Page 115 of Nine Months to Bear

I pad closer, telling myself I’m just getting water. The galley kitchen happens to be past his office. Pure coincidence.

“—clinic’s hemorrhaging cash,” Taras is saying. “Walsh poached another two clients this week.”

I freeze outside the door.

“I know,” Stefan replies.

“Then why are we throwing resources at it? There are easier ways to launder money.”

“It’s not about the money.”

“No? Then what—” Taras pauses. “Christ. You don’t mean?—?”

“Drop it.”

“You’re restructuring our entire East Coast operation forpussy?”

Something crashes. Glass, maybe.

“I’m going to hang up the phone now,” Stefan snarls in a voice that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “And I’m going to remind you that if you ever say some shit like that to me again, I’ll gut you like a fucking fish. Goodnight, Taras.”

Click.

Heavy footsteps approach the door. I scramble backward, but there’s nowhere to hide in the narrow hallway. Before I can figure out what to do, the door opens and Stefan is standing there, looming. His hair is a mess and the bags under his eyes are dark and heavy.

I brace myself for rage, but he just sighs. “Can’t sleep?”

“I heard you yelling,” I mumble. “Is everything okay?”

Stefan shakes his head wearily. “It’s fine. Nothing for you to worry about.”

“You were discussing my clinic.” Before he can deny it, I drive ahead. “I know the numbers are bad… I know it’s not the most profitable business to invest in, but I also need you to know that itisworth saving. And I can save it. I just need time. I know it doesn’t look like it, but I’ve been working really hard. My methods aregood; the science behind it isgood.I believe in my business model. I just?—”

“I know.”

“If I can just get some funding to improve a few of the internal processes, then we really will be the best-in-class, and it’ll be so compelling to these women, we can help them, trulyhelpthem, in a way that no one else?—”

“Olivia.”

The way he says my name stops me mid-sentence.

“Come with me.”

He takes my hand and leads me inside, then settles into the chair in front of his desk with me standing between his knees.

I stay there awkwardly, stiff, unsure.

His hand finds my waist, fingers splaying across the silk. “You’re trembling.” His other hand joins the first, bracketing my waist. The heat from his palms burns through the thin fabric.

“You think I’m pathetic, don’t you?” I whisper. “Needing you to save my business.”

“Is that what you think?”

“My mother would. She’d say I’m proving her right. That I can’t succeed without a man’s money.”

Stefan’s grip tightens. “Your mother is a fool.”

I laugh in his face. “My mom has a billion honorary degrees and more than one magazine with her face on the cover.”