Page 69 of Due Diligence

“This is bigger than you,” she continued, as if I didn’t know that. “Breaking your contract is one thing, but the financial implications of you tanking this deal would hurt a lot of people.”

“Since when are you so responsible?”

“Since the moment when you had only been inside me for, like, two minutes and already I was thinking about when we could do it again.”

God, she was so fucking cool sometimes.

She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “This has to be our secret. That’s the only way this is going to work.”

“Let’s skip the party then,” I suggested.

To my surprise, she shook her head. “No way.”

“Why not? I need to spend ten hours straight just exploring your magnificent body, and I don’t want to wait until next weekend.”

“Because I want to go,” she protested. Nonchalantly, she raised a shoulder. “Maybe I’ll meet a billionaire there and he’ll whisk me off to Iceland for the weekend.”

“Who the hell wants to go to Iceland?” was my response.

“Spoken like someone who can go to Iceland whenever he feels like it,” she replied. And that pissed me off for a few reasons. For one, not only did she respond so quickly I basically had whiplash, but she wasn’t wrong—I had been to Iceland three times.

For another, it pissed me off because Cass didn’t need a billionaire. All billionaires were assholes, and that was anirrefutable fact. Plus, she had me. I would have been thrilled to give her anything she wanted. All she had to do was ask.

And finally, it pissed me off because her hesitation was obviously not just about contracts, jobs, and money.

“Look, if you don’t want me, you just have to tell me.” As I said this to her, I was striking deals with every evil deity in the universe. Satan, Hades, Cernunnos, Set—I was calling them all up and exchanging my soul for a promise that Cass wouldn’t agree with what I was saying.

“That’s not it.”

“Are you sure? Because I’m starting to get the feeling this is about you not knowing if you want to be in my bed, and only my bed, for the next month straight—until we’re so tired from fucking we can’t even get up and go to work in the morning.”

She sighed heavily as she closed her laptop. “Marcus—”

“I don’t care,” I went on. “Cass, I don’t expect you to delete every guy in your phone and to add my personal calendar to yours. If you want to keep sleeping with other guys, be my guest. It’s up to you. But I just need to know—do you want me or not?”

“I don’t want to talk about this right now.” She glanced to her left. “Not when all your beloved staff is sitting right over there. I don’t care if they can hear or not.”

I sighed as well, feeling a weight building in my chest. I was a kid again, wanting to hang with the other kids on the playground and having them laugh in my face. The new kid. The adopted kid. The kid with two moms. Hastily, I shook my head.

Six-second reset.

I knew she didn’t want to talk about this right now, but I also knew she had no intention of talking about this later. But as much as it frustrated me, I had no right to pressure her.

“You know where I stand, but I’m not going to push you. From here on out, I’ll just…” I let out a breath. “I’m going to respect your boundaries.”

Cass didn’t say a word. Her expression was impossible to decipher, as usual, and her eyes remained on me. Even when I opened my laptop, I could feel her watching me. I looked up at her, and the moment I saw her face I couldn’t help but pull up the corners of my lips. She was so pretty to me, even when she was in the business of breaking my heart.

“So, any news from PwC? Did they start the audit?” I asked, breaking the silence. We needed to work. Work was good. Work was the only thing that could keep me from fidgeting with the shards of my shattered ego.

She nodded and began to type on her laptop. “They did,” she confirmed. “So far so good.”

And just like that, we were two professionals, working together on due diligence.

A few hours later, when Cass left to take a call in one of our office phone booths, I managed to successfully put together and send an email.

Erin,

Long time no talk. Hope all is going well and you’re having a good week.

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