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“Ray?” He asked by way of greeting when I hadn’t offered him one.
“I’m here.”
“Hey,” he sighed. “I just read your email. Can we talk, please?”
There it was. The uncomfortable, slithering feeling I got in my lower stomach whenever he spoke.
“Okay.”
“I wanted to apologize, for the way I acted. It was rude and brash and you were right, it was privileged.”
I grabbed the remote and muted the television, my mind already swimming from his words. This wasn’t the response I expected when I hit send.
“I shouldn’t have made assumptions. And I shouldn’t have pressured you into doing something that you might not have been comfortable with by offering you money. I didn’t want you to feel like you didn’t have a choice, and I can see now that when I assumed you’d happily take my offer, that’s exactly how it came across. Giving you an impossible choice between your job and your livelihood. That wasn’t my intention.”
Wade’s voice was softer than I expected, a calm to him that I’d never heard before. I wondered if he was at home, wherever that was, or at his resort. Maybe he lived there.
“But I’m also desperate,” he continued. I listened as he sipped on whatever drink he had in his hand, the ice clinking around in the glass as my heart rate skyrocketed. “And I want you to know to recognize that, that when I say what I need to say to you, it’s coming from that place. It’s not because I’m trying to manipulate you or turn you into something you aren’t.”
Shit.
“This investment, simply put, is extremely important to me. I need it. And you’re the only one I can imagine that can give that to me, so I’ll cut you a deal, Ray.”
My throat swelled with a rock.
“Name your price. Whatever it is, I’ll do it. If it’s not money, I’ll find it. If it’s not findable, I’ll become it,” he said, his voice dropping nearly to a whisper. He really was desperate, that much was obvious. Yet so was I. “Just please, help me out. I don’t have time to find someone else. And to be completely honest, I don’t think I’d find someone as perfect as you.”
I glared down at the pile of papers next to me, untouched for hours. The total screamed at me from the top of the stack.
“It’ll be on your terms, to as much of an extent as I can give you. And if you say no, which I hope to God that you don’t, you can still work for me and we can pretend this never happened. I’ll even give you a raise.”
I didn’t want to do it. Didn’t want to pretend to be something I wasn’t, didn’t want to work for him just because I had to, but I also knew I couldn’t survive much longer without a job. And although there were plenty of opportunities out there, who knew how long it would take for me to land one?
“Please say something, Ray.”
Mom’s year-end report was higher than the number on the page. I knew that one by heart. I could add her forty-grand total onto it. “Two hundred thousand,” I said, the words difficult to get out around the lump in my throat. “I need two hundred thousand dollars to pay off my mom’s bills. Not including my salary. And I need the caregiver’s fees paid each week.”
He didn’t hesitate for a second. “How much for the caregiver?”
“Five hundred per week.”
He swallowed down whatever liquid was left in the glass. I could hear the thunk as he set it down. “Done.”
I blinked as I stared at the television, one of the man’s wives arguing with him in silence. “You can’t be serious.”
“Send me the bills. I’ll pay all of them and the caregiver indefinitely, even after this is over. Anything else needed for this to work, I’ll take care of.”
It was too much. Surely, he couldn’t keep that up forever. But if the millions he was spending on his sister’s wedding were anything to go off of he could afford it. And I was just as desperate as he was.
“Okay,” I breathed. “I’ll do it.”
A slight, breathy chuckle seeped through the phone, lighting my skin on fire. “Then we have a deal, Blunder Bunny. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
Another little crack inside forced me to speak. “I’m not your?—”
The line dropped.
Chapter 14
