Page 17 of Four Money (Ever and Always 1)

Thinking out loud, he said to Holly, “I’d make it worth your while too if we did this.”

Andi clapped and Kari grinned. Lorenzo slapped Owen on the back and they both shot him approving glances. Of course they did. Because if he did this stupid, reckless thing, that meant Holly would be living with them for three months too. And there was only one way that was going to end up. The chemistry had been there earlier. It would be again.

She had no idea what she was getting herself into.

“Hold on. You’re saying that you’d pay me to marry you?” Holly snatched her drink up again and drained it dry. She stood, and he wondered if she was about to smack him, except she paused halfway across the plush carpet between them. Her eyes shifted out the window, as if she was thinking of something far away… “How much?”

“What?” He whirled around to gawk like she had grown an extra head. She couldn’t be considering such a ridiculous charade. Could she?

“How. Much?”

“What would you want to do it?” Trent asked. “It’s just for ninety days or so until I turn twenty-five. Then we could get it annulled, right?”

He aimed that last question at the quartet of lawyers in the room.

Ford was skimming the documents over Cooper’s shoulder and they both nodded. “Yes. It just says you need to be married or over the age of twenty-five to claim the funds and keep them from rolling into the general estate. There’s no stipulation on how long you have to have been hitched or who you need to be with. I guess your dad figured if you’d settled down…”

“Well, he thought wrong.” Trent tried not to yell at them. They weren’t the ones discriminating against him. “So, Holly, what would it take?”

He knew he was being kind of an asshole, but he didn’t think she’d consider it for any amount of money and it pissed him off that he was even entertaining the thought, never mind kind of starting to like it.

So it shocked him when she fired right back at him. “Four hundred thirty-seven thousand, two hundred eighty-one dollars, and seventeen cents.”

Trent threw back his head and laughed.

Holly didn’t.

“Wait, that wasn’t a joke?”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?” Her cheeks reddened, and he realized he’d almost blown things before they’d really started getting serious.

“No, it’s just that’s oddly specific.” Trent cocked his head. “What do you need it for?”

“Is the deal contingent on what I’m going to do with the money?” She propped her hands on her hips. He felt his chances with both her and his dad’s stupid will slipping away.

“Not at all.” He held his hands up, palms out. “I’m curious, that’s all.”

Holly sighed. “That’s apparently the going rate for a kidney transplant in the US these days if you don’t have health insurance.”

“Holy shit.” Cooper whistled.

Trent’s stomach soured. It had nothing to do with the slightly too much he’d had to drink. He felt more scared than when his father had been in that hospital taking his last breaths, which only made him feel sicker for being such an unfeeling asshole. “Are you ill?”

Holly wilted. She shook her head and inched closer to him. “Not me. My mom. She has lupus. I’ve been taking care of her these past couple of years. My father died of mesothelioma triggered by his work and she gets about twenty grand a year from the settlement. That’s enough to disqualify her from Medicaid but not enough for us to afford market insurance. Hell, we can barely scrape up the minimum payments for her dialysis treatments. Now she’s getting worse. She has a spot at the top of the transplant list, but until we can prove we have the funds for the anti-rejection drugs, they won’t clear her because it would be a waste of a precious organ, and without this surgery…”

She gulped.

Trent didn’t hesitate; he crossed the gap between them and wrapped her in his arms. “I’m so sorry, Holly.”

“You’re the one who lost your dad tonight. You shouldn’t be comforting me.” Still, she didn’t pull away. Instead, she hugged him back and they stood there, rocking slightly, in each other’s arms.

When he looked up, everyone in the room was smiling, except for Kari, who knuckled a tear from the corner of her eye. Right then, Trent knew he was going to do it. If not for himself, then for Holly. And her mom. It was literally a matter of life and death. And if they stuck it to his dad in the process, well, more the better.

“Ford, can you guys put something in writing? Make our deal official?” Trent never took his stare off Holly. “Give her enough to cover the transplant and in-home care for her mom, since she’s going to have to stay with me, Lorenzo, and Owen.”

“Wait, what?” Holly blanched.

“You can’t expect people to believe we’re married if you’re still living at home. And I don’t think there’s enough room for your mom to be comfortable at our place.” He closed his eyes. “But if that’s a deal breaker, I understand.”

---