Page 113 of The Anchor Holds

“I have a proposal for you,” I said to Elliot as I sat beside him. He instantly pulled me into his body in a way that was secondnature to him those days. If I was within touching distance, he reached for me.

It was something I should’ve found suffocating since I was not affectionate in any kind of way. Yet I relaxed into it. Every time.

His free hand extended to where a feline with patchy, regrowing fur was purring and sleeping on top of the sofa. She let him pet her. And Clara. She hissed at me and attempted to maim me whenever I went near.

Suffice it to say, Fluffy did not have any incurable diseases. Her vet bill had been obscene, but I couldn’t come up with a way to kill the thing without raising questions. So I’d somehow acquired a murderous—if only toward me—feline which left dead rats on the doorstep and gave Clara oodles of joy.

I was stuck with the fucking thing.

Thankfully, Elliot had somehow trained it to not use a litter box but go to the bathroom outside, since I’d vowed I’d poison its kibble the first and only time I’d been presented with a soiled litter box.

“You better be hiding a ring box somewhere then, because I’m a diamond guy.” He flashed me a cheeky grin.

My stomach pitched at the obvious joke and the offhand way he said it. Had we entered into the phase of our relationship where joking about marriage was commonplace?

I kept my poker face even though the prospect of marriage to Elliot wasn’t abhorrent to me. Not even a little bit. “Nothing sparkly, I’m afraid.” I leaned forward to reach for my purse, grabbing the papers I’d drafted earlier in the day.

“Reminiscent of the day we met.” Elliot looked at the papers then me, eyes twinkling.

My heart did that thing where it somersaulted, feeling like a lovesick idiot. I didn’t let that show on my face, though.

“This time I’m not demanding money,” I replied. “The opposite, in fact.”

Elliot’s eyes lost a little of their sparkle, and his smile faltered. He grasped the papers from me, reaching to the side table for his reading glasses. Despite my uncharacteristic nerves about the situation, my mouth watered at the sight of Elliot in reading glasses. He wore the shit out of them.

I made a mental note to request he keep them on later. If he still felt like fucking me later. If he even still wanted me later. The confidence I’d had about this proposal quickly dissipated as I recognized the risk I was taking. Male egos were unpredictable and fragile things. Even if Elliot was the exception in almost every way, he still had the Y chromosome.

“What is this?” he asked after reading carefully for a handful of minutes.

Elliot was not stupid, and I knew he’d read enough to know what the papers were. “This is my offer.” I motioned to the paper. “To become a silent investor in Shaw Shack and the fishing business.” I sucked in a deep breath. “Although my equity would be miniscule, and I’d like to put the rest in Clara’s name, which might require a change in signage to add ‘daughter’ to the back of the boat.”

Shaw, Sons and Daughterwas kind of wordy, but who gave a fuck. Girls needed to be on signage too.

Elliot was silent, staring at the papers with an expression I couldn’t decipher. It was terrifying to not see his feelings plain on his face.

I’d known Elliot was different, but there was only so far even a modern man could stretch when it came to their nature. He wanted to protect, provide, rescue … all that shit. And this contract was me essentially taking his balls from him. Since I was doing the rescuing, in the fiscal sense, at least. It would make him feel small, like a failure.

He huffed out a breath, put the papers on the coffee table, and laid his readers on top of them before turning to face me with that terrible blank expression.

“I have plenty of money,” I blurted even though I’d promised myself I’d stay silent, vowing to let him have whatever reaction instead of explaining myself, trying to stroke his ego.

“Ridiculous amounts of it,” I continued. “It’s uncouth to talk about, but people would use a lot of words to describe me, and couth would not be one of them. More than likely, they’d use a four-letter word beginning with the same letter.”

Elliot did not crack a smile at my poor joke. I could barely hold it together. Elliot, my expressive Elliot, didn’t even give me a hint as to what he was feeling. It had me in freefall.

“The money I have, I earned it by not so honest means.” Ashamed, I lowered my voice. I hadn’t admitted the breadth of my sins to Elliot, not yet. And he hadn’t pressed, but I was going to give him the truth so he could refuse it if he wanted. “Legally, technically. But it would make me feel better, good even, to put it toward something wholly good. It’s selfish, really.”

Shut up, I told myself.

My lips glued shut, and I tried to remember how I’d kept my composure in front of rooms full of men without so much as breaking a sweat.

“There’s something wrong with that,” Elliot finally spoke, tapping his long fingers on the paper.

His voice was deep, without lightness or teasing.

I braced myself. For the explosion of anger that was surely coming from a wounded male pride.

I braced myself for Elliot to show me he was just like other men, validating what I’d been bracing for all this time, unable to accept that he was as good as he seemed.

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