It infuriated her. Her dad was an alcoholic, but he wasn’t a waste of space, like this heartless man implied. “You were friends once.”
“We still are,” Jeremy said, sounding surprised she’d say that.
“You know the old saying, with friends like you, my dad doesn’t need enemies.”
“Don’t presume to judge what you don’t understand. Neither you nor my daughter ever showed the least interest in business. You have no idea how our world works.”
“I know that my dad’s world is one worth living in and yours isn’t.”
She wasn’t surprised by the hangup that followed. Nor was she tempted to call back. Romi had gotten the information she’d wanted.
Maddie had made the threat. Whatever the particulars were, Romi didn’t know and wasn’t about to interrupt her SBC’s honeymoon to find out.
Maddie hadn’t told her because she knew Romi would have demanded she tear up the paperwork. To no avail. Romi had no doubts on that score.
Maddie could be more obdurate than executives in the oil industry denying the existence of global warming.
Even if Romi told Maddie of Max’s threat, the redhead wouldn’t alter the paperwork. In a month maybe, when she was happily married and sure that Viktor would keep a tight rein on Jeremy. But until then? Maddie would not consider losing the shares worth backing down from her father.
Oh, Romi planned to talk to her SBC about it anyway. When she got back from her honeymoon, but since the threat to her shares wasn’t the main reason Romi planned to say yes to Max’s proposal, it wasn’t a priority.
She wasn’t going to say yes because of his threat to her father’s sobriety either. Harry Grayson wasn’t going to stay sober if he couldn’t remain in the program without the motivation of Max’s merger. Romi was honest enough to admit to herself that she hoped this thing worked for her dad both in the short and long term, but she wasn’t marrying Max and signing his ridiculously long prenuptial agreement for her dad’s sake.
She was going to say yes to the blackmail proposal because she couldn’t imagine her life without Max in it.
Did that mean she’d done the one thing she’d been determined not to and fallen in love with the Corporate Tsar?
She thought probably it did.
Surprisingly, that knowledge did not make her want to bury her head in the sand or run. In fact, there was a certain amount of freedom in acknowledging that there was no point in fighting something that had already happened.
She loved Maxwell Black and had every intention of taking a chance on marriage to him. Romi was primarily a positive person. She hoped for the best and for the most part believed it would come to pass.
She’d broken things off with Max a year ago because he had put a definitive sell-by date on their relationship.
There was nothing to hope for when he’d been adamant he only wanted six months to a year.
The prenup he’d given her to read over made it clear he didn’t expect the marriage to last past ten years, but there was no requirement they divorce at that time. Regardless of the language of the contract, Max was going into this with a different attitude.
For one thing, he wanted children with her. Enough that he’d lost his vaunted control enough to make love to her without protection. Subconsciously, he wasn’t afraid of creating that permanent bond between them.
After his own childhood, he wasn’t ever walking away from his children, even if he thought he might walk away from her.
It might be wishful thinking, but Romi doubted that outcome, too.
A lifetime wouldn’t be enough to grow bored or grow apart. They shared a soul even if he didn’t see it that way and she thought maybe he was starting to get an inkling.
Romi had never been a person to be dictated by what others believed. She believed in soul mates and, she realized now, she believed Maxwell Black was hers.
How could she not take the chance on marriage to him?
When he came by for dinner, she’d have an overnight bag packed and an answer to his proposal.
CHAPTER TEN
MAXWELL CURSED THE tail end of rush-hour traffic as he drove toward the exclusive neighborhood where Harry Grayson had purchased his house before Romi had ever been born.
Maxwell would be cutting it fine, but he had every intention of arriving by the seven o’clock deadline.
If another lover had required an earlier time for dinner, he would have simply canceled. The fact he hadn’t even considered doing so with Romi was somewhat disconcerting, but perhaps not so shocking.
He planned to make her his wife. That would require different concessions on his part.
The type of concessions he had made for no one but his mother and she rarely asked of him. He had no doubts Romi wouldn’t be nearly as accommodating.