Grant shifted in his chair, then leaned in on his elbows. “This salary he’s offering you. You’ve really got it in writing? I mean, like when does your first check come?”
“At the end of my second week.”
“So what happens if he fires you before then?”
To tell the truth, I hadn’t considered that. I’d been riding too high on the sudden weight of poverty getting yanked off my shoulders. “Why would I get fired?”
Milly cleared her throat. “Obvious historical complications between you and Lucifer?”
“Who’s Lucifer?” Luna asked.
Milly smirked. “Your mommy is Lucifer when she hasn’t had her coffee.”
I could see the gears in Luna’s little head turning, and knew I was going to get woken up tomorrow morning by my little girl calling me the devil. Thanks, Milly.
“None of that matters,” I said. “I need the money, so I’ll play nice.”
“It doesn’t strike you as odd that he’s offering you such an insane salary to be his personal assistant?” Milly asked.
“It’s a little strange, yeah. But he’s loaded. Maybe he just pulled a number out of his grumpy butt.” Of course, I’d already speculated on his motivations and decided he was trying to screw me, either figuratively or literally. I didn’t feel like admitting that to Milly and my brother, though.
Luna giggled with joy to hear me drop the “B” word. I gave her a little conspiratorial wink.
Milly shook her head. “Rich people are obsessed with money. It makes them even cheaper. I think he is playing some sort of game with you. He offers you an insane amount of money so he can take more pleasure in tormenting you into quitting. The money is just there to buy him time before you get fed up and walk out.”
“There’s literally nothing he could do to make me walk away from three hundred thousand dollars a year. I mean, almost nothing.”
Milly waved her fork toward my brother. “Grant, help me out here.”
He was studying the table. “It’s a lot of money. A lot. You could change a lot of lives with that kind of cash.”
“See?”
Milly let out a dejected sigh. “Fine. You can walk into this whole thing blind and ignorant, but don’t come crying to me when he breaks your heart into a million pieces and you wind up quitting.”
“My heart? Oh, no, no. My heart has nothing to do with this at all. I’ll be leaving that at home, thank you very much.”
“Famous last words.”
I stuck my tongue out. “Roast chicken. There. Now those weren’t my last words.”
“As always,” Milly said. “You’re a beacon of maturity and wisdom.”
I smiled to myself, but my thoughts were wandering. I’d already decided Damon was trying to trap me somehow. But what if it wasn’t just about proving a point?
As much as I might talk a big game about leaving my heart out of the equation, I knew one thing: Damon was Luna’s father. He might be the devil incarnate and I could hate that it had to be him and not the guy of my dreams, but… There would always be a part of me that longed to give Luna her father. I wished I could make that part of her life complete, but the Damon I knew was too heartless to be in her life.
Men disappointed. They promised things and took them away. They let you down. They only wanted sex, and then once you’d given it up, they disappeared. At least Damon had made the sex enjoyable.
No. Bad. You do not need to be making a pros and cons list. You shouldn’t even be considering whatever it is you’re considering.
I could point to the money or the opportunity all I wanted, yet there was part of me that wondered if what really had my hopes up was the chance to find out if there was anything worth saving in him.
I never claimed to be a smart woman.
7
Damon
Chris sat across from me at a posh restaurant downtown. It was the sort of place where every dish came with a “story” and illustrated some moment of the chef’s childhood. Personally, I preferred to keep my food simple, and this sort of place drove me up the wall. My brother loved it.
It also meant the servers spent way too damn long droning on at the table. Tonight, our waitress was a young, pretty brunette who couldn’t seem to decide if she wanted to eye fuck me or Chris more. He was eating it up, of course, and I wished she’d just leave us to eat our ridiculous, edible flowers and sugar-glass bubbles, or whatever shit my brother ordered.
He smacked his lips theatrically, then pointed to his plate. “Seriously. It’s like you can picture Chef Torrone under the table while his grandma was making bread. I can almost see the flour drifting down around him.”
“That’s wonderful. Now that your stomach is full, can we discuss this properly?”
My brother lifted his napkin to wipe at his already-clean mouth. “If we must.”
“You’ve become a liability to your sponsors. I’m getting calls every day. They’re threatening to pull their deals with us.”
“Then we get new ones.”
“These are the new ones. You can only screw up so many times before you run out of options, Chris. Either you shape up and start at least playing by some of the rules, or you’ll lose them all.”
“I like women. I like to party. I fail to see how that separates me from every other professional athlete with shoe deals and TV spots.”
“Most recently? You liked a woman in a public park in full view of paparazzi. If we want to dig into history, like, say, a month ago? Then you also partied with certain illegal substances while cameras were rolling during an award ceremony. Do I need to continue, or is my point setting in?”
“You have to ask that often, don’t you?”
“What?”
He smirked. “Is your point in yet? When it’s so small, you’ve probably got to double check with them.”
“Could you at least pretend to take this seriously? We’re talking about millions of dollars on the line. In case you forgot, that matters to both of us.”
“What are you proposing, exactly? Some sort of celibacy stunt? Like I go two weeks without fucking?”
“I don’t know yet, but we’re going to need to come up with something.”
“Hey,” Chris pointed past me. “Isn’t that your little friend?”
I spotted Chelsea at the entrance of the restaurant. She was trying to explain something to the hostess while gesturing in my direction. The hostess looked toward me, then sent a young man in a suit to talk to me.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you, sirs. That young woman claims there’s something she needs to give you.”
I hid the smile I felt threatening to come. I shook my head. “I’ve never seen her in my life. Please make sure she doesn’t bother us.”
The man nodded, then went back to the hostess, who said a few clipped words to Chelsea. I only had time to see her shoot me a glare of pure ice before she was escorted out of the building.
“What was that about?” Chris asked.
“I told her to meet me here.”
He shifted his eyes to the side. “Right. And then you had her removed from the building? Any reason in particular you’re tormenting the girl?”