Page 94 of Her Billionaire Boss
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
(Charlotte)
“And I don’t care what you think about it, I’m leaving here with grandmother’s ring.”
“Ms.Holmes?Ms.Holmes?”Marshall’s fingers snapped in my face.“Charlotte?Hello?Are you there?”
“Sorry, I drifted off.”Straight into a land of terror, where my boyfriend had angrily demanded his family’s legacy engagement ring and never mentioned a word of it to me.
“Obviously,” Marshall said under his breath.“Did you get the email?About the site?”
“Ummm...”I extended the word out while I picked up my phone and unlocked the screen.“Oh, I guess I did get a notification.”
“Read it,” he advised.
I skimmed over the text on the screen.Fuck.“We didn’t get it.”
“Afraid not.I’m sorry, I know you liked that location,” Marshall said with genuine sympathy.
Planning Ascend Manhattan—I still wasn’t thrilled with the name—had turned out to be the easy part.Finding a place to put it was a challenge.The first building, which I’d been deeply in love with, would have needed a massive plumbing and HVAC overhaul that would rocket us above our budget.The second building had a great parking garage beneath it, which was probably why we’d been outbid.The very idea that we could be outbid at all annoyed me; there was so much money in Matt’s company that I couldn’t understand why the sky wasn’t the limit on this project.Obviously, I understood that there were other properties being developed, and they all had their own budgets, and then the established resorts and hotels also paid taxes and maintenance and advertising...
I wished I wasn’t so committed to not throwing around my weight as the boss’s girlfriend to get what I wanted.
“Onto the third choice, then,” I said with a sigh.
“That’s New York real estate,” Marshall said, then added with a grimace, “Well, so I’ve heard.I’ll never be able to own my apartment.”
“If I hadn’t ended up fucking a billionaire, I wouldn’t, either,” I reassured him.“Can you call Patricia and tell her to go ahead and make an offer on the ugly midtown?She’ll know which one I’m talking about.”
“No problem.Anything else?”
I chewed my bottom lip.“Yeah.Not a boss thing.Just a general question.”
“I’m intrigued.”Marshall dropped onto the armless chair on the other side of my desk.
How much did I need to explain to ask the question?Probably not the entire story of setting off in search of Matt, only to overhear him arguing with his mom about the ring.That wasn’t the heart of the issue.I distilled my fears down to their essence.“What if you knew that someone was going to ask you to make a life-altering decision, and you didn’t know how you were going to respond to that, but you also didn’t know when it would happen?”
“Mr.Ashe is going to propose to you?”Marshall asked, blinking behind his large, round-framed glasses.
My mouth dropped open momentarily.“N-not, no, I mean, that’s not what I—”
“So, that is what you’re talking about,” Marshall said, seeking clarification.
Fuck it.Fine.“If you suspected someone was going to propose to you, but you didn’t know how you would answer the question...what would you do?”
“I would wait until they proposed and ask if they come with dental insurance.”The answer came so quickly, it was definitely something he’d thought about before.
I frowned.“You don’t have dental?”
He shook his head.
“Jesus.”That was going to get fixed, ASAP.
“Are you afraid of him asking you because you can’t say yes?”Marshall steered us back to the matter at hand.“Or because you’ll say yes, and you think it’s a bad idea.”
I considered.“Neither.At least, I think neither.If he asks me to marry him, I’ll probably say yes because it’s a good idea.We’re perfect for each other.”
He shrugged, shook his head with a look of outraged confusion, and asked, “Then what’s the problem?What’s the drama here?”
