TRISTAN COULDN’T GRASP one thought long enough to groom it into submission, before Victoria popped back into his mind.

The country club dinner was five days ago, and he was still asking himself if it was a mistake to put a hard stop on things at the end of the night.

Each time the question popped up, he had the same answer. It was the only way to do things. She used to date your best friend. The canned answer didn’t hold as much weight as he expected, until it was followed with, that makes you her second choice.

Fuck, he hated living in his own head sometimes.

He headed into the break room for coffee, frowning as he passed Mischa’s empty office. He loved Mischa like a brother, but he really wished the man took his job more seriously. If he did, they might not be near-collapsing under the weight of a bad loan he’d taken out.

With Ash’s father of all people. Not that Mischa knew about the relationship, or even knew Ash at the time. And it wasn’t as though the engagement was buying them any favors.

There was a twisted part of Tristan that would like to see Mischa have to deal with this for once, rather than finding some smooth way to worm out of it. But Ralph Wolfram foreclosing on the property in question would hurt the whole firm.

Tristan found Ash in the break room. Despite her only having worked here for a few weeks, he knew the shadows under her eyes were unusual. “You all right?” he asked.

She gave him a weak smile. “I’ve been better, but it’ll pass. You?”

“Same. You didn’t ride in with Mischa?”

“No.” She watched her feet as she spoke. “I need to get back to work. Boss is a slave-driver and all that.” Her chuckle was forced.

“Yeah. Imagine me cracking a whip.” He shook his head at the odd exchange, grabbed his coffee, and went back to his desk.

There was a new email, addressed to him and Mischa. A prospective buyer who was supposed to look at one of the properties Mischa needed to sell. The buyer was cancelling the appointment.

According to their note, after a conversation with an unknown person, they’d decided to go a different route.

Aggravation surged inside Tristan, and he swiped out a quick text to Mischa. You see the cancellation? You joining us today?

He drummed his fingers on the desk, ticking off the seconds until a reply buzzed through.

On my way, Mischa wrote.

Swell. Tristan scrubbed his face, then turned back to his work. His mood lightened as he looked through his leads folder in his email. A few days ago, Ash had put some new advertising in place, and it was already showing results.

About thirty minutes later, there was a knock. He looked up to see Mischa standing in the doorway.

“Nice of you to join us.” Tristan’s irritation had ebbed.

“I thought so too.” Mischa dropped into a chair across from him. “Seriously though. I was up late working, and it was a long night.”

Tristan wasn’t sure if long night was a euphemism for sex, or if the statement was sincere. “Not that long, if Ash is already here.”

“Have you seen her?”

The question caught Tristan off-guard, drawing back how worn out Ash looked. “Are you two all right?”

“It’s a long story, but the short version is, last night Ralph took Kelly back.”

“Asshole.” Tristan spat the word out. Kelly was Ash’s little sister, and as he understood it, Ash’d had custody for several years. He’d never gotten too much information about why Ralph Wolfram wasn’t raising his own fourteen-year-old daughter.

Tristan was just disgusted anyone would give up their family so easily. Especially a man who boasted so much about how important said family was to him. “That overshadows my good news.”

“No it doesn’t. I could use a little bump in my day. Don’t take that away from me.”

Tristan understood that. He shared the news about Ash’s marketing efforts paying off. “She was a brilliant find. You’d better not piss her off and make her quit.”

“I don’t think that’ll be an issue. I don’t think she’s the one in the wrong line of work.”

Tristan paused as he processed Mischa’s words. “I assume you mean you? Fatalistic isn’t your style,” Tristan said. He tried to keep his tone light.

However, as much as Mischa could rub him the wrong way, he was still brilliant at the design work he did. And the two of them made solid business partners. They wouldn’t have lasted this long if they didn’t.

“Exactly the opposite. I feel better about this than I have anything... in a long time.”

Tristan frowned. “I’ll ignore the awkward pause. What are you thinking?”

“I want you to buy me out.”

No. Holy fuck, hell, no way. Tristan tempered the reaction before speaking. “This is ours. And you’re good at what you do. No one has your eye for a building’s potential.”

“I know.”

Tristan didn’t understand. “But you’re giving up.”

“I’m not giving up. I have a plan. I’ve been floundering in sales for a while. You can’t deny that.”

“I don’t. Want to let me in on this plan?” Tristan had a feeling asking for information was like hopping on an out of control train, but he needed to know.

“Buy me out. I’ll pay off Wolfram’s loan with the capital, and then the block will be mine.”

Oh fuck the hell no. Paying the balance of the loan out of their own pockets would hurt more than having the property repossessed. “We can’t afford that.”

“I can, if you buy me out.”

Tristan appreciated that Mischa was willing to take the hit here, for a decision he’d made, but that didn’t mean it was a smart idea. “What the fuck are you going to do with a block’s worth of buildings? Owning them outright won’t make them any easier to move. How are you going to reclaim your investment if you stop selling? Because that’s the other half of this idea of yours, isn’t it?”

“It is. I’ll design for you when you want, but I’m done with real estate sales.” The most reasonable thing Mischa had said as part of this proposal. He was an artistic genius, but didn’t have the desire to bullshit his way through any sort of sale. Which also meant he was one-hundred percent serious right now.

Tristan noticed something about the response now. “Way to avoid the main question. What are you going to do with the property?”

“Give it to Victoria. Or rather, give the foundation she works for the warehouse. Take time to sell the rest. Offer you a sizable commission if you do it for me.”

And Victoria would get her building. Something about that made do it an easy answer.

But it wasn’t that easy, and why was he considering leaving that kind of capital on the table? Because he had fun for a night with a woman he was never going to hook up with again? He grabbed his phone. “Now I know you’ve lost your mind. I’m having you committed.”

“Victoria’s thing is a tax write-off.” Mischa seemed to have thought this through beyond the standard impulse.

“Which doesn’t mean you get the warehouse’s value back in some sort of government thanks for being generous check.”

“Thanks. I understand how taxes work.”

“Are you sure? I don’t blame you for wanting to fuck Ralph Wolfram,” especially if he’d taken Kelly out of her home for spiteful reasons, “but almost anything you could think of would cost you less.”

“It’s a good idea. Okay, it’s a stupid idea. But it’s so dumb, it’s genius.”

Tristan didn’t have a comeback for that. It was idiotic, moronic, and had its own beauty.

Mischa asked him to think about it, then went back to work.

Tristan couldn’t help but do exactly that. As he called back leads, filed payroll, and updated property listings, the conversation with Mischa was never far from his mind.

A buy-out would be costly for Tristan, but could he make the numbers work? He had the funds. Most of them weren’t part of this business, they were held in other investments, but he could shift the money around.

It meant losing Mischa as a business partner, but that didn’t mean much else would change. And he really did like the idea of spiting Ralph Wolfram. The man wrote contracts designed to take advantage of people desperate for funds, and cashed in handsomely.

Not illegal, just slimy.

Tristan lost himself in work as the day ticked on. When his phone rang, he was surprised to see it was after seven at night.

He blinked the dryness from his eyes and answered the call from Mischa. “Hey, man. You got your head on straight yet?” Tristan said.

“Depends on who you ask. You have a minute for us?” Mischa’s voice was hollow and echoey.

“Us? You and whoever else is listening to me on speaker phone?”

“Hi,” Ash chimed in.

“We have a plan.” Mischa told him.

Tristan sighed. He knew where the conversation was going. Mischa was like a dog with a bone when he got an idea. “What kind of plan?” Tristan asked.

“Buy me ou—”

“That’s not a new plan.” Tristan cut him off. “You were supposed to think about it long enough to realize it’s a bad idea.” The problem with that statement was that Tristan had thought about it, and it wasn’t a bad idea.

“I did think about it.”

“Ash?” Tristan said. “Tell me you’re a voice of reason in this.”

“I guess that depends on how you define reason. I mean... even I can see Mischa doesn’t like his job.”

This was so fucking stupid. But he was going to ride Mischa’s luck for once. “All right. I’ll buy,” Tristan yielded.

“Fuck yes.”

Mischa’s enthusiasm was contagious. Tristan smiled in spite of himself. “My answer was supposed to make you reconsider. I’ll get us a contract tomorrow, to make things official.”

“You wanna go with us to show Victoria the new place tomorrow?”

“Definitely not. She’s your problem.” Tristan winced at the way that sounded. He couldn’t see Victoria again. Not yet. How immature was that?

He had to cling to the resolution though. Keep the distance between them long enough to remember that one night was just that.