The Billionaire's Illicit Twins - Holly Rayner Page 0,31

emailed the attorney back two days ago and told him I’d be coming to this negotiation as well.

Really.

I stood and held out my hand. “Ms. Mayfair, I presume?” I said, allowing a slight smile to touch my lips. “It’s nice to see you. And to answer your question, I’m here because there were parts of this negotiation that I wanted to handle personally.”

She took my hand, the touch of our skin like a spark that shot up my arm and then down through my body, and I gripped her palm firmly. I saw another flash in her eyes, then. One that said she’d felt it, too—and that she’d heard what I was really saying.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell anything more than that because she turned to her client, tearing her gaze away from mine and keeping me from reading her eyes and figuring out what exactly she was thinking about my presence. Whether she was going to let it stand… or if she was going to push her ‘we can’t be seen together outside of work because it might damage my career’ line.

“Well, then. You know my client, Josh Lee. Josh, this is Ethan Parker. The head of the company that stole your music. The man we beat in court.”

When she turned back to me, her eyes were hard as flint again, the flash of vulnerability completely gone, and my stomach was shrinking into itself.

So this wasn’t going to be as easy as taking her hand and suggesting that we get drinks afterward. She was here to play hardball—and be professional about it. And it looked like she was going to be even more difficult than necessary, probably just to throw anyone who might suspect what had happened between us off the scent.

Because she thought her career was on the line. And it looked like she was going to let that rule all of her decision-making from here on out.

I scratched ‘make her laugh and feel more comfortable’ off my list of things to do during this meeting, replaced it with ‘get her to thaw enough to agree to drinks,’ and sat back down.

If she was going to play hard to get, that was fine. Because I’d never backed down from a challenge. And my instincts were telling me that this right here was a battle worth fighting. No matter what I had to do to win it.

Chapter 18

Ethan

Bella, of course, didn’t have a damn clue about what was going through my head—or what I was planning in regards to her future, and mine, so when she turned back to the table, releasing me from the laser pointers in her eyes, I allowed myself a quick shrug to settle the coat across my shoulders more comfortably, and then took a seat.

Bella and her client seated themselves across the table from myself and my own attorney, Joseph. And then she resumed her death glare.

I swear, if I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought that the woman actually hated me. But I’d seen her in court and knew that this was actually part of the mask she put on when she was working. I also knew what she’d stated so clearly to me the morning after we slept together—and again when we discussed the baby.

That getting involved with me would endanger her career. And that she wasn’t willing to do that. No matter what. At the end of the day, her career was more important than anything else—partially, I guessed, because of how hard she’d worked to make it a reality. And she wasn’t going to let me forget that.

She also wasn’t going to let me forget, I thought, that she was more than a little bit offended by the deal I’d offered her in that hot-headed moment of insanity.

Yes, she was tempted by the money and the idea that she’d be stable for the first time in her life. Yes, she was probably tempted by the idea that the baby would be completely safe in my hands, monetarily speaking. But she was also more than a little bit put off by the offer itself. She’d been furious when I first told her, and that hadn’t changed.

I’d seen it right away, and I needed to apologize—though not necessarily take it back. But I’d only be able to do that if she let me get a word in edgewise.

Which was going to be difficult, I thought with a bit of smile, when she was taking her position so very, very seriously. Because