AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her nose flares, and she leans forward, giving my shoulder a hard push. "I can’t believe you did that again, Dare! Who do you think you are?"
"Obviously that depends on what information I can get by acting as if I am my brother."
She makes a sound of disgust and starts to walk out of the library. But before she gets to the door, I grab her by the wrist and pull her back. She resists for only a moment before turning to look at me. "Let me go. I have to find Burn."
I raise my hand, attempting to calm her. "Just hear me out. Okay?"
She rips her wrist from my grip and crosses her arms, her expression humorless. "Hear you out about what? I’m not here to make any more deals with you, Dare. I’m here to inform your brother that I’m carrying his child."
Licking my lips, I motion toward the couch. "Sit down with me. In ten minutes, if I haven’t said anything that’s worth your time, I will pay you one thousand dollars."
Her brows wrinkle with confusion. "For what? I swear, you Morgans have too much damned money."
Grabbing her by the shoulders, I struggle to get her over to the couch and sit her down. I take a seat just inches away. She is looking at me with distrust. I don’t blame her, honestly. I’m not usually the most trustworthy person.
"Okay." I lean in, adopting a very serious expression. "You know that my brother is already engaged."
Her lips curl. "Yes. I didn’t know that at the time, though."
"You met Daisy. Remember?"
"I do." She gives me a look. "Where is this going?"
"If you go to my brother and tell him that you are carrying his child, he might offer you money to ‘take care of it’. Or he might break up with Daisy in order to take you on as his fiancée."
She wrinkles her face up. "That’s not… No. I have no interest in becoming engaged to Burn. Actually, I think that he’s pretty despicable, now that the whole cheating scandal is out in the open."
"That doesn’t really matter; my point is that Daisy is not the sort of person that you want rooting against your team. She is pretty nasty when something or someone gets in the way of her goal, and you and your baby would be in her way. She wants to marry my brother. She has worked for a long time, casing our family. You'd show up at the last minute and derail all her carefully laid plans."
Talia’s brows furrow. "I don’t want that. But there’s nothing I can do about that. I have to tell Burn because he deserves to know."
I peer at her. "This kind of scandal could tear the whole family apart. It could cause a lot of problems."
"Again, what am I supposed to do? I’m just following the natural conclusion of events."
My heart thumps in my chest, and my mouth feels dry. I have a wild, reckless idea that is rattling around in my head.
Looking down into Talia’s eyes, I grab her hand, taking it between both of mine. She looks at me, her eyebrows raising. But before she can say anything, I shake my head.
"You shouldn’t tell Burn anything. You already know that he is a fucking liar. He cheated on Daisy and got you pregnant. Is that really the kind of person you want to spend your life with, or at least raise a child with?"
Her expression is skeptical. She exhales. "Maybe. I don’t really know. As I've been saying all along, I don't know much about either of you other than the fact that you're both rich assholes."
"That’s what I’m saying, though. I have a clean slate when it comes to cheating and jerking you around."
She puts her hands on her hips, leaning away from me and fixing me with a hard look. "You’re just as deceptive as Burn."
"Yes, but that is all I’ve done, and that was out of desperation.”
She opens her mouth and I silence her with a finger to her lips. Looking down at her, I say the words that seem so farfetched to me.
“What I’m trying to say is that you should marry me. Be my wife. Tell everybody that the child is mine."
Her eyes widen and her pupils contract. For several seconds, a shocked silence reigns between us. She blinks, and her throat works gently.
Finally, she pulls her hand from my grip and shakes it, as if trying to remove the traces of my touch. "Why would I do that?"
I grab her hand again, gripping it and looking at her intently. "My grandfather challenged us both to marry a woman and produce an heir. The first one of us that does it will win the company and billions of dollars."
