Chapter 7: The Board Dinner

Roland set the table for twelve and put me at his right hand.

Ansel sat across from me, which was Roland's idea of a joke.

Four members of the board of Amesbury Freight were seated down the long mahogany table, with their wives, eating lamb.

Conrad sat at the far end.

He lifted his glass to me once and looked away.

Chantal was not there.

The housekeeper brought the plates around, and she set mine down with a small, firm tap.

"Joanna," Roland said, with the soft voice, over the lamb. "I'd like to put something on the table in front of friends."

"You usually do."

He nodded at the housekeeper.

She laid a thin gray folder beside my plate.

"Lila's tuition," Roland said. "I pay it quarterly. The spring payment goes out Monday."

"I'd hate for a family disagreement to interrupt a young woman's education."

The board members kept chewing.

One wife looked at her napkin.

I opened the folder and read the top page.

It was a letter from Roland to the bursar, unsigned, dated for Monday, instructing the college to withhold his payment.

"You haven't sent this," I said.

"I haven't signed it. Yet."

"You're going to pull a twenty-year-old out of school to win an argument with me."

"I'm going to protect her from the company she's keeping."

I closed the folder and slid it back across the cloth.

"I paid the spring bill on Tuesday," I said. "With my own card. The receipt is in my bag."

His smile stayed in place, but the color left the rest of his face.

"The summer bill I'll pay in May. The fall bill I'll pay in August. You can keep your folder, Roland. She's not for sale."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Bad Billionaire's Seven Kiss Negotiation from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.