Page 175 of Boss of the Year

Those slate eyes begging for me to look away or maybe just take the question back. When I didn’t, however, he swallowed hard; the movement making the muscles in his throat cord like a fisherman’s rope. He looked me straight in the eye as he spoke.

“They suggested a hundred thousand. I said a million.”

I grabbed the edge of a bureau to steady myself. A million dollars. It was a pittance to people like the Lyonses, but still. They’d been prepared to pay me a million dollars just to stay away from their son.

“What else?” I asked.

Another hard swallow. “An apartment a few blocks from here. A permanent residency visa. A restaurant, plus a monthly stipend for the next few years while you get it off the ground. It’s in Saint-Germain-en-Laye—it’s a Paris suburb. Not as busy as here, but you can get there easily via train.”

He offered a rueful but knowing half-smile that made me want to hit him again. My dream. He’d even taken my dreams of things like living in France and my sweet little restaurant and weaponized them against me.

“And you were going to tell me all of this when?” I couldn’t quite keep my voice from cracking.

“Tonight, probably.” He was quiet with certainty. “Or tomorrow morning. I found I couldn’t—I couldn’t keep it from you for a month.”

I couldn’t breathe. If Daniel hadn’t burst in with all the grace of a battering ram, if we’d spent the rest of the night in each other’s arms and probably a good portion of the morning too, I would have truly believed that everything I’d ever wanted was coming to be.

I would have been grateful.

Happy.

Impossibly in love.

For a month.

And then he would have abandoned me here, no different from the car crash that had taken my father. Left me with a payoff and a broken heart.

“I don’t believe you,” I said finally. “Even you wouldn’t be that cruel.”

He had held me as if I were precious. Kissed me like he needed me to breathe.

Told me he loved me.Hadloved me. All that time…

Lucas looked very much like he wanted to agree with me as he walked back to the desk in the living room, next to Daniel, who was now snoring. I watched the elegant muscles in his back flex as he unlocked the drawer and pulled out a manila envelope. From it, he withdrew several documents and a set of keys, then carried them back and set them on the bed in front of me.

A check made out to me for one million dollars.

Keys to an apartment in the Fourth Arrondissement.

Deeds with my name on them for both the apartment and the restaurant.

An approval for a permanent residency visa in France.

And a business plan for a little bistro, complete with startup funding and my name listed as owner and executive chef.

I floated a hand over each document as tears slipped down my cheeks. It was all there. Everything I’d ever wanted, wrapped up in a tidy little package designed to get me out of the Lyons family’s kitchen and away from their precious golden boy forever.

“How many lives would you steal?” I found myself asking. “How many to get your way?”

“I didn’t want to steal anything.” Lucas gestured toward the items. “Take them. They were for you anyway.”

I looked up at him, this man who had played me like a violin and somehow still sounded, just a little, like he actually wanted me to be happy.

Lies. All lies.

Even if my heart wouldn’t believe it just yet.

“I don’t want them,” I said. “I don’t want any of them.”