the air conditioning. Sienna looked at me as though I’d slapped her across the face, and Jordan’s mouth opened and closed without a single word coming out.

I hadn’t said yes. I hadn’t signed anything. But I looked at the man who had emptied my savings and erased my career with one line on a spreadsheet, and I felt something in my chest settle into place.

I leaned into Lucien’s side and smiled at the girl who’d keyed my car.

“Hello, Sienna,” I said. “I suppose this makes me your new mom.”