Page 5 of Bound to Him
The loan sharks had leaped on my offer. The money was nothing to me, but Divine didn’t know I owned that debt now. He didn’t know he was out of the hot water he’d plunked himself into by gambling too much money on shitty investments—a few which had involved my personal cash as well, money he’d talked me into parting with. I’d asked King, one of the men Divine owed money, to send some of his bruisers over, and I was happy with their work.
Men like Edison disgusted me. They came from wealth and didn’t know how to build it, only spend it. Most of the time they did the smart thing and left their money in the hands of managers, but he’d tried to be a cowboy.
He’d lost more than he’d inherited.
And now he was going to find out what it was like to get the horns of the bull. No one fucked with Alton Bouchard and won.
Smiling, I edged closer into Noah’s personal space. “I have no plans to injure anyone, not in a straight trajectory anyway, but if I don’t pull your daddy out of the boiling oil he’s found himself in, he’s a goner. Your family will be living in a cardboard box somewhere.”
“Explain to me, please, without being a... condescending ass, what you’re talking about. Why do you need me? I don’t handle anything in our businesses.” Noah’s jaw jutted forward, and I grinned.
He flinched.
Edison Divine looked uneasy, and the bastard should. I could see the old wheels spinning in his brain. Do I know? Do I not know? This was going to be fun.
“Your daddy fucked up and owes a lot of ornery people a pile of money, sunshine. I can make that all go away. The only thing I want to make that happen isyou.”
He fluttered his long eyelashes and stepped back from me, his mouth dropping open. “That’s the most... me?” He touched a hand to his chest, then his lips quirked, but one look at his dad’s beat-up face and his smile died.
“Yep.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“Noah,” his father growled at him under his breath. Noah turned toward his old man and shook his head slowly.
“You expect me to... what? I’m in art school. I... what am I supposed to do? Stop my whole life? I won’t do you any good at your company. I haven’t even graduated college, never mind the fact that I’m not studying business.”
His confusion was adorable. He turned an accusatory expression my way and I braced myself for the fallout. I hadn’t considered what he might be doing when I went about concocting this half-assed scheme with every spare minute I had for the last month.
“There’s a contract involved. You’re mine for six months. Totally. Completely.Personally.Then, when I’m finished with you, I bring you back here, right to the front stoop, drop you off, and we never see each other again. Your family will be set. It won’t mean anything to some school to let you retake classes.”
His arms stiffened and he stared at me. I could see the cogs turning furiously in his mind, and his pretty gray eyes skimmed around the room like he was searching for a way to escape. “I don’t give a damn what it means to them. I have my own plans.”
“What, are you that excited to start working in the mail room at your daddy’s construction company while making eight times as much as all the other people in the building?” I smirked at him, and his face paled, eyes going wide. “All you rich boys get jobs you don’t deserve and money you don’t know how to handle. You’ll be back to that before you know it.”
He swung around toward his dad. “I’m not going anywhere with this... this....” He let out a growl, and I covered my mouth to keep from laughing outright.
“You will,” I fired back and dropped my hand to my side. “Or I’ll make sure even this house goes up for auction.”
Edison flinched. At the end of the hallway there was a screech of laughter and a child with dark curls flew around the corner, directly toward us. I was surprised because a kid was the last thing I’d expected to see when I was doing something like this, but Noah dropped to one knee and held out his arms to catch the bundle of energy. He glared up at me as he got a million-watt smile from the kid and little-boy kisses on his cheek that actually thawed my heart... just a bit.
Edison glanced at me, and a skinny, curly haired blonde woman, who was probably in college herself, stood in the hallway a ways back, but she wasn’t hustling forward to try to corral the kid. She smiled at Edison, and then I got it.
She’d let the brat loose on purpose, something Edison had planned, and while I wasn’t above blackmailing someone to get my way, it seemed particularly cold that Noah’s own father had gotten in on the act with some emotional dirt of his own. I frowned at Edison, and he looked away.
“Noah, will you come play cars with me?” The kid bounced all around and the strap of his overalls slipped from one of his shoulders. He was a sweet little guy and reminded me a lot of Noah in looks.
“Not right now, Crew. Why don’t you ask Mindy to play cars?” Noah glanced back at what I assumed was the nanny, who waved at him.
“She’s bad at it. She doesn’t make the good noises.” The kid didn’t even bother looking at me or his dad, he was too stuck on Noah, and I empathized. He’d captured me, too.
“I have to finish talking to the grownups, and then I’ll come play,” he said with a smile.
“No, you won’t. We’re leaving in five minutes. I have things to do.”
He sent me a dead-eyed stare that on a different man might have made me a bit afraid, and my excitement skyrocketed. “If you expect me to drop my life for.... I haven’t agreed to anything.”
His mother chose that moment to come stand in the doorway of the sitting room we’d been in. She clutched the contract in her hand and held a pen. Refined, dark-haired, and obviously where her son had gotten his stunning good looks, she walked slowly toward us. Her black dress followed all her curves and stopped above her knees. She was one of those people who wore shoes in their own home, or at least down here, and her heels clacked on the tiled floor.
