I just can’ t believe I let myself get sucked into this when I’ve been seeing you do it to everyone else for all these years!”
Grant’s eyes had gone steely, battleship grey-blue. “I’m sorry this is such a hardship for you.”
Whatever he was thinking was locked up tight now behind those high cheekbones and blank eyes and crisp, perfectly polite and noncommittal voice.
“You said last night that this was to be purely a business arrangement. Are there any terms we could renegotiate to sweeten the deal?” he asked.
“I seriously doubt it,” I muttered, swiping my foot along the perfectly smooth slate grey pebbles of our path.
“Come now, Lacey,” he said. “Don’t be shy. Surely there’s something you want?”
“I want a goddamn time machine so I can go back and make sure I avoid this in the first place,” I grumbled.
“Well, I don’t believe that I have any DeLoreans in stock at the moment, but how about half a million dollars?”
It was so absurd that I burst out laughing.
I don’t mean a dignified little chuckle, elegantly tossed off like a refined Victorian lady expressing her amusement at a witty remark by Elizabeth Bennet before taking another sip of finest Darjeeling tea, pinky extended, of course. I mean gut-bursting, high-pitched shrieking, guffawing, snorting like a horse with a sinus infection.
And then I noticed that Grant wasn’t laughing along with me.
“Wait,” I gasped—partly from surprise and partly from still having trouble breathing after laughing so hard, “you’re serious?!”
Grant looked about as offended as if I’d suggested that Australia was basically the same thing as New Zealand.
“I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t sincere.”
For half a second, I let myself get lost in the fantasy. Half a million dollars…that kind of money didn’t just buy you new things, it bought you a whole new life. A whole new life of taking only jobs that fulfilled me and not living in fear of destitution if I was fired, of paying off my student loans with a single click of my computer mouse—or better yet, with the thud of a suitcase of bills on the desk of the financial aid officers who had declined my application for a reduced interest loan with smirks on their faces: watch her, she’ll drop out in a year when she finds out how hard the courses are anyway.
I could see it all now: the grateful smiles on the faces of loved ones as I paid them back for all the faith and love they had shown me: I could send my parents on a trip to meet the Dalai Lama and do service work in Tibetan orphanages; I could launch Kate’s lingerie business with a single cash gift. I could establish scholarships at Stanford for all the other girls like me with smarts and determination but no money, and a whole world ready to tell them they weren’t cut out for it, wouldn’t make it.
And in that bed, at least for a few months, there would be Grant Devlin, Grant Devlin with his strong muscular arms and his firm well-shaped legs and that ass just begging to be grabbed as he plunged deep within me, his voice shaking with passion and then muffled as he claimed my lips, his eyes burning with need as he groped my bare breasts and ground his hips against mine, the rasp of his stubble against my soft skin sending me into ecstasy— “Well? Will that be sufficient? You could possibly haggle me up to a full million.”
And his voice brought me back to reality, and to the fact that I would never be able to let myself take that payment from Grant. Because taking that money would mean giving up my pride, and that was the one thing I could never afford.
“No money,” I said. “It feels tacky. I’d rather have rules than cash. If you’ll stick to them.”
“I’ve heard rules were made to be broken,” Grant said with a wicked grin, and my brain decided to make a flash-cut right back to my fantasy, only now I was tied to the bed, Grant hovering above me with that same wicked grin as his hand traced a line down my chest, dipping between my thighs and— “Not these rules,” I squeaked through a throat suddenly very dry.
Grant deployed another of his Threat Level Red pouts. “Oh, very well. Can you elaborate on exactly what these rules will be?”
I took a second to look around the park at the artistically twisted pine branches and meandering pathways, thinking hard. These rules had to be reasonable, but ironclad. No loopholes for Grant ‘Pouty Lips’ Devlin. Or for my own idiotic heart.
“We have a month-long engagement. Portia does all the wedding planning and I get to stay the hell away from her and her stare of death. As soon as Jennings signs the papers, we have an amicable breakup so boring the paparazzi start weeping in despair.”
“Well, that all sounds very—”
“I’m not done,” I said, heart hammering. What if he didn’t agree? “And this last part is non-negotiable. We’re telling my parents.”