Chapter 12
STERLING
I ’d expected the cold shoulder. The silence. I’d even expected to have to give her time and that she’d be so completely taken aback that not even she knew what she was going to say to my proposal just yet.
What I hadn’t expected was how much it would bother me. Nothing got to me. Nothing kept me up at night or ate away at my insides, but this?
Laney didn’t speak to me for the rest of the night. I didn’t press her to, either. In fact, I waited until she’d retired to the guest suite to sulk in silence. Then I went to pour myself a stiff drink and did some highly uncharacteristic sulking of my own.
Because this was bothering me. Her reaction had gotten to me. I stood on the balcony outside the master bedroom, drink in one hand and the other wrapped around the metal railing, staring out at the moonlight glinting off the ocean, and I knew I honestly wasn’t going to get much sleep tonight.
The way her nose has scrunched up in disgust when I’d told her we could make a baby the old-fashioned way? What the hell had that been about? I was good in bed and I knew she’d thought about fucking me—probably at least as much as I’d thought about it with her.
Would having to do it regularly until she was knocked up really be that bad? I watched the swells deep in the ocean and took a gulp of my whiskey. The liquor was smooth and expensive, rolling across my tongue and down my throat like velvet fire, but for some reason, even that reminded me of her.
That woman had an inferno inside her that I hadn’t expected, a wildfire of passion and joy that could make life with her easier than I had been anticipating.
We could have fun. It wasn’t something that had ever figured into my plans for the future, but having her in my house wouldn’t be intolerable.
Maybe she still wouldn’t be living out her fairy tale life, but I’d make it good for her. The sex to conceive the child. The day-to-day once she was pregnant. I’d let her plan the nursery of her dreams, and as her husband, I wouldn’t stifle her professional ambition.
Eventually, I drained my whiskey and had another before I climbed into bed, my cock so hard that it was weeping. The thought of getting that Firecracker in my bed and feeling all those soft curves underneath me really got me going, but I didn’t give in to the temptation.
There were far too many other things on my mind, and under the circumstances, sex, even with myself, would only complicate things further. I’d never mixed business with pleasure and I couldn’t afford to start now—not like this, anyway.
After a night spent not sleeping, I took a shower and got dressed, heading downstairs to find Laney eating breakfast in the kitchen. She sat at the sun-soaked table by herself, picking at her eggs and pancakes while staring out at the ocean, but I doubted she was even aware of the view.
“Good morning, sir,” Mario said when I walked in, immediately turning to take a plate out of the oven. I sat down at the breakfast bar instead of the table, raking my tablet closer and opening it to the news.
Mario set my food down in front of me—an egg white omelet, fruit, and a black coffee. Laney’s pancakes looked so much better, but those were an indulgence I reserved for holiday weekends. Mostly because it was just too much effort to decide what I wanted to eat every morning.
It was much more efficient to eat the same thing, at the same time, and be done with it. Laney didn’t look at me. She didn’t speak, eating her breakfast in silence before she stood and headed back to the guest suite.
She was already dressed in yet another pair of yoga pants and a shirt, her hair piled into a messy knot on top of her head and her sneakers squeaking across the polished tile as she strode to the door. Once she reached it, she turned to Mario with a smile that never once flicked in my direction.
“Thank you. That was delicious. Dinner last night was incredible as well.”
He inclined his chin at her. “Can I get you some more coffee?”
“No. Thank you. I should get ready to leave.”
Mario glanced at me once she was gone. I could see the questions in his eyes, but he didn’t ask and I simply shrugged as I turned back to my own breakfast and the news I wasn’t really reading. When I was done, I collected my things and headed out to the car.
Laney was already there, her bag at her feet as she stood in the driveway, her face tipped back toward the sky and large sunglasses covering her eyes.
I unlocked the car with the press of a button, and when she heard the low beep, she lowered her chin and climbed into the passenger seat, tucking her overnight bag in at her feet.
There were no traces of either of the folders I’d given her last night. I had half a mind to run back to the balcony where we’d eaten just to make sure she’d taken them and hadn’t left them behind, but in the end, I had electronic copies of all that anyway.
She wouldn’t get out of this by simply leaving a paper copy behind. On the way to the airport, she sat facing the window, her lips pursed in thought and her cheeks paler than I would have liked.
Once we were in the air flying back to San Francisco, I thought about breaking the silence between us a dozen times.
Every time I looked over at her, however, she was hunched over her laptop, her brows drawn and her fingers moving across her keyboard like she was trying to beat herself to a finish line only she could see.
She was working. Not just checking emails or scrolling Pinterest for cute counter displays, but really working.
From what I was able to tell, she was budgeting.
She pulled up vendor spreadsheets every so often, looking over quotes for renovations to their back room in San Francisco and, interestingly, she seemed to be building a three-year forecast of her own from scratch in Excel.
My people had already done that—the five-year forecast, not three—but it looked like she’d decided to do it herself as well. She was locked in, married to her business and making it work.
Just like I was to mine.
We really are the perfect match.
People like us, from what I’d heard, struggled to find partners who really understood what drove us and why. Significant others tended to expect people to spend time with them, and that was the one thing I didn’t have to give.
Laney was the same.
Yet here we both had the opportunity to get what we wanted and needed, and all she had to do was agree. She would never have to ask for my favorite color or whether I went to therapy. She would never have to ask anything about me at all and I wouldn’t be offended. In fact, I’d be delighted.
For some reason, waiting a whole week to find out if she felt the same way was already eating at me like acid under my skin. I wanted an answer now, but for the first time in my life, I was afraid that if I demanded it, it would be no.
We’d barely touched down when she was on her feet. She didn’t wait for me as she grabbed her bag and strode toward the door. She didn’t wait for Steve as we disembarked.
She barely even glanced at me as she shifted the strap of her bag on her shoulder. “Okay, so I guess I’ll be seeing you, then.”
“I’ll send over the contact details of an attorney,” I said once we were leaving the private terminal. “Someone reputable and discreet. I’ll cover their fees, of course.”
Those gray eyes rolled. “How generous.”
She held my gaze for one more beat, her mouth opening like she was about to say something, but then she gave her head an almost imperceptible shake, shut her mouth again, and walked away.
She marched to a waiting Uber like I was nothing more than a stranger she’d been seated next to on the plane, without so much as even a cursory backward glance.
Her driver climbed out when she neared his car. A guy in his early thirties. He was tanned and overly eager, checking her out before he jumped to get the door for her. He smiled. She smiled back.
Instantly, I hated him.
The words, Back off, that’s my wife, jumped to the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t say them. Not yet, but she would be my wife, and as soon as she agreed, no other man would ever look at her that way again.
I would put a rock the size of Mars on her finger to make sure they knew she belonged to someone who could give her things they could never even dream of. The urge to possess her, to consume her, was utterly absurd.
I had never felt anything like it, but it was brewing inside me now like a thunderstorm. A supercell storm that would take out anything in its path.
She simply wasn’t mine to protect yet, but no one in her position would really say no to the terms I laid out. No one would even think about it.
The last two acquisitions I’d structured had been finalized within forty-eight hours of the initial offer. My lawyers had practically framed the timestamp. I was that good, but Laney?
Surely she wouldn’t say no.
I would’ve felt much more confident if she hadn’t laughed in my face when I’d made my proposition, but she had. She’d laughed and laughed like it’d been the funniest thing she’d ever heard. She hadn’t been flattered. She hadn’t thrown herself at my feet and thanked me for my generosity.
She’d looked at me like I was insane for trying to contractually force someone to spend a year with me, and maybe she had a point. But it wasn’t like I was asking her to love me.
All I was doing was offering stability. Legacy. Control. A future carved in granite.
Yet she was climbing into a rideshare and smiling at some other guy like he was her savior for being paid to pick her up.
She slammed the door behind her, still without so much as another glance at me, and even from here, I could see the relief etched onto her delicate features as he rounded the car and prepared to drive her away.
I watched it all go down, and for reasons I didn’t have time to examine, I didn’t get in my car. It was right there at the curb, the engine idling and Steve waiting to take me to the office, but I stood there, letting the wind mess up my hair, and just watched her leave.
She’s going to say no. Of course she’s going to say no.
I just wasn’t about to let it happen. The knowledge simply made me more determined to do everything I could to make her say yes.
Mind made up that I was going to marry her, I went straight to my office and set up a meeting with my favorite attorney and my most trusted financial advisor. We blocked out my entire afternoon for it, and when they strode in, I immediately got down to the reasons I’d called them here.
“There’s a woman named Laney Rhodes,” I said. “I’ve proposed marriage to her. She hasn’t said yes yet, but she will, and when she does, I need her to have access to my accounts.”
My financial advisor’s mouth dropped open, which was new. I’d never seen him look even mildly surprised, but he seemed completely shocked right now. “Which accounts, sir?”
“All of them.”
My lawyer shook his head. “I’m going to have to advise against that, Sterling. Let us set up her own account. A little savings pocket of sorts with?—”
“No.” I folded my hands on my desk and looked them both right in the eye. “Open ‘em up. I want her to have full access.”
“We don’t even know this woman, sir,” the financial advisor objected. “We’ll need to run a background check. I?—”
“Laney is smart. She won’t be blowing my money on extravagant, obnoxious shit. I didn’t ask you here for your opinions. You have your marching orders, so get it done. Claire can get us all the paperwork we need. All I want from you is to walk me through it so we can ensure it gets done right.”
Deep down, I was suddenly kind of hoping she would spend my money, though. On whatever she wanted.
I didn’t believe I had kinks. That was stuff my younger brothers were definitely into, but I’d never had time to get into any of that.
What I had was too much money, and for the first time ever, I was feeling all sorts of new things about the prospect of getting to see someone spend it on stuff that would make them happy. Maybe that’s my kink. Huh.
However, I was also just curious about what Laney would buy if I slipped a black card into her wallet.
Probably clunky new hiking sandals and a Patagonia fanny pack.
Neither my lawyer nor my financial advisor were onboard with this plan, but they didn’t argue, simply doing what they needed to get the ball rolling. Meanwhile, I scrubbed the thought of Laney spending my money from my mind as soon as I felt my cock starting to swell behind my fly.
God, what is this girl doing to me?
My libido hadn’t been this bothersome in twenty years, but I ignored even that and got to work once the meeting was over, staying at the office well into the evening. Around nine, my father called, snapping me out of the zone I’d been in for hours.
“Are you coming to family dinner on Friday night?” he asked without prelude after I’d picked up. “Your mother would love it if you would all be here this week.”
“Yeah, I’ll be there.” It was a weekly tradition, but my brothers and I had, perhaps, been playing a little fast and loose with it recently. I drummed my fingers on my desk before I added, “I might be bringing someone with me.”
If she’d said yes by then.
Nerves ratcheted my insides at the thought that she might also say no. Anxiety wasn’t something I was used to feeling, and I knew I shouldn’t want her as badly as I did, but for some reason, her not jumping at my offer was throwing me out of whack.
I didn’t like it, but at this point, it felt like waiting the entire week was going to drive me to the brink of insanity. What was worse was that there wasn’t a single damn thing I could do about it.