Chapter 74: My Dark Prince: Chapter 73

The next eight weeks blurred together in a haze of orgasms, lakeside strolls, movie nights, and dates at vegetarian restaurants (hey, not everything is perfect all the time). Didn’t matter. We’d folded into goddamn bliss.

Briar and I did not speak about the future. On unspoken agreement, we’d categorized it as radioactive. A volatile prospect neither of us wanted to consider. She wouldn’t – and shouldn’t – give up her Hollywood career for me, and I couldn’t – and wouldn’t – leave Sebastian here on his own.

“You’re an idiot,” Eli announced before my meeting with two board members. For a glorified assistant, he sure had a mouth on him. “They’re going to hate you the second you take them out to the pond, only for them to realize you drained it because that chick fell into it.”

“That chick is my fiancée.”

“That New York Times announcement was real? I thought someone was pulling an elaborate prank on you.”

“The only prank here is the one my dad pulled on me when he hired you.” I patted his cheek on my way out.

The sun warmed up my neck as I strode to where John and Edward waited for me. I whistled, nodding to them as I approached. They’d gotten tanner during their two-month station in Dubai. Well, Edward got tan. John just got red.

John clapped his hand on my shoulder. “You look good.”

“Do I?” I raised a brow, starting down the path of the, indeed, empty pond. Tufts of ugly dirt and weeds sprouted out of the gaping hole.

“You do.” Edward rounded to my other side. “Less tired.”

“Hmm.” I nodded, realizing for the first time that, despite my late-night shenanigans with Briar, I’d slept more in the past several weeks than I had in the past fifteen years.

When was the last time you had a nightmare?

The three of us walked along the patchy crater-sized hole as I tried to renegotiate my way out of the fucking ski park scheduled to open in the middle of our Dubai resort before Briar had my balls for ruining the planet.

John and Edward began speaking over one another, rambling about shareholders and market trajectory. But mostly, I knew they hated the fact that they’d dedicated two months of their lives to a project I wanted to scrap.

John, who was approximately two hundred years old, stabbed his cane in the ground with each step that he took. “We see where the wind is blowing, and there’s a lot of interest in Dubai for that kind of venue.”

“Yeah, I don’t really care,” I admitted, my eyes fixated on someone seated in a golf cart. “You’re not going to be here when this world implodes. You don’t mind shitting all over it.”

“You won’t, either, son.” Edward, a sixty-something, private-equity fox, chuckled. “You’re not that young.”

“You’re right.” I sagged, realizing the woman on the golf cart had white-blonde hair, not strawberry-blonde. Not that I didn’t already know Briar was currently on a baking date with Dallas. “But my children will.”

Since when do you care about your children, who don’t even exist yet?

Since the idea of them became real. God, I had it bad. I needed to get my shit together, ASAP.

“Well, with all due respect, if you won’t shit all over this planet, someone else will. It’s all about the money.” Edward snorted. “Don’t try to be a nun inside a brothel.”

We started toward the parking lot. I knew I wouldn’t appeal to their conscience on account of the fact that they had none, so I decided to put the lid on this conversation.

“It’s true that I can’t control other people’s actions.” I stopped by their Maserati and Ferrari. “But I can control my own, and I choose not to lower myself to the behavior of a greedy oil exec. So, no, there won’t be a ski resort in a place that is normally 100 degrees. End of discussion.”

“Did you clear this with your father?” John fisted a hand around his key fob. “Back in his day, he wouldn’t have turned his back on a good deal, just because he had those pesky things called feelings.”

“I’m making an executive decision,” I drawled. Dad didn’t know about it. He would, though. Soon. I couldn’t keep this from him. “And my father is no longer in the picture, so it doesn’t matter.”

Edward shook his head, like I was a lost cause. “What happened to you?”

“Love.” I grinned, depositing them into the welcome hands of their gas guzzlers. “Mine came back to me, and I’m never letting her go.”