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She stares at me blankly. “What?”
“Sit.”
“Gavan, I’m not going to—”
“I’m not asking. Sit.”
Her lips purse. “We’re in a restaurant.”
“Yes. That I own. Sit.”
She stares at me. “I’m sorry, exactly how many restaurantsdoyou own?”
“Several. Nowsit.”
She swallows.
“Please,” I add. “I didn’t bring you here to talk about goddamn Brooks McKinnley.”
“Well, that’s nice to know,” she mutters.
Goddammit. I’m fucking this up so bad.
“Well?” Eilish mutters as she slides her ass onto the table in front of me, demurely keeping her knees firmly together and her hands folded in her lap. “Whydidyou ask me here?”
“Because I have a counter-offer.”
“Of?”
“Marriage.”
You could hear a pin drop. Eilish stares at me, her eyes bulging out of her pretty face.
“I’m not asking for the reasons people usually ask,” I continue quietly. My hands grip the table on either side of her knees as I sigh. “There’s a complicated situation unfolding right now involving Svetlana—whom I fucking hate, if that wasn’t made clear before—and my inheritance from my adoptive father.”
She swallows, nodding.
“The short version is, Vadim left her a decent chunk of change when he died. But she’s a bloodsucking cunt and fuck her, so I stole it from her. I denied her the money, and assumed she’d go broke in no time. Except now she’s hired one of the best law firms in the country that specializes in estate conflicts. She also has proof that I basically broke the law to make sure she didn’t get a dime of that money.”
“Basicallybroke the law? Or—”
“That I absolutely broke the law,” I admit, shrugging. “And she knows it. She was going to use that to come after my entire company until we settled on something else she wanted even more—something of Vadim’s she’d always coveted, that he’d left to me. If I gave her that, she’d shut the fuck up and disappear forever.”
Eilish arches a brow. “So have you given it to her?”
I shake my head. “I can’t.”
She frowns. “Why not?”
“Because you shattered it into pieces, Butterfingers.”
Her eyes go wide, her mouth falling open in horror, her face paling.
“Oh my God—” Her hand flies to her mouth. “Gavan, I am…I amso fucking—”
“It’s fine.”
She shakes her head. “No, it’s not.”
