Page 42 of Return Billionaire to Sender

“No,” I say.

He leans back and crosses his legs. His big, brown eyes would look kind if it weren’t for his villain’s eyebrows arching over them, dark and severe. “You’re missing an opportunity to annoy me. You could open up a whole new avenue of torment with instructive commentary about my negotiation performance.”

“I’m not here to torment you,” I say.

“So what did you think? Why doyouthink Gerrold’s at the table?”

“The negotiation process isn’t my area of concern,” I say.

“And what is your area of concern?” he asks, and I have the uncanny feeling that he’s looking right through me, like he knows about my area of concern as well as my forbidden fascination with him.

I keep my face carefully devoid of expression. “You know what area,” I say.

His eyes twinkle darkly.

Oh my god! Did that sound sexy? “My area is the video program that I have designed,” I clarify firmly.

“It’s entirely possible that you’re a better negotiator than I am,” he says. “You don’t know how much money I’d pay to avoid watching any more of that footage.”

“Why?” I ask. “Because you’re starting to see those people as human?”

“No, because it’s just so bloody tedious.”

I frown, thinking of all of my friends that are on that footage.

“Come on, now, aren’t you a reader of body language? Doesn’t that sort of thing fall under emotional intelligence or soft skills or whatever it is that you’re doing here? You have no theory on Gerrold and the negotiation?”

“Maybe Gerrold wants his son to see the beauty in what he built,” I suggest. “To see the human value in it instead of looking at it coldly as a commodity to be destroyed.”

“Yes,” Malcolm says sarcastically. “I’m sure that’s it.”

“We need to get to the session here,” I say.

His phone makes a soft chime sound.

“Your phone,” I say.

He shuts it off completely and slides it over to me.

“That’s okay,” I say. “Just keep it off.”

“No, no.” He picks it up and holds it out to me, gaze fixed on mine. “Take it.”

My pulse kicks up. A phone is such an intimate thing—almost like a part of a person. I’m pretty sure that if I said no, he wouldn’t push it, but some perverse part of me wants to hold it in my hand again, like a talisman or an orb or something. Is that warped?

I watch myself reach my hand out, watch myself take it from his fingers. I curl my fingers around it, enjoying the cool heaviness of it. God, I barely even recognize myself anymore.

When I look up, Malcolm is watching me.

“And what did you think about Gerrold as a person?” he asks. “How does he strike you?”

“I thought he seemed nice,” I say. “He reminds me of a fisherman.”

“A fisherman?” he asks, interested.

“With the cap that he wears. And his weather-beaten skin. I could imagine him in a ratty knit sweater, casting the line.”

Malcolm asks me more questions about what the fisherman’s cap says, things like that. Malcolm seems interested in what Gerrold hopes to say about himself to the world. For being such a misanthrope, he really is quite the student of human behavior.

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