Page 55 of Burn for You (Slow Burn 1)
I sat back against the chair. A breath left my chest in a noisy rush.
“Mm-hmm,” said Rayford, full of himself. “So there you go.”
“There I go what?”
“Lord, do I have to do all the heavy lifting?” he muttered. Then he waggled the paper impatiently at me. “Hello, future Mrs. Jackson Walker Boudreaux?”
I blanched. “You’re . . . that’s . . .”
Rayford said, “You already know each other, it’s clear that she likes you and you like her—”
“I never said I liked her.”
“Oh, be quiet, now you’re just talkin’ trash,” said Rayford, then continued on with his ridiculous explanation. “And there’s a very good chance that if you sweeten the deal a little bit, she’d say yes.”
I was starting to get a bad feeling about this. “Sweeten the deal?”
Rayford sat back in the sofa and crossed his legs again. Smoothing a hand down the lapel of his suit jacket, he carefully said, “Everybody’s got a price. You didn’t know that last time you got engaged, but now you do.”
I said quietly, “Ouch.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But it seems to me that if you go into it with your eyes open, with all your cards on the table, it might work out for both of you.”
He let me process that, then added, “She doesn’t even own a car.”
I closed my eyes and rested my head on the back of the chair. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”
Rayford said, “You told me Cody likes her.”
I groaned.
“She’s smart, she’s got her feet on the ground, and she comes from good stock.”
“Rayford! What century is this? We’re talking about a woman, not a cow!”
“And she isn’t too hard on the eyes, either.”
That made me pause. I had a vivid, fleeting image of Bianca prancing naked around my bedroom and had to shake my head to clear it.
“It’s not gonna happen. What would I do, mosey into her restaurant and say, ‘Oh, hi there, I was just thinking since you’re poor and I need a wife that we should get married’? How romantic! I’m sure that’s the proposal of her dreams!”
Rayford said, “Maybe if you prefaced it with the mention of a million dollars, it would be.”
I jerked my head up and stared at him in outrage. I sputtered, “A million dollars?”
He didn’t even blink. “Oh, I’m sorry, are you not a billionaire? With a b?”
“No! My father is a billionaire!”
“And who’s his only son who’s gonna inherit all that money?”
I threw my hands
in the air. “This is completely insane.”
But Rayford wasn’t giving up so easily. He said, “And who gets an annual trust stipend in the gazillions every year before his father dies?”
“Gazillions aren’t units of currency.”
