“Maybe you could expand on the building? You know, add more apartments, and the increased number of apartments would help you make back the cost of the renovation over time?” I propose hopefully.
I take another sip of my wine as he cocks his head to the side and regards me thoughtfully like I’ve surprised him.
The waiter comes and places a sample of delicious-looking dishes before us.
I’ve never seen such decadent looking or smelling food before, so I waste no time in picking up my fork and trying a bite of something that like looks like crab meat.
I close my eyes as it practically melts in my mouth. So good.
When I open my eyes, Dane is watching me intensely, his thumb stroking over his lower lip. I feel my heart trip within my chest.
“Or,” he begins slowly, “I have a counterproposal.”
My brow furrows in confusion. “A counterproposal?”
He leans closer to me over the table, and his eyes seem to turn a darker shade of green as he proposes, “You stay with me for thirty days, and I won’t bulldoze the building. I’ll renovate it and won’t raise the rents on the tenants.”
I almost drop the glass of wine I’m holding as my mouth falls open.
“What?’ I whisper. I can’t have heard him right.
He sits back in his chair confidently, but there’s no smirk or smile or hint of amusement on his gorgeous face. He’s dead serious. “Thirty days with you or thirty days until everyone has to get out for demolition. Those are my terms.”
“I—I,” I sputter, looking for the words to describe the outrage and helplessness I’m feeling. “I’m not a whore!” I whisper at him furiously.
His eyes glitter dangerously, and he has the audacity to look like I’m the one who offended him.
“I never said you were,” he says lowly.
“But you want me to—to,” I can’t finish the sentence. I can’t even say it.
“To stay with me for thirty days,” he finishes cooly. “I won’t force myself on you. You won’t be forced to do anything sexually that you don’t want to do.” He says that last bit like it’s inevitable that I’ll want to do something sexual with him.
I’m shaking with a mixture of rage and shock, but I manage to scoff, “You would be willing to make a deal like that just for me to…what? Live with you for a month? Nothing sexual required?”
He doesn’t blink. “Exactly.”
The man’s insane.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to outright refuse him, but then I pause as I think of all the people who live in the building. I think back on how I found my mother crying—my mom who never cries.
“So?” he asks me.
I look back up at him. My gaze had fallen to the plate of food as I’d actually considered his offer. I can’t do something like this.
Can I?
It’s insane.
Isn’t it?
But he’d promised I wouldn’t have to do anything sexual. It’s not like it’d be morally wrong or anything. I wouldn’t be selling my body to him. I’d just have to stay with him.
So, it’d be like selling…time?
I take in his perfectly tailored suit and his movie-star good looks. There were worse deals out there. He probably has a gorgeous penthouse suite, and what girl wouldn’t jump at the chance to stay with someone as gorgeous as him for however long he would have them?
“What’s the catch?” I ask him suspiciously. This honestly seems too easy to be true.