Free Bartered Proposal: The Billionaire's Wife, Part 1 (A BDSM Erotic Romance) by Ava Lore Page B

company, or you?”
    “Both.”
    “You crossed the streams?” How was that even possible? The corporation should have had enough equity and assets to fund any venture, no matter how stupid.
    “It was private. I wanted to start up a new company on my own. But it didn't work. And the company... well, financial empire building isn't what it once was. We're broke. I'm broke.”
    I sat there in silence. Across the coffee shop someone burst into laughter and the noise grated against my nerves.
    “Are you on drugs?” I finally said. “What on earth made you do those things?”
    He finally lowered his hands, but he didn't look at me. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe I was.”
    Holy shit, I thought. “How much do you owe?”
    He told me. The number he quoted was so huge that even if I grabbed a plane and sacks full of dollar bills and spent a month dumping money into the Pacific, I wouldn't have come close to making a dent in what he'd wasted.
    I sat and stared at him some more. “Are you for real? Jesus Christ, meth-heads are better at money than you. What the hell is wrong with you?”
    He just shook his head and I realized that was all I was going to get out of him.
    I leaned back, reeling. “Why don't you guys declare bankruptcy?”
    “Because... it's my life, Felicia.” I flinched at my name. “I can still fix it, I just need enough capital. And I could cook some books and get it, but...” He trailed off. “Your mother should have started chemo last week. But I can't afford it. Every bill is past due, my credit is tapped out, and I dropped the insurance a few months ago to free up some money...”
    This couldn't be real. No one could have been this stupid.
    “So it's just pride that's keeping you from saving mom.” I stared at him, cold with fury. If he wanted to ruin his own life, well, he was welcome to it, but to drag mom down with him... I couldn't stand it.
    “No,” he said, and he finally looked up at me. “No, I have a plan. I have a backer. Someone who believes in my vision. I can get it done, but I need his help. And... there's a condition.”
    I had an oddly clear premonition. “This is one of those Indecent Proposal things, isn't it?” I said. My voice was too loud. Heads turned in our direction. “Holy shit. I'm your daughter.”
    “No!” he said, his face flushing, his eyes darting this way and that. “No, it's not like that.”
    “What, I have to sleep with him and he'll give you a million dollars and I'll see diddly? Is that it?”
    “No! It's...” He turned to his omnipresent briefcase, popped it open, and pulled out a contract as thick as a paperback book. He extended it to me, but when I just stared at him, he set it on the table between us.
    “It's a marriage proposal,” he said.
    I started to laugh. “Oh my god. Oh my god. You were always such a humorless dick, I thought you were serious there for a while!” It still wasn't very funny—joking around about cancer was a seriously shit thing to do—but the relief I felt was so welcome that I felt I could forgive it. After all, if all his sins had been as relatively innocent as a joke about cancer he would have practically been a shoo-in for heaven instead of the soulless earth-bound lich he was.
    “It's not a joke,” he said quietly.
    I stopped laughing.
    “Who's this backer?” I said. Visions of his usual colleagues danced through my head. Getting married to one of the corporate aristocracy was probably on my bucket list somewhere between eat bucket of toenails and break own kneecaps with ball-peen hammer.
    He took a deep breath. “Anton Waters.”
    My eyebrows lifted so far they were in danger of wandering into my hair.
    “ The Anton Waters?” It was too absurd to be real.
    I looked at the contract in front of me, and sure enough, there was his name. Anton K. Waters. A man I'd only read about in magazines and heard about on tv and in idle gossip in online forums. The ruthless, powerful, and boringly attractive lord of