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Glancing down she saw his fingers twitch. Her eyebrow raised haughtily in a slight challenge, making a hot bolt of desire rush through him.
“I haven’t had it looked at. No,” she said simply, not bothering to elaborate.
He nodded in response, seeming to breathe through his irritation and arousal. His eyes found hers before he spoke, breaking the silence between them.
“I would like to buy the rights to the blueprint renderings of the residence I saw in your home,” Colin stated simply, snagging the folder off the table. He folded his ankle over his knee and leaned back, placing the folder on his elevated leg and just watching her patiently.
Olivia’s brow furrowed as she carefully placed the glass on the table. The heavy mass of her hair tumbling forward to spill across her front with her movements. She glanced at the table as she obsessively made sure to put the glass on a coaster.
His eyebrow twitched.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Olivia said, blinking at him as genuine confusion and shock colored her voice. She truly didn’t expect this, out of all the things he could have said. She thought he was going to ask her out on another date. Or some such thing.
Colin handed her the folder, and she took it slowly, before opening it with shaking fingers. Her eyes widened seeing her drawings that were currently in her home, now in black and white on paper in front of her. Looking quite professional. Out of her peripheral she saw him turn the TV on with the remote.
And a 3D-colored rendering of the home she’d designed a few years ago in college popped up on the screen. The images turned in slow motion to showcase all angles of the exterior of the house.
The house he’d coincidentally colored the same color she wanted her herself.
Olivia sat back against the plush back of the couch as her jaw hit the floor. The images on the television screen continued turning as the images faded away and reappeared with new images, showing multiple angles of the home and landscaping as well as dozens of pictures of imaging of the inside of the home. It was an impressive presentation, and looked even better than she’d imagined when she originally drew it up. He’d colored the house in a tasteful blue gray and white in some places.
The color was broken up by stone pillars, and more stone fireplaces dotted all throughout the house. The presentation even showed recessed lighting in the house, and there was a rather impressive outdoor terrace off the master bedroom that hosted a private hot tub and outdoor television area. A screened in day bed was on the other side of the private terrace.
The man had been busy in the two weeks they’d last seen each other.
The slideshow finished as Olivia came back to her senses. Closing her mouth, she realized her face was wet. She raised a trembling hand to her face and touched her cheek gently in surprise as she stared at the dark television, lost in her thoughts. Not noticing his eyes turned a warm brown at her crying.
Colin waited patiently.
“Do you know what you just did, what you just gave me?” she whispered, her eyes now sliding to meet his, more tears leaking out of her eyes. It didn’t even bother her to cry in front of him, because he’d given her a precious gift. The ability to see her vision played out in real life.
She’d only ever imagined what he’d just shown her. Colin tilted his head at her and regarded her slowly.
“How much do you want for the drawing? What does this mean to you?” Colin asked again calmly. She met his stare silently, and he waited patiently as he could see a dozen thoughts crossed her mind at once.
“What’s the catch?” Olivia asked, her eyes narrowing suddenly as her tears dryed up.
Colin cocked an eyebrow at her and grinned wickedly. His eyes flicked down with interest as he saw her breath hitch and her nipples poked through the thin material of her dress before landing on her eyes again.
“Very smart, Olivia. I’m afraid there’s three catches. When you sell this to me, you can’t sell it to anyone else. You are not allowed to build this rendering for anyone else. This is a one and done deal. Not even for yourself,” he smiled at her not unkindly, noticing his own breath had become strained as his body tightened with tension.
Olivia narrowed her eyes slightly at him as she blinked, attempting to process this information. She realized that in giving her one dream, he was taking away another. Her dream to live in said house, or even a smaller rendering of it. And then she scoffed at her own foolish thoughts because how was she ever even supposed to afford to build it to begin with?
It was and continued to be a pipe dream that haunted her from the corner of her living room.
Her mouth turned down in a slight frown and her eyes slid down to the empty space between them. Colin stretched a leg out, the material of his pants stretching tight across his thick legs, momentarily distracting her. He cleared his throat, causing her eyes to lift back to his.
“So, I need you to think hard about the amount. What do you think you’re worth?” his elegant voice drug out the last word almost seductively, the warm hints of his accent floated across the still air between them.
A small flashback of them at diner when he asked her a similar question of what she wanted came to the front of her mind.
Again, the cogs of her mind turned.
“You went through my things when I was in my bedroom?” Olivia said in disbelief, for some reason, that being the first thing she wanted addressed. She shot daggers at him across the seat. He nodded solemnly, unashamedly, arrogantly. Though it irritated her, she dismissed it as momentarily inconsequential. The man wanted a monetary figure for her work. She didn’t have to figure out how to turn down his romantic advances.
Olivia crossed her legs and turned her gaze away from him once more, to rest on the drinks cabinet situated across from them against the wall.
She narrowed her eyes as she picked through each drink at the cart. Wondering for the millionth time which brand of liquor the drunk driver who’d killed her parents was drinking the night of the fatal accident.
