One dark brow rose with the corner of his mouth when he caught me looking. “Can I get you a cab?”
“I suppose we can’t share one,” I lamented, pulling on my coat.
“Probably not. Anyway, I’m heading home to help Mom prepare for our next shot at her deposition.”
“Your poor mother.” I hung my head, wishing there was more I could do. “I couldn’t even stand it yesterday. I had to say something. I was going to burst into flames if I didn’t.”
“It was the bravest, most perfect thing you could have done. If I hadn’t wanted you before that moment, you would have changed my mind right then and there.” He laid a broad hand on the small of my back, stepping into me. “I wanted to grab you and steal you and kiss you.”
“I would have held on and gone quietly and kissed you right back.”
He pressed a lingering, promissory kiss to my lips before guiding me out.
Marcus walked me to the curb, and with a final brush of his lips, he put me in the cab.
The second the door thumped closed, it cut me off from my joy, leaving it with Marcus there on the busy sidewalk.
Dread settled over me, into me, sinking into my stomach, weighting my lungs. It was the tingling sense of danger, the knowledge that I was about to walk into a fight that could set my life on a course I’d never expected. I had no map, and the road before me disappeared into craggy mountains, the path unfamiliar, uncertain when my life to this point had been planned out so precisely by my mother, charted and mapped and visible from space.
It was unnerving. But it was exciting too, and the promise of what was around the bend fueled my confidence as I stepped out of the cab and into the building my mother occupied.
She didn’t occupy the whole thing, of course, only five meager floors of the towering building in Midtown. But she might as well have filled all seventy floors for the space her ego took up.
With every open and close of the elevator doors, my anxiety climbed, my hopes shrinking under the shadow of what I was about to do. Through the bullpen of her floor I walked, enduring the occasional Hello, Ms. Bower. But my eyes were on the office down the hall, and my mind was consumed with a ticking countdown to my fate.
Shelby popped out of her seat when she saw me, her brows drawn. “Maisie? Did you have an appointment this morning?”
“No, but I was hoping to talk to her for a minute. Does she have time?”
“She has twenty minutes until Roland arrives for take seven of the elusive finance meeting, so I’m sure she’ll welcome the opportunity to avoid it.”
I couldn’t even laugh. Or smile. Or even remember what she’d said, my eyes on the doors to her office. “Good. Thank you.”
“She’d kill me for not insisting, but do you want me to announce you?”
“No, thank you. May as well make it a surprise all the way around.”
Shelby’s head cocked, but she waved me on. “Well, good luck.”
“I’m gonna need it,” I said under my breath as I opened the door.
My mother looked up from her grand desk, somehow managing to appear both surprised and annoyed. “Have you come to explain where you’ve been going every morning? Because you’ve exhausted my patience where that is concerned.” When I didn’t immediately answer, one of her brows rose. “No? Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed it, because that ends as of today. What do you want then, Margaret? I thought you were down at your little project today.”
“Well, there’s been a change of plans.”
She glanced at my dress. “Perhaps you should have considered a change of plans regarding your dress as well, dear.”
I ignored the jab, walking up to her desk with my chin up and shoulders back. My heart, however, did not have such confidence. It beat so painfully fast, I wondered briefly if I was about to have an anxiety attack.
“Sit,” she commanded.
“I’d rather stand, thank you.”
At that, she took off her glasses and leaned back in her chair, assessing me coolly. “Well then, go ahead.”
I took a breath, my dry throat working to swallow. You have nothing to lose. It’s about to be over one way or another, so jump, Maisie. Jump.
So I took a breath and did just that. “I think we both knew that my return to Bower wouldn’t be smooth or easy. But I expected at least the most basic respect.”
“And I expected you to do as you were told.”
I drew a long breath to keep ahold of my temper. “Had you not taken my charity from me, I probably would have. But there’s no repairing what’s happened between us, and though I know you don’t believe it, there’s no amount of force that will change that. We find ourselves here, and I’d like to remind you that I’m not a toy. I’m not a doll for you to play with or a pretty little handbag for you to show off. I’ve allowed you to dictate what I can and can’t do. But not anymore.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t speak.
“It seems to me that I have something you want, and you have nothing I require. You want me to head this company, to be a replica of you, and you want it so badly, you’ve lured me back to do just that. But I certainly have no interest in being your plaything, nor am I willing to be berated by you anymore. No amount of money or power will change that.”
“So what do you propose?”
I lifted my chin. “If you want me to be your successor, then it will be on my terms.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then I’ll go.”
A long, silent moment passed.
“I see. And what are your lofty terms?”
“The charity will be mine to do with as I please with all the funding I wish and all the hours to devote to it that I like. You will not force me to do what isn’t necessary—including monitoring my comings and goings—and otherwise, you’ll stay out of my way.”
Her face remained unchanged, which was perhaps most terrifying of all.
“Tell me, Margaret—what do I get out of this deal?”
A bubbling tension simmered in my belly, one both hopeful and averse. “You will acquire the heir you so desperately want. I will also concede to a short list of required tasks, such as attending board meetings and shadowing executives, but we’ll define boundaries to determine what’s considered necessary. If I’m to run Bower one day, I need to know how it all works, but you’ll give me the freedom to participate on my terms, which we both know aren’t unreasonable.”
Tension crackled in the air between us.
“You came in here prepared to leave, didn’t you?”
I drew myself taller to mask my fear. “I did. I am.”
I waited for her to thrash. To yell and fume and sling everything she could at me. My trust fund. The life I knew. My home. My father. Bower. The charity. Braced for impact, I held my breath and waited for her to stand up and fight me.
But instead, she smiled.
It wasn’t a kind smile or a smile of pride. It wasn’t maternal, and it held no empathy.
Hers was a smile of triumph, as if she’d won a battle I hadn’t known we were fighting.
“That, Margaret Bower, is exactly what I have been waiting for.”
I blinked, confused. “Y-you’ve been waiting for me to leave?”