Bring the Heat by Margot Radcliffe (13 ebook reader .txt) 📕

it, which was why he’d been trying like hell to keep it from her.

“The business is just the business,” he told her, hoping this would explain it a little without making him sound like a totally out-of-touch nutbag. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the rest of it.”

Molly looked skeptical. “So you’re not hurt that they want to take your money?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, I’d probably try to do the same thing.”

“What?” she asked, brow furrowing, not understanding at all.

“It just means that money is a game. It’s not a thing I even really think about anymore, to be honest,” he said, biting back a sigh. He needed to tread carefully here but also he knew he shouldn’t hide this part of his life from her anymore. “When you have so much of it, it kind of becomes a game.”

She stared at him, her expression blank as she waited for him to continue. As if that would help.

“I love my family and they love me,” he assured. “But the money stuff, it’s how we connect and bond, how we fight, how we one-up each other.”

“So, like, instead of playing Monopoly the board game, you play it in real life?”

He huffed a laugh. “Yeah, except there are a lot fewer rules with us.”

Her eyes widened then. “And you like doing that stuff? Have you ever stolen money from your family?”

“Not stolen, but I’ve undercut them when they’ve tried to acquire a business, snagged people they wanted to hire, bought a competing business in the same market to see who makes more of a profit. It’s just how we work. My parents are using the firm stuff as leverage because they think I’m still playing the game. But I’m not.”

Molly met his eyes, considering. “But those games,” she said, “that are so meaningless to you, have real consequences on the people employed in those businesses.”

“To a certain degree,” he allowed. “But not really. If the company is being run correctly, generally management remains the same.”

Molly took a sip of her drink and shook her head. “I guess I don’t know much about your actual life, Oliver.”

“It’s not my life anymore,” he reminded gently, his voice low, wanting—needing—her to truly understand.

“It sounds like it is the same, only you’re refusing to run the firm your family owns.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s different. I can buy and sell stuff all day, but this is my opportunity to build something, Molly. That’s the difference. I want to actually do something, not just move my money around on an invisible chessboard.”

“And you need me for that?” she asked, bringing up his offer for the first time on her own.

He took her hand in his, giving it a squeeze. “I want you in my life in all ways, Molly. I want you to help me build this company, I want you to build yachts, I want to build a life together. So, yes, I kind of need you for the last one for sure, but the other ones are optional.”

Molly’s breathing deepened and he could tell that he’d probably overshot it, but fuck it if it was too soon. The only thing he could do was try to make her love him for him and the rest of it, like his parents, they could figure out together.

“I haven’t changed my mind, Oliver,” Molly eventually said, carefully setting her glass back down on the table. “I don’t want to leave my job.”

“I know,” he said. “But I’m also still waiting for you to tell me how much money would possibly tempt you away from it.”

“Money doesn’t matter to me.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Everyone has a price, Molly. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but if I offered you a multimillion-dollar yearly contract right now with a half million signing bonus, your head wouldn’t be the least bit turned?”

Her eyes did widen, which pleased him, but then they shuttered. “Even if I wanted to take the job, which I don’t, I couldn’t take money or be employed by you if we were in a relationship.”

“It’s not as if you’re going to see me in the office every day. I doubt I’ll even go in at all except to see the actual yachts when they’re finished being produced. There will be a chief operating officer who is actually in charge of daily operations so it’s not as if you’d be reporting to me.”

At her doubtful look, he took another breath and continued. “Look, I don’t have all the answers, but I know that you’re brilliant and I don’t love the idea of you returning to the same city as that asshat ex-fiancé, and there’s no one I trust more to create a new generation of boats.”

Liam came out again, setting a tray of more toast, sausage and mimosas down on the table in front of them. “The oranges here cannot be beat, correct?”

“Should not the chief steward be bringing us our drinks?” Oliver enquired, jokingly, but reminding flirty-face Liam that Oliver was onto him and he was the only man Molly was interested in on this boat.

“Ah,” Liam said and clapped his hands together. “But I made the bread myself so I wanted to make sure you all liked it.”

Molly immediately took a large bite with butter on it and gave him a big smile. “This is outrageously good, Liam!”

Liam beamed and Oliver almost rolled his eyes, but stopped himself. And because he wasn’t a total asshole, he took a bite of the bread himself and had to admit, only to himself, that it was delicious.

“It is my pleasure to serve you, my dear,” Liam told her before leaving the deck with a huge smile on his face. “Do not hesitate to tell me whatever you would like me to make and I will deliver your deepest desires.”

Oh, brother, Oliver thought, his lips thinning.

Molly laughed when she saw his expression, her eyes dancing. “He’s fun.”

“A real riot,” Oliver drawled.

He ate a piece of buttered toast and