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Maxwell Black said she was going to be his.
He knew she wanted a commitment. The hope of a future, not a guarantee, but at least the possibility. Okay probability. But she wasn’t looking for promises as much as the likelihood of them being made down the road.
None of which had he been willing to offer a year ago.
No, he’d presented the possibility of six months to a year of sexual pleasure and intermittent companionship, with the clear and nonnegotiable understanding that they would go their separate ways after a year.
She’d turned him down flat.
And it had not been easy, though she’d tried very hard not to let Max see just how difficult she’d found it to utter that single-syllable word. No.
But her heart had been on the line and she was smart enough to know it.
She hadn’t suddenly gone stupid, so why had she agreed to meet with Max?
Romi didn’t have a reason, at least not a good one.
She still wanted him. She still found him the most intriguing and attractive man she’d ever met.
Maxwell Black was her Kryptonite and that scared the willies out of her.
Some people, after growing up the way she had, watching her dad pine for her dead mother and slowly come apart, would have been determined never to go through that themselves.
Romi had taken the opposite view. She wanted that kind of devotion directed at her. She knew what it was to be loved.
Her dad was flawed. Some might even say weak, but he loved Romi with the best that was in him.
His drinking had taken its toll, but it hadn’t all been bad. Harry Grayson had given his daughter the finest he had to give and she was grateful.
His company might have suffered, but she’d never once doubted her dad’s love.
She was determined that the man she married one day would love her with that same kind of devotion. Hopefully without a past grief to overcome and an addiction to alcohol.
Max’s intensity and dedication to her pleasure had tricked her into thinking once that he might just be that guy.
He’d disabused her of that belief. With prejudice. No matter how he saw it.
So, why was she meeting him tomorrow?
Because she couldn’t help herself.
For the daughter of an alcoholic that was not just a little worrisome.
That was terrifying.
She had to wrest back control of her life.
Because she wasn’t her dad.
Romi was her own person, with her own strengths and her own weaknesses. She wasn’t going to let Max be one of them.
Even if she craved him with a desire embedded to the very marrow of her bones.
Maybe what she needed was her own deal.
Her own offer with a set of parameters that weren’t going to leave her heart bleeding out when he walked away.
CHAPTER FOUR
MAXWELL WALKED INTO Harry Grayson’s study, with the certain knowledge that he was looking forward to his lunch meeting with Romi much more.
However, this one was necessary if he wanted the next one to end the way he planned for it to.
Dressed casually in a sweater over his dress shirt and tie, his trousers creased perfectly, Harry Grayson’s slightly reddened eyes were the only indicator of his excesses the night before. “Good morning, Maxwell. Have a seat. I’ll ring for coffee.”
“Thank you.” In other circumstances, Maxwell might have refused the offer of hospitality, but he was sure the older man could do with a shot of caffeine.
Maxwell was actually a little relieved that things hadn’t progressed to the point where Grayson had offered him a drink at nine in the morning. He waited quietly while Grayson called his housekeeper and ordered a tray of the hot beverage.
Grayson’s hand trembled only slightly as he hung up the phone. “I looked over the contract you sent over.”
“Good.” That was another positive sign.
“It’s a favorable contract.”
“To both parties.” Maxwell didn’t do charity when it came to business.
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why Grayson Enterprises? Surely there are better companies for this sort of merger. Black Information Technologies isn’t just solvent. You’re growing with ROIs other companies would kill for in this climate.”
“Yes.” Maxwell didn’t deny it.
There was no point. He’d worked hard, and smart, to make his company what it was today.
“So, you have nearly unlimited options for this kind of merger. I’m not so blind I don’t realize my company probably isn’t the best of them.”
“I plan to marry your daughter.”
The stark words hit the older man like a blow. He sat back in his chair like Maxwell’s strike had been physical rather than verbal. “I’m not Jeremy Archer. I’m not selling my daughter to insure the future of my company.”
“And I am not trying to buy her.” Not that Maxwell considered Viktor’s marriage to Madison in that light.
The man wanted control of AIH, but he wanted the woman, too.
“Do you love her?” Grayson demanded.
“That is between Romi and myself.”
“She’s my daughter. I want her to be happy.”
“Do you?”
“Of course I do. How can you ask that? I’m no Jeremy Archer,” he said again, like that particular point was one that needed making. Maybe it was. To him. “I’m not selling Romi to save a company that isn’t on the brink of bankruptcy, no matter what that bastard likes to imply.”
Maxwell didn’t bother reminding Grayson he’d already said as much. No matter how together he looked, going to bed drunk night after night took its toll on the man’s thought processes.
“But you are vulnerable to takeover.” The fact Maxwell didn’t have to be here making a merger offer could be left unspoken.
Grayson wasn’t stupid, even if he wasn’t thinking with the same sharp reasoning he’d once been known for.
Just nearly constantly inebriated.
“Romi isn’t part of this deal.”
Did he think if he kept saying it that would make it truer? “No, she isn’t, but your sobriety is.”
“What? That wasn’t in the contract.” Grayson looked down at the contract Maxwell’s office had sent over two days before like it might jump up and attack.
Maxwell pulled a sheaf of papers from his briefcase. “No, it’s in the codicil I’ve got here.”
Last night he’d realized that Romi might well need more than the impetus he’d arranged for her acquiescence to his plans. If he wanted to give Romi something more than just saving her father’s company from the other predators, he would keep that particular motivation to himself.
Grayson paled sickly as he read the codicil. “I don’t have to agree to this. My life is my business.”
“And yet I’ve decided to make it my business.”
“Like my company.”
“Would you rather be having this discussion with Jeremy Archer?”
“More like Viktor Beck.”
“Viktor wouldn’t consider the merger. He’d go for the takeover.” Because in his own way, Viktor Beck was every bit as ruthless as Maxwell Black.
“I’m not going into rehab.”
Maxwell didn’t argue. He knew better.
Instead, he asked, “Have you considered how much your death from alcoholism-related disease will hurt your daughter?”
“She’s an adult.”
“Who would grieve your loss, with guilt she would never let go of. She’s got a very tender heart.”
“You don’t have to tell me that.” Grayson glared, fraying around the edges. “She’s my daughter.”
“Then you should know how your actions affect her.”
“I’m not her responsibility. That’s not how it works.” But his words lacked conviction.
As well they should. Romi took care of her father and if he didn’t see that, Grayson was being willfully blind.
“Are you saying you consider her yours?” he asked the older man.
“Yes, of course.”
“Even though she’s an adult?”
“Yes,” the other man ground out.
“Then you owe her your sobriety.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Life never is.”
“I miss her mother, damn it.”
Maxwell didn’t say that the older man spent too much of his time pickled with alcohol to miss anyone. Though he thought it. Or maybe it was the constant inebriation that made it impossible for the older Grayson to move on with his life.
His maudlin inability to move beyond his grief might well be fed by the alcoholism and not just vice versa.
