Billionaire's Match novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Say Otherwise

"The rest," Elliot said, and he came out of the study into the hall, "is that I'd have been a worse man doing it."

Brittany stayed three steps up.

"Would you have asked me?"

"I don't know." He did not look away. "I'd like to say yes, and I won't lie to you on a staircase."

Behind him, the old man's cane tapped on the study floor, and then the door closed softly. He had left them to it.

"A dead man put my name on a page," she said. "A living one put it on a list. You put it in a file."

"Brittany."

"And I said yes to all three of you in one sentence, because I wanted something and nobody asked what."

She came down the three steps so that they stood level.

"Term four. Until one of us says otherwise."

Her voice was steady, and she was proud of that.

"I'm saying it. One year and a day was how we both meant to leave. I'm taking the day now."

He went very still.

She watched him think of an argument, and watched him put it down.

"The car is yours," he said. "The driver is yours. The room at the end of the east hall stays yours whenever you want it."

"Don't follow me."

"I won't."

It was the hardest thing she had ever seen him do.

She walked out past him with her bag before she could change her mind.

The flat on the twenty-second floor still had no chairs.

She sat on the floor with her back to the window.

She wrote a list on the back of the lease envelope, because lists were what she had.

The company. His name off the door.

Teddy out of that woman's hands.

She stopped, and wrote the next thing, and crossed it out, and wrote it again.

The knock came at dusk.

The old woman stood in the corridor with her cane, and her driver stood a pace behind her holding the lift door.

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