“Carry on.”
“The partnership is for two years. He hasn’t seen the contract yet so there could be clauses to consider, but the main one is already on the table.”
“Are you being fucking blackmailed?” Daniel snapped.
Blake could almost see his intimidating cousin leaning forward on his desk with his jaw clenched, ready to go to war for him.
“No. Not at all. It’s a woman. A thing,” Blake said. “I mean, rhetorically.”
Shit.
“Lay it out. My Spidey senses are on fire.” Daniel growled.
“Well, I’d have to marry her. Rhetorical, damn it. This is much harder than I thought.”
“Blackmail. I fucking knew it. Tell me who this woman is. I know people. We’ll get this sorted in a week. What’s her name?”
Oh, fuck.
“No. Daniel. Fuck. It’s not like that,” Blake rushed to explain.
“Okay.” His cousin took a breath and let it out. “So yourfriend.Does he want to marry her?”
Did he?
No. But he also didn’t want anyone else to. Jesus, he was twenty-five. He wasn’t ready to get married.
He had wanted to date Bella, but now things had changed. The proposal had come at a time when he was at rock bottom and needed to save his business.
Watching it collapse was not something he could do when there was a solution.
It wasn’t that he would irresponsibly throw money at InkWell. With the possibility that Randall Scott could be taken down a peg or two in his role at Kennedy Enterprises, it meant things could change.
Not that he would step outside the legal boundaries of insider trading.
Even Bella herself couldn’t make the change for him. It would be a board decision and that of whoever sat in the CEO chair.
If Randall was removed, it increased the chances.
And it wasn’t just about InkWell. It was about having a fair and reasonable industry for other companies like him and for the authors he had created this platform for.
And yeah, his ego. He wouldn’t fail and then have to face his successful family.
Being Bella’s fake husband for two years might seem appealing now after spending another incredibly sexy night with her, but he wasn’t a fool. Their chemistry could disappear, but something inside him wouldn’t entertain the possibility of her seeing someone else during their marriage.
He liked her.
Enough to be the man she did this with. Because if it wasn’t him, she would marry someone else and there was still the possibility things could change in his favor.
InkWell might go bankrupt beforehand.
But fuck all that. He’d had flashes of her in a wedding dress standing before Tom With The Glasses and it had been a firm no.
“Yes. I do want to marry her,” Blake answered honestly.
“And the threat to yourfriend’sfinancials?” Daniel asked, playing along.
“Resolved. Mostly,” Blake said sharply. He didn’t want to go into any more of the details. Mostly because he was already feeling the heat under his collar for sharing that he might be under some financial pressure.