“You heard me.”
“Like... money?”
“Yes, like money,” Eve said impatiently.
An odd, completely inappropriate urge to laugh bubbled up inside her. She’d never been bought off before. “Uh, what’s the going rate?”
“How much do you want?” Eve countered.
Livvy might not have been groomed to be a CEO, but she had OkaandKane blood running through her veins. Businesspeople, the lot of them. You never wanted to be the one who opened negotiations. “A billion dollars.”
“I’m being serious.”
“Oh, you’re beingserious. Okay, then. A million dollars.”
Eve swallowed. “I don’t have a million dollars in liquid assets.”
“What have you got? Or I suppose I should ask what’s your brother worth to you? Ten thousand? Forty thousand? A hundred thousand?”
“I don’t put a value on my brother.”
“That’s what you’re asking me to do. If you can’t put a value on the man you love, why should I?”
Eve lowered her voice, though Livvy wasn’t sure why. No one could hear them in the rapidly growing crowd. “You don’t love him. Don’t pretend you do. You don’t even know him anymore.”
Ouch.“You’re right. I don’t.” She didn’t. She’d stopped loving him on a cold afternoon near a small pond in the woods surrounding his grandfather’s house, and she’d never looked back.
That was the story, anyway.
“Okay, so why don’t we do this, to be fair.” Livvy tapped the table. “You can give me the difference between what your father paid for my mother’s share in C&O and current market value. Is that too much? Fine. The difference between what he paid and the market value at the time of the sale. You know, when he stole the place from a grieving widow.” She paused. “That’s still probably more than what you have in liquid assets though.”
Eve drew back like she’d been slapped. “He—you—”
“What’s that?” Livvy cupped her ear. “Oh. Does it hurt to have your father accused of something shady?”
Eve’s lower lip quivered, and she shoved back from the table with a jerky move. “This was a mistake.”
“Yeah, it was.” Livvy wasn’t sure whether she was talking about coming to this bar or coming to this state. It didn’t really matter.
“Stay away from my brother.” The younger woman stalked toward the door.
“Yikes. That didn’t look good,” Sadia murmured.
Livvy was only surprised it had taken Sadia this long to rush over. She pressed her lips together, some of her rage melting instantly away at her friend’s presence. “Kid’s mad.”
“She’s not a kid, she’s a grown-ass woman. What’s she mad about?”
“The accident.”
Sadia snorted. “Then she should know who to take her mad out on, and it’s not you.”
Livvy rubbed the spot between her eyes, feeling the tension headache that had been looming earlier turning into a full-blown headache. “She has no one she can take that mad out on. That’s the problem.” That had been the problem for everyone, right? Even she’d had no one to yell and rail at, with her beloved, bright, laughing daddy dead.
Livvy’s eyes narrowed as Eve sidestepped a bunch of frat boys walking into the bar. There was a stumble in the other woman’s gait. “How much alcohol is in those pink fruity drinks she was downing?”
Sadia picked up Eve’s empty glasses. “A deceptively large amount. Especially for a little thing like her.”
Eve stumbled again, catching her balance on the door. They glanced at each other. Sadia sighed. “Go on. Call me if you need help.”
