Page 10 of Bred By the Silent Bidder
“Only you didn’t negotiate.” I pinch my lips together and try not to chew the inside of my cheek. “I guess what I’m saying is, I understand if you are the one who wants out.”
Dayan
She's shivering.
The fine hairs on her arms have stood up. Goosebumps run down the soft inside of her wrist where the light from the porch catches it, and there's a tremor in her chin, small, the kind a proud woman tries to swallow before anyone sees it.
The cold's been working her over this whole drive and I let it. Watched it instead of fixing it.
"You're freezing," I say.
"I'm fine."
"Don’t lie to me." I shrug out of my jacket before she can argue, drop it over her shoulders, and the breath she lets out when the warmth hits her does something low and ugly to my self-control. "Inside. Now."
"Was that a request?" she asks, raising one perfectly arched eyebrow.
Why is that sexy?
"No."
She huffs, but she pulls the jacket tight, and I watch her gather herself like a hand of cards she's not ready to show.
I climb out of the car quickly and get the door for her.
The house swallows us in heat and warm light. She stops in the entry and looks up, taking in the stone and the height of it.I don’t know why she is surprised, she must have grown up in a nicer place than this.
"Whisky?" I ask as I open the door. "Tea? Something to put the color back in you."
"Whisky." She rubs her arms under my jacket. "Please."
I pour two and hand her one while wondering if she chose whiskey only for the warmth... I watch her wrap both palms around the glass like it's a small fire, and the shiver in her finally lets go.
"You said no negotiation," she says. "At the table."
"I did."
"And now?"
I lean against the counter. Put a careful three feet between us, because three feet is about all I trust myself with right now.
"Now you're in my house and the deal's done," I say. "So we negotiate. You tell me what you want. I tell you how I can make it happen." I tip the glass at her. "Start with an easy one."
She studies me over the rim. Sharp even cold, even rattled. "Tell me you didn't just buy me to lock me in a tower somewhere or use me as some kind of leverage against my family name."
"I didn't buy you to lock you anywhere. Or for leverage against some Brit family I don’t know." Plain. No armor on it. "Ask me for something real."
She's quiet for a second. Then. "My sister. Cecily." Her chin lifts. "You said the men your father lets through the door aren't your kind. So tell me. The man my whole family's losing their minds over. Connor Calhoun. American, oil-adjacent money, smile like a toothpaste ad. You people know everybody. What's the read?"
I set my glass down.
"You want the polite truth or the glossy version?"
The color drains right back out of her. "Don't start being polite with me now."
"Connor Calhoun." I say his name slowly so I can watch her face. "The family money's real. Was real. His grandfather's. By the time it got to him there wasn't much left but the name and the way he wears it." I think of the file Serik flagged eight months back, the one I almost didn't read. "He's underwater. Deep. Borrowed against things that aren't his. There are men in two countries waiting on him to make good, and he can't, and a wedding into a respectable family with a respectable name and bank balance to match is a very clean way to look solvent while you sink."
Her glass has gone still in her hands.
