“Phil,” I whispered. “Does your Page Seven say the same thing mine does?”
He pushed his sheet over so I could read. And right there in black and white, just like mine, was a number that broke my brain.
Twenty-five thousand dollars. Per month. For fashion and beauty. Plus the huge salary. Plus the benefits.
I dragged my gaze from the paper to Phil’s face, flabbergasted. Nothing made sense. I didn’t understand. What had just happened? What was going on?
All this just to go to a few fancy events on Jared Branson’s arm? How-why-what?
It had to be too good to be true. There had to be a catch.
“Phil,” I whispered again.
“Yes, Iris?”
“What the heck is going on?”
His eyes glittered, and the corners of his lips twitched. “We’ll go through the contract with a fine-toothed comb,” he told me. “But from what I’ve read so far, they’re offering you this in exchange for indemnity against any lawsuit you might have been planning to bring against the company.”
“What?”
His eyes twinkled. “Like I said before, this right here?” He tapped a finger on the contract pages on the table. “This is a group of people trying to cover their asses after a major fuck-up.”
Suddenly, I understood. They were buying me off. Branson picking me up from the hospital was him probing me for information, and whatever I’d said had spooked him. Meanwhile, I’d been eating chocolate and dreaming of my bed.
I’d tripped and fallen into a swimming pool full of gold. Or maybe he’d pushed me into it.
I huffed, amazed. “What do I do?” My voice was hoarse. Imaginary me had cackled a bit too much.
The older man hummed, tilting his head. “You want to know what I would do?”
I nodded.
A smile broke over his lips. “I’d bite their hand off. Any settlement I negotiate for you will be far less than this, and it won’t include any of these benefits. Take it, Iris, milk it for all it’s worth, and don’t look back.”
Jared’s POV
I paced the length of my office, my steps heavy on the carpeted floor. Blood rushed in my ears. My hands clenched and unclenched.
That little minx was squeezing me for all I was worth, and I did not appreciate it.
I gritted my teeth and turned, pacing in the opposite direction. Cole watched me from the corner of the room where he leaned on the wall, his arms crossed.
“You think she’ll go for it?” he finally asked.
“She will if she knows what’s good for her,” I fumed. The cheeky little thing. Painting her lips like she didn’t have a care in the world. Demanding more and more and more from me, even though we’d offered her a great deal to begin with. Munching on my truffles like they were her due.
Her dark-brown eyes had flashed across the table from me, that little black-and-white outfit taunting me with every movement of her body. She thought she could waltz in here and make a fool of me? She thought she could get one over on me?
Ha!
“To be fair,” Cole said, interrupting my inner rage, “if she’s attending a full schedule of events, a grand wouldn’t be enough to cover what she needs. Twenty-five k is generous, sure, but at least she’ll be able to dress the part.”
“That’s not the point,” I snapped.
Cole arched a brow. “Oh? What is, then?”
“The point is, she thinks she can tighten the screw on me. She thinks she can play a tune and my feet will start dancing. I don’t appreciate it, and I don’t appreciate her.”
“So pull the offer. Especially if you don’t think you can stand to have her on your arm four or five times a week. Maybe more with the holidays coming up. You need to at least pretend you get along, or else this whole thing falls apart.”
I bared my teeth at him, then whirled around and stalked to my bar. I poured myself a tall drink, letting the alcohol burn my throat.
“I can’t pull the offer,” I finally said when my glass was empty. “You were right about Monk. He won’t hire me unless he knows I can take criticism, and in his geriatric, wife-obsessed mind, the only way to show that is to have a softening influence in my life. I need a companion.”
“I wonder how he deals with same-sex couples.”
Setting my glass down, I shook my head. “He’s fine with it. It’s the partnership he wants. He thinks a committed relationship changes someone and makes them worthy of trust.”
“So you need her.”
“I don’t need her,” I shot back petulantly, glaring at him. “I need someone. She just happens to be the convenient option.”
Cole tilted his head, considering me. “I see,” he said, and it sounded like he saw a lot more than I wanted him to. Like he might be able to see just how easily Nikita Little had gotten under my skin. And how badly I wanted to march back in there and demand she stop playing around and sign the damned contract already.
“I can’t afford a lawsuit right now. Especially not a public one,” I told him, even though that wasn’t the only reason I wanted her to work for me.
It galled me that she was winning. It boiled my blood to know she’d gotten one over on me. It wasn’t right.
I wanted to teach her a lesson.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.