The Stepbrother (Red's Tavern 5)

“You’re a bit quiet, aren’t you?” Mariya said.

“So you’re here to offer me a job?” I asked, still incredulous.

Luckily, Mariya laughed softly, leaning back. “I’m surprised that you didn’t expect this,” she said. “People have been comparing us for years. It seems fitting that we could join our forces.”

My head was spinning. I’d rushed back to New York to try for Ben Chamberlight’s job, and now Mariya was offering me a completely different, equally life-changing opportunity.

“I don’t even know what to say,” I told her.

“Something is on your mind. Clearly,” she said.

“I’m just thinking about your offer.”

She narrowed her eyes at me, still searching me like I was a puzzle. “That may be true,” she said. “But I can’t trust you if you aren’t honest with me. Something else is on your mind.”

I sat up a little straighter. “You’re right.”

She gave me a small smile. “I know I am.”

There was nothing else I could do. I was going to tell her the truth, no matter how unprofessional it might be.

“I… am worried that I may have hurt someone this week. My number one priority was coming here to meet with you, but I was on a trip with my family. Spending time with them like I hadn’t in years.”

“Your friend Maxine told me of this,” she said.

“Max always talks about me behind my back.”

Mariya laughed. “It was only good things. But who are you worried that you’ve hurt?”

I chewed the inside of my cheek. “My stepbrother.”

“How so?”

“I’d never really known him before this trip,” I explained. “But we connected. We learned we have so much more in common than we knew.”

“That is a beautiful thing.”

“I’m afraid he thinks I’m choosing money over family,” I admitted. “Which is what I’ve done for my whole life.”

“You know you can have both, Mr. Fox,” she said.

“I know. I’m just not very good at it.”

There was a lull in the conversation. The sounds of the piano and chatter filtered through from the main area of the club, filling the air between us. The shocking thing was that I actually felt comfortable with her, silence or not. I was sharing feelings that would have seemed impossible for me just a few months ago. And Mariya and I had hit it off from the first moment we’d met.

She really was everything I’d always dreamed she’d be. Funny, shrewd, kind, smart, beautiful, and somehow still human. But she’d clearly noticed that I’d been distracted all night. At first I’d been checking my phone way too much for texts from Sam, but somewhere in the last couple of hours, it had run out of battery, and now was just a dead brick in my pocket.

“You really like him,” Mariya said, peering at me.

“I do,” I said.

“He will understand,” she said simply, tossing back the rest of her champagne. “After we make our deal tomorrow, go to him.”

I sat up a little straighter. “Make our deal tomorrow? Mariya, you know I can’t make any decisions that soon.”

She gave me a nod. “Of course, it is still contingent on negotiating a price for the partial asset purchase,” she said. “We will discuss the earn-out structure and roles, if you do decide to go in with my firm.”

With every word she spoke, I felt a straitjacket tightening more around my chest.

I should have loved it. But now, everything she said sounded like obligation and years of stress.

And she didn’t pull any punches. With Mariya, negotiations barely even felt like negotiating. She just acted like she would get exactly what she wanted. It was something that normally was inspiring. It reminded me of how I used to work, back when I had nothing but fire inside me.

But I didn’t feel that way anymore.

When had it finally, fully disappeared?

“And I would also love to invite you on my family’s yacht. We are going to be in the French Riviera next month, and you may come along.”

“Goodness,” I said. “Thank you very much for the offer, Mariya. I’ll have to see about my schedule for the next month.”

“We will need to be in contact almost daily for the next year if we move forward with the deal,” Mariya said. “It will be much work.”

“It would be a lot of work,” I said. “I would have to speak with my estate attorneys and tax advisors, of course.”

“Naturally,” she said softly. “Is this... not something you had considered?”

“I’d never even imagined it,” I told her.

She peered at me. Her eyes really did feel like spotlights, sometimes. “Where do you picture yourself, in two years? Five? Ten?”

Suddenly I felt like I was being interviewed. The tables had turned, yet again.

“I’ve thought about all sorts of things, actually.”

“Like? Tell me one thing you’ve thought about that is different than this. The wildest thing you can imagine.”

I pulled in a slow breath. “Retirement,” I said. “Early retirement. That’s the wildest thing I can imagine, actually.”