I give a single hard shake of my head. “You need me a lot more than I need you. I can find another business to save. You can’t find anyone else to salvage this farm, or else you already would’ve done it.”
“You are so—”
“Arrogant? Yes, I know. I’ve heard it all before, and it’s true.” She glowers, and I roll my eyes. “You don’t get final say, but I will ask for your opinion. How is that?”
She scoffs. “Are you always like this?”
“Yes, I am. Now. Any more rules on your exhaustive list?”
“It’s not exhaustive ... And yes, there’s one more.”
“Only one?”
“I’m not as uptight as you seem to think.”
“That remains to be seen.”
She smirks. “You’re not sleeping in the house.”
“I didn’t even ask if I could stay here.”
She tips her head back and laughs. “You’re a billionaire short on cash. Where else are you going to stay?”
Good point. “Where will I sleep, then? The barn?”
God, not the barn.
“I’m not that terrible.” She shoots me a look so scalding that it could burn the hair right off my head. “My mom’s she shed. She uses it to make candles. There’s a bed in there, and it’s temperature controlled.”
I frown. “Are you also going to lock me in at night?”
“Don’t tempt me.”
Her mouth curves lusciously when she says it. So I look away.
I lean my shoulder against one of the porch’s posts, and her gaze lingers on my arm before darting back to the landscape.
“So to recap, your rules are”—I tick them off on my fingers one at a time—“I have to run everything past you, you get not-quite final say in all decisions, and I have to sleep in a she shed.”
“It’s more like ashamper, but yeah, that’s right.”
“Done.”
She balks. “Really?”
“Did you actually think that a few rules would make me say no?”
She eyes my shirt, which is rolled up to the elbows. “To be fair, I thought the shamper might break you.”
“Hardly.” She extends her hand to shake on the deal, but I stop her with, “I have a few rules of my own.”
Her shoulders tighten. “Youhave rules?”
“If you get them, then so do I.”
“It’s my house, so it makes sense that I would have them.”
“And I’ll be doing a lot of work so that in two months you can sail off into the sunset of financial freedom. At the very least, I’ll have a road map and a staff for you.”
