REJECT ME PROPERLY

Chapter 7: Clause Nine

Alina Argstone walked onto Floor 88 without an appointment, past two assistants, a security guard, and a glass door that cost more than her mother's diner, and dropped a stapled document on Avery's desk.

"My terms."

Avery looked at the document. Then at her. Then at his assistant, who was hovering in the doorway with the expression of a woman watching a bus head for a cliff.

"It's fine, Janet," he said.

Janet fled.

From the leather couch by the window, Dino Marse lowered his coffee and sat up like a man who had just been handed front-row tickets. "Oh, this is wonderful. Please continue. I'll be quiet."

"You will not," Avery said.

"I will be *mostly* quiet."

Avery picked up the document. It was eleven pages long. It had a table of contents. It had *footnotes.*

He had built an empire on reading contracts written by people who wanted to ruin him. He had never seen one written by someone who so clearly wanted him to suffer.

"You said no," he said.

"I said no to *your* offer." She sat down in the chair across from him, crossed her legs, and folded her hands on her knee. Green blouse again. He noticed. He hated that he noticed. "This is mine."

*She's magnificent,* Nimor breathed. *Look at her. She came here with footnotes.*

*Stop,* Avery thought.

*She came to war with footnotes, Avery.*

From somewhere just past the edge of his hearing, a second voice, smug and sharp: *Tell your wolf to stop staring. It's rude. Also she's wearing the good bra.*

Alina went scarlet to the roots of her hair. "*Daxy.*"

Dino had no idea what had just happened but was enjoying it enormously.

Avery turned the first page.

**Clause One.** *No kissing unless at least three cameras are present.*

He looked up. "Three?"

"One camera is an accident. Two is a coincidence. Three is a story." She didn't blink. "I'm not kissing you for nothing."

"And if there are two cameras?"

"Then you can wave."

Dino made a sound into his coffee.

**Clause Two.** *Separate bedrooms. Non-negotiable. Locks on both sides.*

"Both sides," Avery repeated.

"I've met your wolf."

*Rude,* Nimor said. *Accurate. But rude.*

**Clause Three.** *Miss Argstone retains her position as Junior Crisis Associate on Floor 30 and performs it in full.*

"You want to keep working," he said. "For me."

"I want to keep working. That you sign the checks is an unfortunate detail." She tilted her head. "When this ends, I'm not going to be the girl who dated a billionaire. I'm going to be the woman who fixed his scandal. That's a résumé. The other thing's a punchline."

He read it again. Then he read her face. She meant it. Every word.

Something in his chest made a small, unfamiliar movement. He ignored it.

**Clause Four.** *Mr. Durke will not spend one cent on Miss Argstone's family. Not on loans. Not on bills. Not on gifts. Not on anything.*

He paused on that one longer. "Your family has debts."

Her face shut like a door in a storm. "My family has *me.* Next clause."

**Clause Eight.** *Upon completion of this agreement, Miss Argstone will receive five million dollars in seed capital, to be used solely to found her own firm.*

"You skipped five through seven," he said.

"I left them blank for you. I'm generous."

"Five million."

"For a nine-billion-dollar deal? I'm practically volunteering." She smiled sweetly. "You can write it in your little checkbook."

Avery set the pages down, picked up a pen, and wrote in the empty spaces.

**Clause Five.** *Miss Argstone will never ask about Mr. Durke's nights.*

**Clause Six.** *Miss Argstone will never enter Mr. Durke's private rooms after dark.*

He turned the page around and slid it across the desk.

She read it. He watched her read it. He watched her eyes stop on the word *nights* and go narrow and thoughtful, the way a journalist's eyes go narrow when someone says *no comment.*

"Why?" she asked.

"That's a question about my nights."

"The contract isn't signed yet."

"It will be." He held her gaze. "Or there's no contract."

For a long moment, neither of them blinked. Then she uncapped her own pen and initialed both clauses, quick and neat. But she was still looking at him when she did it, and he had the uncomfortable sense that he'd just handed her a puzzle she fully intended to solve.

**Clause Seven.** They wrote it together, in a short, vicious volley across the desk. *The engagement ends when Madame Rinora signs. A quiet, friendly separation follows. No blame. No interviews. No tell-alls.*

"No tell-alls," Alina said, initialing it, "applies to you as well."

"I don't give interviews."

"You will now. You're in love."

Dino choked.

Avery turned to the last page.

**Clause Nine.** *Feelings are a breach of contract.*

He read it twice. Then he looked up.

She was waiting for him. Chin up. Eyes clear. The same face she'd worn in the suite when she'd said *I reject you* and walked out in his coat.

"You put this in," he said.

"Someone had to."

"You think I'm going to develop feelings."

"I think *someone* in this room is very dramatic," she said, and every person present knew she meant his wolf.

*I object,* Nimor said. *I object to being written into a legal document as a threat.*

*You ARE a threat,* Daxy told him. *You're a threat in a cape.*

*I do not own a cape.*

*You would if they made one big enough.*

Avery signed Clause Nine. It took him one second. He did not let anything at all show on his face, and he was fairly sure he succeeded, except that Dino was looking at him with his head tilted like a golden retriever trying to understand a doorbell.

Alina signed after him. She dotted the *i* in *Argstone* hard enough to dent the paper.

"Witness," Avery said.

Dino bounded over and signed with a flourish so large it went off the edge of the page. "This is the best day of my life. I'd like that on the record too."

---

When it was done, when the copies were made and the originals were locked in the safe behind the bookcase, Alina didn't leave.

She stood by his desk and pulled out her phone.

"One more thing. Not a question about your nights. A question about mine." She turned the screen toward him. "Somebody texted me after I left here. Deep in the night. From the same number that sent me to Room 1208."

He read it. *Say yes.*

Every muscle in his back went tight.

"Was that you?"

"No." He said it immediately. Then, because she was still watching him with that journalist's look, he took out his own phone, unlocked it, and set it on the desk in front of her. "Look."

She looked. She scrolled through his messages, his calls, his apps. He let her. There was nothing to find. Board members. Dino. His grandmother, who texted exclusively in capital letters.

Nothing that matched the number.

"Then who?" she asked quietly.

"I don't know." It was the truth. It was also, he realized, the most frightening sentence he'd said in years. "But I'm going to find out."

Inside his skull, Nimor had gone extremely, conspicuously quiet.

*Nimor.*

*Hm?*

*Do you know anything about this?*

*About what?*

*The text.*

*What text?* A pause. *Oh, look. A pigeon.*

There was no pigeon. They were on the eighty-eighth floor.

Avery's eyes narrowed.

But before he could push, Daxy cut across the channel like a whip: *So. Clause Nine. What's your bet, Poet?*

Nimor perked up instantly, the pigeon forgotten. *It breaks before the first gala. I'd stake my dignity on it.*

*You don't have any dignity.*

*I have some. I keep it for emergencies.*

*Fine. Your dignity against a steak. Medium rare. It holds.*

Alina frowned. "What bet?"

*Nothing,* both wolves said at once.

"They bet on how long Clause Nine survives," Avery said flatly. He'd heard every word. "His dignity against her steak."

Alina looked at him. He looked at her.

"Well," she said. "Neither of them is getting paid."

"Agreed."

---

The door opened without a knock.

Simone Dalone walked in the way she walked into everything, as if the room had been rehearsing her arrival. Red again. Sunglasses pushed up into her hair. A tablet held against her chest like a shield.

Her eyes went to the signed contract on the desk. Then to Alina. Then back to Avery, and her smile went thin as a paper cut.

"How cozy," she said. "I won't keep you."

She turned the tablet around.

Madame Marilka Rinora filled the screen, pearls gleaming, silver hair swept into its crown. Behind her, a window. And beyond the window, unmistakably, Halden Bay's harbor.

"Avery." Rinora's accent sharpened every syllable. "I have landed."

Avery's blood went cold. "Madame. We weren't expecting you until—"

"Nobody ever expects me. It's my best quality." Her eyes moved off-screen, and Avery realized with a lurch that Simone had angled the tablet so Rinora could see straight past his shoulder. Straight to Alina.

"Is that her?" Rinora asked. "The woman in the coat?"

There was no hiding. There was no time.

"Yes," Avery said.

Rinora studied Alina through the screen for a long, silent moment.

"Good," she said. "Then she will have dinner with me tonight. In person. Orelle, at eight." She leaned closer to her camera. "I would like to see for myself what kind of woman makes Avery Durke lose his coat."

The screen went black.

Simone lowered the tablet and smiled at Alina like a cat that had found the cream, the canary, and the key to the cage.

"Wear something you can run in," she said.