Page 10 of Strictly Yours

I still remember when I was nine years old. Sleeping in the backseat of a Toyota Camry with a wet winter jacket for a blanket. My mom crying quietly behind the wheel.

I can’t do that to my people. I won’t.

“I’ve seen what it looks like when someone loses everything.”

Her expression softens, and I hate how that hits. That look—gentle, kind, pitying. Like she’s just found a dent in the armor I spend every damn day polishing.

The elevator opens with a ding, but she doesn’t move.

“Are you going inside?” I ask, desperately hoping she doesn’t.

“Another one will come along,” she says as it closes. “You bought yourself a couple of minutes.”

For the first time today, I smile. She smiles back and the sight is staggering. I nearly lose my balance.

She looks me up and down, although there’s no sarcasm or witty comments this time. Just eyes full of curiosity. Like she’s seeing me—not the CEO, not the suit—but the man underneath it.

I swallow hard as her eyes come back to mine.

“When you put it like that,” she says quietly. “It doesn’t seem as draconian. Maybe you aren’t a total monster.”

“Thank you?”

She puts her hand on her hip and looks at me, and for the first time, I see the resemblance between her and her sister Willow. I’ve seen Willow give people that exact same look countless times.

“So, what do you do for fun, Logan Strickland? Or is this it?” She gestures around at the empty office. “Staring down spreadsheets alone at ten o’clock on a Tuesday night in a three-thousand-dollar suit. Living the dream.”

“Fun?”

“Yeah,” she says nibbling her bottom lip. “Fun. Has it been that long? Do you remember what fun is?”

I sigh. “It has been a while. I’m too busy for fun.”

She shakes her head like she can’t quite believe that someone as pathetic as me exists.

“Excuse my bluntness,” she says, “but you strike me as someone who has more money than they could possibly spend in a hundred lifetimes.”

I do. It keeps piling up in my account and I never really have time to spend it. I invest it, but that just gives me more money I don’t know what to do with.

Something tells me this woman wouldn’t be impressed if she looked at my bank account. She seems like she couldn’t care less if I was a billionaire, which I am, or if I was dead broke, which I’m definitely not. To her, my worth as a person has nothing to do with my net worth. That’s a big change from the people I’m normally surrounded by.

“I do okay,” I admit.

“So, you have enough money to have any experience you’d like, in a city where you can do pretty much anything, and all you do is work? Do I have that right?”

I swallow hard. “It’s not all bad. I did let loose earlier.”

She leans in with a scandalous grin. “Do tell.”

“I had a cupcake. Well, a bite of a cupcake.”

Her face falls like I just told her I kick puppies. “Onebite of a cupcake? Who doesn’t finish a cupcake?”

I just stare at her.

“What, was it someone’s birthday or something?”

“Yeah.”

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