I paused, thinking what the best way to approach this proposal would be.

Honestly, it was a spur of the moment thought, but if that was what it was going to take to help either of us out of an otherwise impossible situation, I was not about to let it fall by the wayside.

Besides...it could be the one solution for a problem that had been looming over my head since before this whole episode with the Peppertree even started. It was one hell of a long shot, but...

I took a breath.

“I can’t stop the sale of the Peppertree,” I began, watching Haley’s careful gaze and suspicious face. “That ship has sailed. But it doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t still have control over it.”

“Let me stop you right there,” Haley interjected. “If you’re about to tell me that you would hire me out of your good graces and just let me be a manager with some…” She moved her hands in circles with a disgusted face. “...some name tag and a skimpy uniform, then-”

“No, good God, Haley, that isn’t what I meant at all,” I interrupted her, shaking my head and holding back a laugh. “I already thought about that the morning after we were together, and I knew that would never suit someone of your caliber.The Peppertree should belong to you.”

“Well, you know I can’t buy it back from you,” she retorted.

I leaned forward in my seat, and a smile crossed my face as I folded my hand over my fist on the table.

“I know, and that’s why I want to ask you this: Haley Simmons, will you marry me?”

She was halfway through a sip of her drink when the words reached her, and she immediately choked on her drink and started coughing violently. She put a napkin to her mouth and turned her head as she regained her composure, taking another sip to ease the coughing.

When she was finished, she slammed the cup down on the table and glared daggers at me.

“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t throw the rest of this drink into your face.”

“Because I just gave you the one option that would let you retain ownership of the Peppertree.”

She was still tense and stiff as a board, and her eyes were still flashing with anger, but she didn’t toss the remainder of her piping-hot chai at me, so I had her attention. I put my hands out and explained.

“Listen. The property is coming into my possession one way or another. Even if I pulled the plug on the deal and let hundreds of employees go jobless, you would still be sitting on a failing business, and it would be a matter of weeks, maybe months before the bank found another person like me who would take it. The Peppertree needs to be flipped, period.”

“Okay, twisting the knife so far, but go on.” Her tone was icy, understandably so.

“However, if you and I were husband and wife in the eyes of the law,” I continued, and I watched her eyes start to grow wide as she followed my train of thinking, “then what is mine would be yours. That would solve both of your problems. You would be the owner of the Peppertree so seamlessly that nobody would know anything changed, and moreover, you would have access to my company’s bank account to carry out all the renovations we need to make to get this place back in running order.”

I let that sit for a moment, and Haley just stared at me. Her jaw had fallen a few seconds into my explanation, and I didn’t think she had noticed until she fluttered those long eyelashes of hers and gave her head a little shake of disbelief.

“Let me get this straight. You’re offering me a...a marriage of convenience?” The word ‘marriage’ came uneasily from her, as if the idea was still shocking. “I own what you own, I get not just to keep everything, but to use your money to do everything I want with the place?”

“Everything we want,” I corrected her, “since this would still be an investment on my part, and I tend to be a very hands-on investor.”

A little color came to her face at the tone I used for those last words, but she swallowed and sat up. “So you get your returns on your investment. That’s it? No strings attached?”

A cocky smile spread across my face, and fear came across hers.

“One string,” I clarified, holding up a single index finger. She arched an eyebrow at me. This was the part where I thought I would lose her, so I had to take advantage of the upper ground while I had it.

“That is?”

“I need an heir,” I said.

She blinked a few times, staring at me with her arms crossed over her stomach, trying to process what I had just said. “An heir? What do you…?”

My eyes went down her front to her stomach as my smile grew wider, and she tightened her arms and scooted back in her chair as realization hit her.

“You cannot be serious. You mean an heir as in...from me?”

“With you,” I corrected her, an amused lilt to my tone that was perhaps too cruel for the way she was reacting.

“Just who do you think I am?”

“You’re Haley Simmons,” I replied, “a very talented, decisive young woman who has done her damnedest to pull her father’s failing business out of the nosedive his death put it in, and if you were in any other circumstance, you would be a powerful enough competitor in the business to give even me a run for my money. You’re also the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met in my life, and I can think of nobody else in the world I would even dream of proposing something like this to.”

My little speech left her shocked face wordless, so I continued.

“I don’t make this offer lightly. Look, my sister Celia is leaving the business, and my brother Chase could not be less interested in getting involved. Eventually, my company will need someone competent to take over, and neither of my siblings will be that person. I need a child of my own. I may be young now, but time slips away fast. I don’t want to be one of those executives in his sixties picking up a twenty-something and being too old to bring the child up as a decent person.”

She started to say something, but she hesitated and bit her lip. “I…”

“I know this is a lot to take in,” I admitted, “but keep in mind, it would mean an heir for you, too. What’s mine is your and yours is mine, and any child that comes from us would inherit both our empires.”

Her cheeks were flushed. I was aware that in some sense, I was talking about her as if her womb was a commodity on the table to be traded with the rest of the property we were dealing with. The thought of that made my cock twitch, and judging by the way she was squirming, I wondered if it wasn’t getting her a little excited too, despite herself.

“So, this is sex for a favor?”

“Not at all,” I retorted, and my smile turned into a grin. “That part is just icing on the cake. We obviously already enjoy that part.” I cocked my head to the side. “Why don’t we make it so something useful can come out of it while we’re at it?”