He pulled up in front of my apartment building, idling on the curb. He turned again, leaning toward me so that I inhaled him, cologne and the coconut sorbet and something that was achingly him. “Name your price, Molly. Whatever you want is yours.”
The wine and perfect evening muddled my thoughts. I couldn’t think straight with him this close. I couldn’t remember all of my intelligent reasons for telling him no.
“You give me complete control of your EFB account.” I heard myself name my price, but I still didn’t believe I’d been the one to speak. That was a bold demand. Especially from an overbearing dictator like Ezra. And I wasn’t bold. I was meek and mild mannered. I didn’t demand things from anybody, especially not super successful business tycoons like him.
“Excuse me?” His lips pressed into a frown.
I patted my tipsy self on the back. There, I’d found the one price he wasn’t willing to pay. That would teach him to ask ridiculous things of me late at night. This was a bad habit I needed to break asap.
“You back off the website and social strategy and all of it. I want complete control.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Oh, I am.” Gaining confidence, I laid out my reasoning. “You’re impossible to work with, Ezra. I can’t make any progress with your fingers in every single aspect. I spend most of my time convincing you to let me do what I know is best, which leaves very little time to actually work on the project. If you want me to paint this mural, then you have to back off the graphic design side and give me complete autonomy.”
His jaw ticked. He couldn’t do it. “Anything else?”
“And you can’t interfere with the painting project either. If you hover over my shoulder the entire time, I’ll be too nervous to get anything done. I’m not a professional and I don’t want to be treated like one. If you really want me to paint something for you, you have to trust my process. Which is isolated. I work alone. You can’t come anywhere near it until I’m finished.”
“And how much do you want to get paid?”
Was he seriously considering this? My stomach filled with angry butterflies, flapping poison tipped wings. I hadn’t believed he would take me seriously, but now that I was in the middle of negotiations I wasn’t sure I could back out. Not if I got Ezra to concede to leave me and his account completely alone.
I waved off the idea of getting paid. “I have no idea,” I admitted honestly. “I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m sure there is a standard rate or whatever, but I’ll have to look it up.”
He raised one eyebrow. “You’ll let me know if it’s over ten thousand?”
I rolled my eyes, finding the entire idea ludicrous. “Yes, Ezra, if I plan to charge you more than ten thousand dollars, I’ll warn you. Right before I commit myself. Don’t be crazy.”
His full lips twitched with the smile he held back. “I’m starting to think it’s too late, Molly Maverick. There is just something about you that makes my common sense completely disappear.”
That shouldn’t have felt like a compliment. But it did. It so did. “Thanks for the ride, Ezra. Don’t worry about not getting any work done tonight. I’m on it.”
This time he did smile and it was perfect. Confident, genuine and so, so stunning. “Will you at least give me updates?”
“You mean before I upload everything to all your sites and totally revolutionize your business and way of life as you know it?”
His smile widened and my heart tried to jump out of my body altogether. “Yeah, before all of that.”
“Let’s just say, good behavior will go a long way. We could come up with a reward system? A gold star chart?”
“I think all this power is going to your head,” he murmured, his voice pitching low and smooth.
I sucked in my bottom lip and suppressed a victorious smile. “That doesn’t sound like me at all.”
His eyes glittered when he laughed. “From everything I know about you, it sounds exactly like you.”
His words hit me in some secret, hidden part. Was that true? Did he somehow see something in me that I didn’t know existed?
But to be fair, I acted differently around him than the rest of the people in my life. I was assertive and antagonistic and… outspoken. I didn’t hold back my thoughts or my words. I argued with him. I even picked fights with him on purpose.
But that was because of him, not me. He pulled that strong personality out of me with his boorish, overbearing behavior.
It was his fault I was like this.
Except I found that I didn’t want to give him all of the credit. I didn’t mind this side of me. Maybe I was even proud of it. I wanted to keep some of the credit for myself. I wanted to believe that I was capable of this all on my own.
“Thanks for the ride, Ezra. You can email me the details of your mural whenever you get a chance.” My hand found the door handle and I forced myself to leave the warmth and strange intimacy of his car.
“I’ll walk you inside,” he offered.
“No, that’s—” But he’d already jumped out of his side and was headed around to mine. I scrambled out of the passenger’s side door before he could do something drastic that ruined every other man for me for the rest of my life—like open my door again.
We walked in silence the short distance to the door of my lobby. He’d left his car idling unmanned and I was irrationally nervous that someone was going to run up to it, jump inside, and drive off.
“If someone steals your car because of me, I’m going to have to sell a kidney to pay you back.”
The corner of his mouth lifted, amused. “It’s just a thing, Molly. Not worth a kidney.”
“Don’t tell Killian that,” I warned. “Pretty sure he thinks it’s a bigger deal than most internal organs.”
He leaned in, bringing our faces close together, our bodies following suit. My gaze dropped to his lips for just a second. Okay, maybe five seconds. Possibly a good ten seconds.
“We’ll keep that just between you and me.” His head dipped down and he pressed a slow-burning, heart-stopping, over-too-quick kiss on my lips. “Goodnight, Molly the Maverick.”
Then he stepped back and jogged the distance to his car while I was left internally flailing as I fell and fell and fell down an endless well of uncharted territory.
I stepped inside my building and went straight up to my studio. If ever there had been a reason to paint, a gentle kiss by a man like Ezra Baptiste was it.
So, paint I did. Until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Until my fingers were stiff and my back ached. Until, without any of the details or specs, I had the perfect idea for Ezra’s mural.
Chapter Fifteen
Sunday did not go anything like I wanted it to. I hadn’t realized how much work I had agreed to until I started to plan out all of my different projects for the week.