The Billionaire Game 3(21)

“Actually, I checked in with Grant as to where you’d be, and guessed what point in your jogging route you’d be at by now. You’re actually farther behind than I anticipated.” He raised an eyebrow. “Is this your first snack stop?”

Lacey made her ‘you want I should punt this guy’ face at me from behind his back. And it was tempting. It was more tempting than a buy-one get-two-free sale on vintage muslin. But avoiding Asher was getting old; it was time to face the music.

The terrible, goddawful, zero-stars-on-iTunes music.

I slurped my shake loudly through the straw and turned to Lacey. “Looks like I have some business to take care of. You good to wrangle with the florists on your own? You can text me pics if you’re having trouble deciding.”

“Hey, the day I can’t go up against flower power…” Lacey glanced at Asher and then squinted at me, lowering her voice. “But are you sure you don’t want me to hang around?”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” I reassured her, trying to keep my tone light. “One threat to this guy’s action figures and he folds like wet cardboard.”

“My action figures are insured,” Asher said smugly.

I raised an eyebrow. “You know, saying that does not make it cooler.”

“Maybe I’m not interested in being cool.”

“Well that’s a relief,” I shot back.

We grinned for a second like it was old times, then remembered that we were fighting, and the grins slowly faded from our faces.

“Well, I’ll just head out,” Lacey said, not bothering to hide the hopeful expression on her face. Her optimism squeezed my heart. Just because Asher and I fell back into old habits didn’t mean we’d fall back into anything else, let alone a bed or a relationship.

There was an awkward silence after she left. God, I wished I just knew what he was thinking. I wished I knew how to act, what he wanted. I missed that feeling of moving in lockstep with him, the two of us and our business against the big bad world.

“Thanks for the book,” I said after awhile.

He relaxed a barely perceptible fraction. “Sure. It was the least I could do.”

Had I ever thought Asher was easy to read? His shoulders were tight and his face still, his entire body more closed off than a mine collapse. Was this true contrition? Anger? Neutrality?

I cleared my throat, one thousand percent done with awkward silences. “So, did you come down here to tell me about some exciting new insurance opportunities, or…”

“Oh! Right.” He opened his briefcase and produced a folder, handing it to me. “There’s been a business development. I’ve been approached by Slips ‘N More—you know them?”

“Asher, every American who has access to television commercials knows them.”

“Right. So—” He shuffled his feet, looking down at them; a boyish gesture that made my heart cry out to take him into my arms. Dumbass heart. “They want to expand their products to include lingerie, but looking at the projected numbers they’re not interested in starting from scratch. They want to acquire your brand instead.”

“Acquire my brand. Right. Interesting.” I heard the words but they refused to gel into a picture in my brain. “Wait, so what exactly does this mean?”

Asher looked away, his frame practically radiating tension, every tendon and muscle wound as tight as it would go. “It’s a buy-out. They’d pay one million for your designs, your brand name. They’d take everything. Take over the company, essentially. You’d be out of the picture. But you could start a new line, under a different name. It wouldn’t be the end for you.”

One million dollars.

My whole mind for a second was filled with a mental image of all that money, more money than I’d ever seen in one place: Benjamin Franklins piled high on the floor of my apartment like snowdrifts, spilling out of doors and windows, spread out across my bed just to roll in or jump around on…

I’d be able to order more raw materials, hire more workers, maybe even start looking at a second retail location!

I felt my stomach drop, and suddenly I was picturing other thing: substandard factory-manufactured lingerie products with my name slapped on them, snide reviews in Blossom and a hundred other magazines that looked at me now with favor but wouldn’t if I sold out, a boss that condescended and stole the credit for my ideas, getting on the cover of Forbes while I languished in the background…

It was too much. I didn’t know what to do. But Asher was right—I could start a new line, come up with a new brand name, a new spin. And take that dirty, delicious money, ever filthy cent of it. I sighed. “What do you think?”