“Yes, I suppose. However, the profit on your homes all depends on their market value and what is still owned on the original loans, am I right?”
He knew he was right, the fucking prick. “You want Fiona’s, don’t you? That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”
He stood up and walked over towards me until he was invading my personal space, and he did it on purpose. I wasn’t a stranger to his bullying tactics. Yeah, it’s been ten years, but the last ten years hadn’t done enough to erase the thirteen before then.
I didn’t flinch, and I didn’t step back. I wasn’t a ten-year-old girl anymore, protecting her new art bag. I was a grown ass woman who was protecting her home, her business, and her livelihood.
And now her parents’ freedom, apparently.
Damien reached out and twirled a loose strand of my hair around his finger and I immediately felt the bottom of my stomach fall out. The last time I was with this man he left me bleeding all over my bed sheets and now it seems like he’s back for more blood.
“Don’t touch me,” I grounded out.
“Get used to it, Halloween, because I’m going to be touching you a lot in the near future.”
I fixed my brown eyes onto his green ones. “Wh...what are you talking about?”
He hadn’t let go of my hair when he answered, “I’ve got a proposition for you.”
Every hair on my body stood at attention, his words as smooth as silk. “No.”
He began to crowd me until the back of my thighs hit my desk. “Eager to see your parents in prison, are you? I mean, I know your father’s a dick, but I thought you still loved your mother, at least.”
“I’ll sign over my house and my business,” I conceded, and I didn’t even bother trying to hide the moisture pooling in my eyes. I’d like to think I would have stood stronger had I not been blindsided by Damien coming back into my life, but I knew that no matter who had held the debt, I couldn’t stomach my mother going to prison all because she was stupidly in love with my father.
“You can,” he agreed, “but I already have a house and a business. I don’t need another of each.”
I wanted to scream and cry and kick this fucker in his nut sack! “Then what do you want, Damien? Quit playing fucking games and tell me what all this is all about!”
“What it’s always been about…you.”
I shook my head. He couldn’t mean what I think he means. No way. There’s just no fucking way!
I guess he could see the dawning in my eyes because he smirked again and confirmed my suspicions. “I want you in exchange for dropping the charges and clearing your parents of all debt and criminal accusations.”
No, no, no! He couldn’t be serious. He...he just couldn’t!
I don’t know how I held his eyes, I was just happy I could. “What does that mean exactly?”
“It means that, if you accept, you’re mine for the next six months.”
“Yours for six months,” I numbly repeated.
Damien nodded. “You’ll be my…uh…somewhat of a girlfriend for the next six months.”
I knew my eyes were the size of saucers. “Oh, God!” My knees gave out on me and I would have gone crashing to the floor if he hadn’t wrapped his arms around me to hold me up.
This time I really was having a heart attack. All my insides suddenly felt too large for my body and it felt like they were bursting to escape.
This man hated me in an extreme, singular way. He didn’t want me to play the part of his girlfriend. Men usually treated their girlfriends with adoration and respect. Damien Greystone did not adore or respect me. So, that meant he could only want one thing from me. Apparently, he hadn’t been done with me on graduation night after all.
Growing up, he had turned me into a weakling, a coward, a scared mouse and, now, that we were all grown up, it looked like he wanted to turn me into a whore.
His whore.
For six months.
I felt like I was five-years-old all over again, feeling the punch of his rejection at not wanting to be my friend. The pools in my eyes finally spilled over. “Why?”
The phone on my desk rang, saving him from having to answer. He stopped playing with my hair and took a decent-sized step back from me. “How about I let you get back to work and give