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He hadn’t asked her to do that.
The older man smiled at Wyatt. “We are prepared to offer you—”
Shit. She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t let them rip off a good man like Wyatt. “I don’t think you want to make that offer just yet,” she interrupted in Chinese.
Wyatt stiffened. “What did you just say to them?”
“Shh.” She said, placing her hand on his thigh and squeezing. She tried her best not to get distracted by how hard it was, but hot damn. She switched back to Chinese. “I think we need to renegotiate, gentlemen. He might not have an agent right now, but he has me.”
The older man blanched, his eyes wide. “You understood us?”
“Yes, I understood everything.” She held his gaze. “Everything.”
“Ma’am, I’m sorry—” he started.
“I’m sure, but that isn’t what I want to talk about.” She nodded once toward Wyatt. “He is worth more than what you’re offering. He’s unaware that you tried to shortchange him, and he doesn’t need to find out, if you make this right.”
The younger man laughed and tugged on his tie. “Why should we offer him full price, when he is unrepresented, and this is a huge deal for him—as he’s already stated?”
“Because it’s a huge deal for you, too.” She crossed her arms. “This would bring in a lot of revenue for you, as no one else had secured an athlete of his caliber in your field yet. Wyatt Hamilton is a household name, and I have every reason to believe by the time this season is over, everyone who hasn’t heard of him yet will.”
Wyatt sat up straighter, clearly tired of not understanding a single word that was being spoken around and about him. “Kass—”
“Quiet.” She squeezed his leg again and switched to Chinese. “He’s getting restless. Tell me what I want to hear, gentlemen. Make it better than your original offer, since you were so quick to turn on him when you thought he was weak.”
The younger guy’s jaw dropped. “You can’t be serious.”
“Dead. Go on, then. He’s waiting.”
After issuing her threat, she picked up her wine and took a big gulp because she might have just stepped out-of-bounds. He’d brought her here to help him translate if necessary, not to negotiate his offer. If these men walked away from him right now, it would be her fault, and she’d owe him for a busted endorsement deal, on top of a priceless vase.
What had she done?
The older man laughed, leaning back in his chair. He switched back to English effortlessly, looping Wyatt back into the conversation. “You have quite the ferocious defender as your companion, Mr. Hamilton. She’s like a dog with a bone, only ten times as fierce.”
Wyatt cleared his throat, side-eying her. “Yes, she is…something else.”
She shifted
in her seat, refusing to back down. She’d made her play, for better or for worse, against her better judgment, and she was going to stick to it. “I’m just looking out for the best interests of everyone here at this table.”
“Indeed,” the gentleman said. “After your companion’s…wise…words, we are prepared to offer you”—he scribbled down a number on a business card and slid it toward them—“this much, which is almost double our original offer. We appreciate a hard-baller almost as much as we appreciate a good deal, and this falls into both categories.”
Wyatt held it out to her, showing her. She glanced at it and nodded the verification he seemed to desire that it was, indeed, almost double the number the men had been prepared to offer—and holy crap, that was a lot of money. More than she’d ever seen, or would see, in her life. He smiled and tucked the card into the breast pocket of his jacket. “Gentlemen, I do believe we have a deal.”
They stood and shook hands.
Everyone clapped one another on the back in that way that men always did, and she swallowed another gulp of wine because she did it. She took a chance, spoke up, and it worked. One might say that by choosing to interject herself into the situation, she’d been living life to its fullest. Living wasn’t so hard after all, was it?
Guess she didn’t owe him for that vase anymore.
With this win, came a heady rush of victory unlike any other she had ever experienced. Never again. Never again would she put herself behind a wall or inside a bubble because some jerk had made her doubt herself. Never again would she stop living, or forget to take risks like she’d taken. Never again would she forget that for one night and one night only, she’d gone on a date with Wyatt Hamilton, or that she’d scored him a deal that would leave him sitting on a big wad of cash for the rest of his long, healthy life—all with her quick wits and sharp brain.
This was living.
She could fly over the white puffy clouds, higher than the planes in the blue sky.
And she was never going touch the ground again.
