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"Five minutes to do what?" Lili's voice was hoarse from crying, but there was steel beneath the hurt. She stood slowly, like someone gathering armor. "Five minutes to spin another story? To make me feel like an idiot for believing you actually cared?"
"I never used you for anything. Christ, Lili, I didn't even know about the accelerations of the acquisition until a couple days ago."
"Well, I'll be damned." Her laugh was bitter as winter wind. "Don't you dare lie to me again. Your Mother laid it all out—howyou've been planning this for months, how getting close to me was just good business strategy."
"My Mother is many things, but she's not infallible. She doesn't know everything about my work, and she certainly doesn't know anything about what I feel for you."
"What you feel for me?" Lili's voice cracked. "You mean the feelings that were so strong you couldn't be bothered to mention you were about to destroy my entire life?"
Every word she spoke was justified. Every accusation, earned. I'd failed her in the most fundamental way possible—not by lying, but by being a coward.
By choosing the easy path of silence over the difficult path of honesty.
I could see Cece preparing to intervene again, but something in my expression must have stopped her. Instead, she squeezed Lili's shoulder and stepped back slightly.
"The review of acquisition completed this morning," I said quietly. "Malcolm called me before dawn with the acquisition papers. Project Wildflower, they called it. Your company's UK division, hemorrhaging money, ripe for acquisition. I stared at your name on those documents and felt like I was going to be sick."
"How convenient." But I caught the flicker of uncertainty in her eyes, the way her breathing had gone ragged.
"You want the truth? The whole truth?" I ran a hand through my hair, destroying what remained of my careful styling. "Yes, my firm is acquiring your company. Yes, I've known since the very beginning. And yes, I should have told you immediately."
"Finally, some honesty."
"But everything else—every moment we've shared, every conversation, every touch—none of that was calculated. None of that was business." I stepped closer, my voice dropping. "And the fact that you could think I'd be capable of that kind ofmanipulation tells me exactly how little you understand what's been happening between us."
"Then explain it to me." Her eyes blazed with hurt and fury. "Explain how the man I've been falling for just happens to work for the company that's about to ship me back to Texas. Explain the coincidence."
"There is no explanation that doesn't sound insane." I felt my own control slipping, months of careful composure finally cracking. "The truth is, I'm a man who's spent all my life building a career, following a path laid out for me since I was born. I've never questioned an acquisition, never let personal feelings interfere with professional obligations."
"Until now?"
"Until you." The words came out raw, unfiltered. "Until I met a woman who makes me laugh at things that aren't supposed to be funny. Who sees beauty in gardens most people would call weeds. Who can command a room full of aristocrats one minute and worry about her Mother's feelings the next."
Lili's façade wavered, but she held firm.
"Don't try to sweet-talk me, Edward. Pretty words don't change the facts."
"The facts?" I moved closer, close enough to smell the faint scent of her perfume. "The fact is, I've been professionally compromised since the moment I found you in my bed. In legal terms, I have a conflict of interest so severe it could end my career. In personal terms, I stopped being objective about anything the moment you looked at me like I was worth trusting."
"So you decided to say nothing? To let me find out from your Mother in the cruelest way possible?"
"I was trying to find a way to fix it first." The admission felt like tearing open my chest. "I've been calling contacts, trying tofind another buyer, another solution—anything that would let me keep you and my career."
"And?"
"And I failed. There is no solution that doesn't require me to choose between everything I've worked for and everything I want."
The silence stretched between us, heavy with implications we both understood.
"Whatdoyou want, Edward?" Lili's voice was quieter now, dangerous in its softness.
The question hung in the air like a challenge.
Fifteen years of training told me to give the safe answer, the professional answer. But looking at her face—beautiful and broken and still somehow trusting enough to ask—I found myself incapable of anything but honesty.
"I wantyou." The words came out like a confession. "I want to wake up to your laugh and fall asleep to your voice. I want to watch you turn a room full of skeptics into believers with nothing but passion and charm. I want to build something real with someone who sees the world as full of possibility instead of problems to be solved."
"But?"