Chapter 3 - The Billionaire’s CounterofferThe private dining room at L'Espalier was entirely empty except for the two of them. Julian had rented the entire floor, ensuring that the muffled clatter of crystal and silver was the only sound accompanying the steady beat of the rain against the tall Victorian windows.
Julian sat across the white linen table, a glass of 2010 Bordeaux cradled in his fingers. He hadn't changed out of his charcoal three-piece suit; his tie was slightly loosened, revealing the strong, hollow curve of his throat, and his dark, unruly hair fell slightly over his forehead just as it had when they were graduate students arguing over urban development models at Harvard.
"Let me get this straight," Julian said, swirling the deep red wine in his glass. "Ethan Carter took out a thirty-day hall pass, packed his bags for Seattle with his childhood sweetheart, and left you sitting in a bridal boutique like an unclaimed package at the post office."
"That is an exceptionally crude way to summarize my humiliation, yes," Clare said, cutting a piece of roasted duck with clinical neatness.
"Humiliation?" Julian raised a dark eyebrow, a slow, predatory smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. "Clare, honey, look at you. You aren't humiliated; you’re uncaged. You spent three years trying to turn that corporate drone into a husband when he was never anything more than a safe bet. You wanted stability. You got stale."
"And what did you get, Julian?" Clare challenged, looking up to meet his dark, unblinking gaze. "You built a real estate empire worth half a billion dollars, you own three penthouses from London to Manhattan, and you spend your life eating dinner alone in private dining rooms because no one can stand your company for more than twenty minutes."
Julian didn't look offended. In fact, his smile widened, bright and sharp as a blade.
"True," he admitted easily. "Which is why my offer stands."
Clare froze, her knife hovering inches above her plate. "Your offer?"
Julian leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table, closing the distance between them until Clare could feel the faint, clean scent of his cologne mingling with the aroma of the wine.
"Marry me instead," Julian said, his voice dropping into a register that brook no argument.
The silence in the room became absolute.
"Julian, are you insane?" Clare hissed, dropping her fork. "We haven't spoken in four years! You broke my heart when you chose your father's development firm over our partnership, and now you’re proposing over duck breast?"
"I didn't choose my father's firm, Clare. I used it to destroy him from the inside out, exactly as I told you I would," Julian corrected smoothly. "And as for proposing—yes, I am completely out of my mind. I’ve been out of my mind since the day you walked out of my apartment. Do you think I haven't kept track of you? Do you think I didn't know every detail of your engagement to Ethan? I watched him from a distance, waiting for him to slip up. Because I knew—I knew—he wasn't man enough to hold onto a force of nature like you."
Clare’s breath hitched. She looked into his eyes and saw the terrifying, absolute truth burning in their dark depths. Julian wasn't joking. He was entirely, dangerously serious.
"Ethan’s wedding is scheduled for November twelfth," Clare whispered, her mind racing as a dark, brilliant plan began to form in the ruins of her broken engagement. "The venue is booked. The guest list is locked. The invitations were supposed to go out tomorrow morning."
"Then we don't change the date," Julian said softly, reaching across the table to wrap his warm, strong fingers around her hand. "We change the groom. On November twelfth, at the exact same venue, in front of all of Boston’s high society, Ethan’s mother, his business partners, and every last one of his snobby friends, you walk down that aisle. Not as a weeping jilted bride waiting for her stray dog to come home... but as Mrs. Julian Vance."
Clare’s fingers trembled inside his grasp.
"He’ll be back in town on November tenth," Clare murmured, her voice laced with sudden, electric venom. "Two days before the ceremony. He’ll come back expecting me to be sitting on the sofa, knitting baby booties and waiting for his verdict."
"Let him come back," Julian whispered, a dark, wicked promise curling on his lips. "By the time he walks back through that penthouse door, his company won't have the liquidity to pay its own rent, his credit lines will be frozen by my holding company, and his fiancée—the precious Sophie—will discover that the job waiting for her in Seattle was permanently filled yesterday morning by one of my corporate subsidiaries."
Clare stared at him, stunned by the sheer, terrifying magnitude of his reach.
"You bought her company?"
"I bought the parent corporation three weeks ago," Julian corrected, taking a sip of his wine. "I just hadn't decided what to do with the Seattle branch. Until tonight."
May you like
Clare pulled her hand slowly from his, picked up her wine glass, and met his gaze with a smile that was just as cold, just as sharp, and twice as deadly as his own.
"To November twelfth," Clare said, clinking her glass against his with a sharp, clear ring that echoed through the empty room. "Let’s give Boston a wedding they’ll never forget."
