I Logged In As The CEO's Mother And Crushed His Favorite Girl novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Her Terms

Ellis didn't argue.

He took his hands out of his pockets and sat down on the stone wall, facing the lake instead of her.

"Okay," he said.

Holly stood there. She'd been ready for a fight.

"Okay?"

"You're not a prize. I agree." He picked a flake of old paint off his thumbnail. "I don't want to win you. I don't want the company. I don't want thirty percent of anything."

"Then why are you here?"

He was quiet for a while.

The wind came off the lake and pushed her hair across her face.

"Because she called," he said. "She's never called. And because a man at the front desk downstairs told me a girl nearly died in the mud because my brother wanted her toughened up. I grew up in that house. I know exactly who teaches a Pembroke that's normal."

Behind the hedge, I held very still.

Holly sat down on the wall too, not close.

"So what do you want?" she said.

"To paint." He shrugged. "To have a studio with north light and nobody telling me it's a hobby. I want my mother to come to one show. Just one. That's the whole list."

"That's a short list."

"It's been the same list since I was twelve."

She laughed, surprised. Then she stopped herself.

"I'm not marrying you," she said.

"I didn't ask."

"Good."

"Good."

They sat there.

A sailboat crossed the gray water far out.

"But," Holly said slowly.

He turned his head.

"My father's company has three hundred people in it. Draftsmen. Site crews. A receptionist who's been there since before I was born. If the merger dies, they all go."

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