Undeniable Demands. Andrea Laurence

it didn’t shatter. She quickly crouched down to grab it, but he had reached out for it as well and beat her to it. He held out the jar to her. Tori looked down at him, only inches away, and felt a familiar and unwelcome tingle deep in her belly. When she took the jar from his hand, her fingers brushed his and the tingle turned into a surge right to her core.

      Jerking upright as though she’d been burned by his touch, she quickly recovered and removed the infusers, then added a dollop of the honey to each cup. She plunked his tea down in front of him and took a seat on the opposite side of the table.

      “That’s ridiculous.” She said the words knowing she meant both her reaction to him and his offer for her land. Tori knew better than to let herself fall for Wade’s good looks or his seemingly good offer.

      “Maybe. But that’s what I’m offering.”

      “You’re hiding something,” she accused. “You’re the guy who built your business buying cheap buildings and flipping them for a fortune. No way you’d pay one penny more than is necessary to turn a profit on whatever project you’re wanting to build out here.”

      Wade turned to look her in the eye. A lock of brown hair had fallen into his face, giving him a boyish charm she had to steel her resolve against. “I’m not building anything out here. This isn’t about money.”

      Tori scoffed. “You don’t get to be a millionaire before you’re thirty unless you’re born into money or driven by it. Either way, everything is about money.”

      Wade watched her. He took a sip of his tea before he answered. “This is about family. That’s more important to me than even money. This property belonged to my parents. They sold it without telling me or my other siblings. We never would’ve let them do that if we’d known. They worked too hard their whole lives for this land. We grew up here. Our childhood was here. If we’d known they were having financial problems, I would’ve taken care of things before they resorted to this.”

      Tori felt herself being sucked in by his story. The expression on his handsome face was one of sincere concern. The words sounded so convincing. But this was the same man who had praised her potential and work ethic, then fired her the next day. Ryan had also seemed sincere, and nearly every word out of his mouth over the past two years had been a lie.

      She had been raised with a naive spirit by hippies who wanted only to experience life and culture. They didn’t have a malicious bone in their bodies and never thought other people did, either.

      Life had taught Tori differently. Wade had taught her differently. He had heard her pleas of innocence and turned his back on them. He hadn’t believed her. So why should she believe him now?

      The people who had sold her this land—Molly and Ken Eden—were a very sweet older couple. No way they’d spawned a son like Mitchell. They didn’t even have the same last name. It wasn’t even a well-planned lie. She wanted to be insulted by his lack of faith in her ability to see through his crap. Did he think she would just melt into a puddle at his feet the minute he knocked on the door and flashed those deep green eyes at her? Or started waving cash?

      She didn’t need Wade’s money. She’d paid cash for this property. She was one of the most highly sought after green architects in America. She’d traveled thousands of miles in this Airstream to build environmentally friendly buildings, homes and businesses. Tori had several large and successful projects in Seattle, Santa Fe and San Francisco. She was wrapping up one in Philadelphia just after the first of the year. She did well enough that she could laugh at his offer. But it couldn’t hurt to push him and see how far he was willing to take this.

      “What if I said I would sell it back to you for half a million?” There was no way the land was worth that much unless there was oil, gold or diamonds hidden beneath her feet. She doubted it, though. She’d never heard of Wade Mitchell being interested in any of those things. The only thing about land he cared for was what he could build on top of it.

      Wade didn’t even flinch. “I would get out my checkbook and sign on the dotted line so you could find an even better piece of land and everyone would be happy. Let me assure you that nothing is more important than preserving my family and my history.”

      Wow. He was certainly desperate for this land. She almost felt bad for him. Any other person might have immediately given in and made his day. Four times the value was a great offer. A crazy offer. One that she was probably crazy to turn down. Even with her success, half a million was quite a lump of cash. Tori could certainly do a lot with it: buy new land, build her dream house without a mortgage attached to it, get a new hybrid pickup truck. She had to admit, if it were any other person sitting across the table from her, she’d probably take the money and tow her trailer off into the sunset.

      But it wasn’t any other person. It was Wade Mitchell. And she wasn’t about to sell him this land. Not for any price. Just because it was worth it to watch him squirm. This would be as close to payback as she would ever get. It was his bad luck that he wanted her land.

      “You’re really quite good,” she said, nodding and watching her tea instead of his handsome face. She wouldn’t let herself get pulled in and swayed by his mesmerizing eyes and fabricated sob story. She’d already caught herself being a sucker once this year, and that was enough. Maybe if he came around in a few weeks, she’d let him be her dumb mistake of the New Year. “Did you practice that speech long or was that off the cuff?”

      Wade stiffened, pushing the half-empty cup of tea aside and shelving the charm. “Is all this animosity over your termination years ago?”

      Now it was Tori’s turn to stiffen in her chair. He made her seem petty for holding that over him all these years later. “Absolutely. I don’t take affronts to my reputation lightly.”

      “You weren’t worried about your reputation when you slept with one of our suppliers and put my company in jeopardy.”

      “I didn’t sleep with anybody. I told you then that I didn’t do any of the things you accused me of. Nothing has changed. Just because you didn’t believe me doesn’t mean I wasn’t telling the truth.”

      “They were serious charges, and I needed to deal with them as such. I did what I had to do.”

      “And I’m doing what I have to do. I’m keeping this land. It’s mine. Whether or not I like you or resent what you did is irrelevant.”

      “This isn’t about me or you and your damaged pride. This is about Ken and Molly Eden and everything they worked for. I want to give them back what’s rightfully theirs.”

      Tori straightened and shot him as lethal a gaze as she could manage. “You mean, mine. I signed those papers at the lawyer’s office two months ago. I didn’t hold a gun to their heads and make them sell me this land.”

      “Wouldn’t have surprised me if you did,” he said bitterly, glancing over at the shotgun sitting on the counter.

      “They sold it all on their own. I paid them full asking price and covered all my own closing expenses, so it’s not like I cheated them, either. I don’t know whether you’re their son or not, Mr. Mitchell, but let me just tell you that if you are their son, you’re a crappy one. They told me about Ken’s heart attack and all their medical expenses. Where have you been? In Manhattan? Worrying about making money?”

      “You think I don’t know that?” he challenged. Wade’s eyes flashed with a touch of a temper she’d seen years before. “I’m not proud of it, but I can fix it.”

      Tori stood up from her seat. “You’re just going to have to find another way to soothe your conscience. Send them on a cruise or something, because you aren’t going to browbeat me into selling this land. And that’s final. Please leave.”

      Wade stood, bringing his head a hairbreadth away from scraping the top of her camper. He took a step toward her, and his body loomed large and intimidating in such close proximity.

      Tori couldn’t help the surge of awareness that ran through her body as he came near.