“I won’t be bought,” I tell him. My parents taught my siblings and me to stand strong on our own two feet and make the world a better place, but they didn’t mean like this. Dad always said integrity can’t be bought, and he’s right. Clearly Jackson is used to buying whatever he wants, but he’s got the wrong girl this time.
His looks might make me weak in the knees, but his personality is ugly, and that’s what really counts.
“I’m not trying to buy you,” Jackson says. His voice has softened. “I’d simply like to spend the evening with you. One meal. I was curt with you when you came in here, and I want to make it up to you. Maybe you can tell me more about what you do at the fund.” He cocks his head to the side, his eyes like lasers on me. My heart has picked up speed again and I try to keep my emotions steady.
This isn’t how this morning was supposed to go. I knew Jackson Croft would be intimidating—a twenty-eight-year-old billionaire doesn’t get to this position without some serious balls, even if it is the family business. But I didn’t expect him to make me feel like charging across the room and wrapping my legs around his waist. I squirm under his gaze.
But if he can stay strong, so can I. “Not a chance,” I say, lifting my chin to show that I mean it—even if I am intrigued at the prospect. Which is why I have to get out of here, quickly.
Before I can open the door, he says, “Twenty thousand.”
“Excuse me?” I say, turning back to him.
“I’ll donate twenty thousand dollars to your charity.”
“Great, I’ll take the check now,” I say, hoping against reason that he’s not serious about the strings.
He slowly shakes his head. His hair is thick, chestnut brown with golden highlights that probably come from summers at Cape Cod. It’s combed back, every strand perfectly in place. God, even his hair wouldn’t dare disobey him.
“Dinner, Ms. Brown,” he says. “Tonight.”
“No,” I say, my face now blazing. I can’t believe the arrogance of his guy. “And it’s ridiculous that you’re even playing this game. With a charity. For kids.”
I’m disgusted and just want to get out of here.
I can dream about running my fingers through his hair as his lips kiss my neck—dream about him from a safe distance—but I can’t stand to be in this office a second longer.
Just as I finally open the door, he says, “One hundred thousand dollars.”
The words freeze me. A hundred thousand dollars. I mentally do the math and think about all the kids whose lives we could change. Plus it would be the biggest donation in the organization’s history.
All I have to do is sit through a dinner with him.
Just the two of us.
I wonder: would that really be so bad? I mean, I do have to eat, right? It might as well be with him instead of the UBurger I planned on picking up at the end of the day.
I close the door and turn back to Jackson. I stride across the room quickly, before I lose my nerve. He seems at once startled and amused.
I'm standing what feels like inches from him. So close I can smell him, a light, clean scent with a hint of spice. Up close I see the gold dust in the brown of his eyes, and the smooth skin over the sharp lines of his jaw.
Maybe moving so close wasn’t a great idea. Now all I want to do is slide my hands up his chest and see if it really is as hard and strong as it looks through his shirt.
“Yes?” he says, cool as ever.
“You can’t be serious,” I say.
“I’m always serious.”
“Why?” I ask, honestly. “Why does it have to be like this? Why can’t you just be good and donate the money? I would have been happy with the ten thousand. That’s an amazingly generous offer that would do so much good. Don’t you want to do good?”
“Oh, I do good, Ms. Brown,” he says. “In more ways than one.”
“I mean with the charity,” I say, as my cheeks flush.
“I told you, I don’t care about the charity.”
I can’t even believe someone would say that, could feel that. I’m glad he said it, because it shows me once again how truly slimy he is.
“I won’t do it,” I say, and now I finally mean it.
Leaning toward me so close that I can feel his cool breath on my cheek, Jackson says, “Think of the children. Because I won’t.”
“You’re cruel,” I say.
“You have no idea. Now, this is your last chance to consider my offer, and because you’ve been so hard-headed about it, I’m putting you on a time limit.” He looks at his watch, which is large and flashy and totally obnoxious. “You have one minute to decide. Is dinner with me so horrible a thought that you’d give up all that money that, as you say, could do so much good? Time starts now.”
I want to explode. He’s an asshole, but there’s just something about him that’s got me, emotionally and physically. I hate him; I want to crawl all over him. He’s watching me closely. My eyes drift to his lips, which are parted slightly.
“Tick tock, tick tock,” he says softly, teasingly.
This is what I want to tell him: I’ll go to dinner with you. For free. I don’t need some sleazy proposal to do it.
I’d like to see him on more neutral ground, not this office where his presence hovers as high as the top floor his office sits on. Maybe in a restaurant he’s less of a prick. I picture him checking his heart at the lobby downstairs each morning before he comes to work. Maybe he gets it back at the end of each day.
He crosses his arms over his chest. The smirk is still there, playing on those lips. Yeah, this guy is definitely used to getting what he wants—in business and from women.
“No,” I say, finally. “I’m sorry you don’t feel your money is good enough for us. But I won’t be bought.”
He almost laughs. “You’re not serious.”
But I am serious, and I prove it to both of us by moving as quickly as I can—before I do what I really want to do and give him everything he wants and more.
On shaking legs and in heels that are cutting my feet, I finally leave Jackson Croft’s office.
I get on the T at the State Street Station in a bit of a fog. What did I just do? I just turned down one hundred thousand dollars…so much money for the Children’s Education Fund.
Money we desperately need.
Not only is that stupid, bad business, and irresponsible, it might also get me fired from the job I was hoping to move into full-time once I graduate next year.
Plus, all that money could have changed so many kids’ lives, and isn’t that my mission in life? Why I’m busting my butt in the graduate program at Boston University to get my master’s in educational leadership? I want to make a difference, add some good in the world.
And now what—I have too much integrity to have dinner with a gorgeous billionaire? Am I clinically insane?
But I know that the game he was playing was dangerous. If I’d agreed to that dinner, if something god forbid had happened between us—then I’d basically have been no different than a prostitute.
And I didn’t get into this to sell myself to rich men.
Not even sexy, gorgeous ones like Jackson Croft? I ask myself.