Page 34 of Not His Bride

I close the folder and rest my hand atop it. “This is a good deal.”

“I’m well aware. I can read quite well.”

He doesn’t oversell it. Phillip may be an asshole, but he knows when the numbers speak for themselves.

But the answer is easy. That might be exactly why the decision matters. Nobody is forcing me to choose Lilith this time. I will never entertain a merger with Jovi Group in any capacity. “No.”

Phillip gestures to the contract. “We’re talking billions here. You’d get everything you wanted. Except with no marriage or personal obligations.”

“So you’ve said.”

“She may never come back to you.” We both know who he is referring to.

“She doesn’t have to choose me back for me to choose her.”

Silence. Phillip stares at me and realizes the negotiation is over. “Fine.”

He gathers the contract. At the door, he pauses to glance back at me. Then says, “Hello, Lilith.”

Lilith? She appears just outside the doorway. I quickly stand, my chair slamming into the wall behind me. How much did she hear? Did she get the wrong idea?

Her black choker circles her throat, and her hair falls loose around her shoulders. She has one hand wrapped around the strap of her bag.

She’s staring at me. The crinkle of her nose immediately tells me that this is not a normal run-in. Phillip steps past her and heads down the hall.

With him gone, I ask her, “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to pop in and see how your day is going.” Lilith steps farther into the office, letting the door swing shut behind her. We’ve been doing that more lately—checking in on one another.

“How much did you hear?”

She walks to the chair her father just left and rests one hand against the back of it. “Enough.”

Shit. I slide my hands into my pockets.

“Lilith, I can explain. I didn’t invite him here. He just showed up.”

Her fingers drag across the top of the chair before falling to her side. “You turned it down.”

I nod. “Yeah. He wanted a merger, but I’m not interested.”

“You could have made a fortune.”

“I already have one.”

She smirks. Then she comes around the chair, closing some of the space between us. “That has never stopped you before.”

Fair, considering I was the one pushing to merge with Jovi Group.

“I’m not doing that again,” I say.

Her smirk fades. She folds her arms loosely across her chest. “You wouldn’t technically be doing anything to me. We’re not together. I have no say in who you work with.”

I’m aware of exactly where we stand. Friends who happened to get married first. Lunches, texts, and enough time together lately that I’ve started wanting more than she ever offered me. Hearing we’re not together puts a definition on all of it. That’s all she promised.

“Then why does it matter?” she asks.

“Because I once had a choice between that deal and you, and cared more about the deal than your feelings.”