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Except, he wasn’t.
He couldn’t order her around. She wouldn’t permit it. She had to think. Nothing was happening the way it was supposed to. She’d worried about being in the same city with this man and now it turned out she’d be working for him.
Impossible.
Better to go home…and do what? Lose the house? Move to a furnished room? Take whatever job she could find? Earn barely enough to live on and, oh yes, impose on Sheryl’s kindness by asking her to watch Sam?
“Taylor, I want an answer!”
There was only one answer, but she couldn’t bring herself to give it. Not without making him wait.
“I’ll call you with my decision.”
His eyes narrowed. She tried to move past him as quickly as possible, but his hand clamped down on her shoulder.
“Would you put your pride before the welfare of your daughter?”
“Nice, Dante. Really nice.” Tally’s eyes blazed with anger. “Don’t you try and lay this on me! I never ignored Sam’s welfare and I sure as hell never tripped over my own oversize ego! You’re the one who came to Shelby, who bought a bank just so you could tear my child’s life to pieces.”
“That wasn’t my intention.”
“Maybe not, but it’s what you did.”
“Yes. And now, I intend to undo it. I will not avenge myself by hurting a child.”
“My God, listen to you! So high and mighty. So godlike. Anyone would think you have a conscience. Maybe even a heart.”
“Damn you, Taylor!” His fingers dug into her flesh as he pulled her to him. “I want to do the right thing. Why make it so difficult?”
And, in that moment, it came to her. The missing piece of the puzzle. What he’d just called doing the right thing. If that was his intention, there was a much easier way to do it. Why wasn’t he taking it?
“If you’re serious about not wanting my little girl to pay the price of your revenge—”
“Interesting,” he said silkily, “how you manage to misquote me, cara. I said I would not avenge myself through her. We both know what that means, that your daughter should not pay the price of your unfaithfulness.”
“Put whatever twist you like on it. The point is, if you’ve suddenly turned into the male counterpart of Mother Teresa, why go through all this? Why not simply stop the foreclosure proceedings?”
There it was, the million-dollar question. The question he’d asked himself a dozen times since coming up with this idea. His attorney and his accountant, each of whom knew only small details of the overall situation, had finally asked it, too, but he hadn’t given them any explanations.
A man who answered to no one but himself didn’t have to.
That didn’t mean it wasn’t a damned good question. All he had to do was have the loan payments rescheduled. Or tear up the documents altogether.
End of problem.
Nothing else made sense. Not to his attorney, to his accountant, to him and now to Taylor, who was looking at him with her eyebrows arched.
Dante frowned. She could look at him any way she liked. He didn’t owe her an explanation, either.
“It’s too complicated to explain.”
Her smile was thin. “Try.”
“There are banking laws. Rules. And I’ve already set the foreclosure procedure in motion.”
“And I’ll unset it by repaying the loan with my earnings from this job.” Another thin smile. “Try again.”
For a second, he looked blank. “You’d see it as charity. You’d never accept it.”
