some random thoughts we gathered. Everything has been carefully calculated and checked with experts multiple times, we’ve consulted plenty of—”
“Ella, this is not how it works,” I cut her off, pointing a finger at her. “You can’t just burst into my office and yell at me like a displeased toddler when something doesn’t go your way. This is the real world, with real economic implications and limitations, not Ella’s personal hippie dreamworld. I don’t have time for your little tantrum.”
She glares at me with vicious hate, curling her hands into fists until the knuckles turn white, while her eyes turn to narrow slits.
“You really haven’t changed at all, have you?” she snarls through gritted teeth. “Still the same condescending douchebag who thinks he’s got it all figured out—”
“Look, Ella, I just know how these things work and—”
“Don’t you fucking dare to mansplain this shit to me!” she shrieks out so loudly that I’m sure Therese can hear her outside.
“Lower your voice!” I reprimand her with a raised finger—which Ella slaps away like a pesky fly.
“Don’t treat me like a child!” she barks.
“Then don’t act like one!”
Ella scoffs and rolls her eyes at me, fully aware of how much this annoys me. If she were anyone else, I’d have thrown her out of my office long ago.
That’s actually what annoys me the most. The fact that I let her get away with this. I just can’t help it with her.
Just like I can’t help the fact that her spitfire nature is still as endearing to me as it was seven years ago.
“Okay, let’s be adults about this, then,” she says now, pulling out a stack of papers from her bag. “We’ll go over this point by point and have a proper discussion about this, so you can see that our proposal holds water in every single aspect.”
“It doesn’t, and no, we won’t be doing that,” I object, adding a dismissive shake of my head when she throws the papers on my table. “I’m a busy man, Ella. I don’t have time for this now.”
“Okay,” she retorts. “When do you have time for this?”
She crosses her arms in front of her chest and juts her chin forward.
“Not this week—”
“It has to be this week,” she insists.
I shake my head again. “Absolutely not. My schedule is jam-packed all week long.”
That’s not entirely true, but she doesn’t have to know that.
“Unless you want to accompany me to a fundraiser event this Friday, that’s the only time I’d be free to discuss this.”
Why did I just say that? Why the hell would I want to bring her to that event?
Fuck it, she’ll dismiss it anyway.
But Ella wouldn’t be Ella if she didn’t find another way to fuck with my head.
“Okay, fine,” she says, only her trembling voice revealing how rattled she is. “When and where exactly?”
Our eyes lock for a moment, both of us turning into a pillar of salt while tense silence stretches between us.
“You can’t be serious,” I tell her. “Miss holier-than-thou Ella Whitt at a stuffy event full of pretentious moneybags? Watch out, you might actually learn something new…”
“I’ll do anything to get you to reconsider this proposal,” she states, biting her lip in anger. “Even if it means playing dress-up for one of your dumb masquerades.”
I can’t suppress a smirk at her words.
This could actually be fun.
Chapter 10
Ella
“You have to take advantage of this!” Alaina insists, holding up a piece of paper that she’s been trying to shove in my face all day. It’s a pamphlet, or rather, a manifesto. Or a “written-out warning that summarizes everything that’s wrong with this world,” as she put it herself.
I made the mistake of telling her about everything, about my failure at the meeting and its consequences, about Gabe and our tainted history, about his crushing denial of our proposal—and how I’ve been given the chance to fix almost all of it tonight. It defeats me how she could possibly think that storming the stage to read out an accusatory letter to a bunch of moneybags at a charity auction could achieve anything other than me being detained and escorted out of the venue immediately.
“Don’t worry, I will take advantage of this,” I say, looking back at her over my shoulder. “But this is crazy, Alaina! It won’t do anything!”
“Yes, it will!” she insists, waving the paper frantically. “It’s a wake-up call like no other! It will get their attention! It will move them! It could be just what these people need to finally