Chapter 14: Name Your Price

The door clicked shut, and the office felt much smaller than it had a minute ago.

I put my back to the desk and kept my hands where he could see them.

"You said it yourself," I said. "Tell me to stop when I'm wrong."

"I did."

"You're wrong. Stop."

He didn't argue. He stepped back until his shoulders met the wall of photographs, and he held his hands open at his sides.

"Tell me what you want done with it," he said. "I'll call the clerk in the morning and have it torn up."

"I don't want it torn up."

That stopped him.

"I want it," I said. "I want a building nobody can lock me out of. You were right about that part, and I hate it."

"Then what?"

"I want to buy it."

His brows went up, the scarred one a little higher.

"One dollar is a gift, Rafe. A gift is a thing a man can say he gave. Dutch gave me a garage for ten years, and I paid for it every day."

"This isn't that."

"I know it isn't. That's why I'm not tearing it up. I'm telling you the price is mine to name."

He took that in. His chest rose once, slowly.

"Name it."

"I'll tell you when I've earned it. You'll put the sale on paper with my number, and you'll take a payment every month."

"Stephanie, I don't want your money."

"You'll take it anyway."

The corner of his mouth moved. It wasn't a smile, but it was close.

"All right," he said. "That's fair. That's more than fair."

"And the next time you want to do something with my name on it, you ask me first. Out loud. To my face."

"I will."

"You'll hear 'no' sometimes."

"I'd rather hear no from you than yes from anybody else."

That was the line that undid me.

It wasn't clever. He said it flat, with his hands open and his eyes on mine, and I knew that every word cost him.

I'd been angry for two days, and I'd carried the anger so carefully that I'd forgotten it had a bottom.

"I told you not to touch me until I said," I said.

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