Page 6 of Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire)
“We’ll get to it. No arguing before we get there. We’ll go in order. Yours first.”
“You’re starting out lousy,” she muttered.
I negotiated for the win, and I got it. It was best to have your opponent off-balance, flustered. But this win was different, and to get it, I had a feeling that I had to approach it differently, too. So I told her, “In a negotiation, you don’t tell the other person what you’re actually going for. You ask for everything, and then you work downward. You let them think they’ve won when they get you to accept what you wanted in the first place. But I’m going to break the rules and tell you exactly what I want. I want to put my ring on your finger, and I want you to want it there. I want to change your name, and then I want to go home with you and move you and Karen into my apartment. I want to come home from work and kiss you hello. I want you in my bed every night. And that’s all.”
Her eyes were soft. Her brain, unfortunately, appeared to be completely unaffected. “That’s not all,” she said. “That sounds wonderful—even the name change part, which I should at least be deliberating—but you aren’t telling me all of it. You’re saying you are, but you aren’t.”
She was getting narky, and so was I. What, that hadn’t been good enough for her? “What am I not telling you?”
“How much control you want over what I do.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No? Is it all right with you if I go to lunch with another man? How about dinner?”
“No,” I said immediately.
“See what I mean? You’re possessive, Hemi. Write ‘other people’ down on that list.”
I scowled, breaking another rule—not betraying emotion. “I’m not negotiating that.”
“Fine.” She hopped up. “We can leave.”
I grabbed her hand and tugged her back down with me. “No threatening to walk out. Ground rules. We’re here until we’re done, and we both say that what matters most is being together.”
“Even if,” she said, her blue-green eyes deceptively innocent, “we’re not married at the end of this trip? You’re not saying, ‘My way or the highway?’”
I sighed. “I want to say it. You have no idea how much. But I’m not.”
“Then I agree to those ground rules.”
“Right.”
She said, “So put ‘Other people’ down on the list,” and I did it. I didn’t want to, but I did.
“Money first, then,” I said. “What about money?”
“You have a lot more than I do.”
“Yeh. I noticed.”
“And you could think that gives you all the power.”
“No worries,” I muttered. “I already got that.”
“Good,” she said. “So how does the money thing work?”
I blanked. “Dunno. How do you want it to work?”
She stood up, and this time, I didn’t pull her down. There was a reason this had been the first thing out of her mouth.
She paced to the window, stood looking out at the sea, and didn’t answer. Finally, I said, “Money is power. There’s no use denying it. That’s why I’ve worked so hard to get it.”
“And it’s yours,” she said without turning. “I know that. Obviously.”
“No,” I found myself saying. “It should be ours. It has to be ours. I don’t want you doing everything I’ve had to do to get it, or working as many hours as I have. I want you with me when I’m home. I want your company, and I want to know you don’t have to be exhausted and worried anymore. I want to know that I’m taking that burden off you, and I want you to know it, too, and to trust it. I want…”Children,I didn’t say, because we didn’t need any more complication today. Time enough for that later. This negotiation hadn’t been my idea, and if that wasn’t playing fair? Too bloody bad. “How about,” I said instead, “if we set up a joint account with our paychecks, took our expenses out of it—which includes Karen’s—and sat down every month to go through it together? And I set aside that college fund for Karen straight away, too, so you don’t have to think about that anymore?”
She turned from where she’d been staring out at the blowing curtains of rain to stare at me instead. “How could you agree to that? To the checking account, I mean. That’s ridiculously unfair to you.”
