“I’m not going.”

“Yeah, you are.”

I prided myself on being a skillful negotiator. I also knew that, logically, starting the negotiation from an aggressive, dogmatic stance would get me nowhere. However, where Madison Goldbloom was concerned, I simply couldn’t help myself. She called to the four-year-old asshole kid in me. And he came running, ready to pick a fight.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I told you it was a one-off. No.”

“I will pay your rent. Twelve months up front.” My fingers curled over the steering wheel firmly.

“Are you deaf?”

Are you? I’m offering you free fucking rent to do something most women would sacrifice a kidney for.

I had the sense to keep this as a thought and not spit it in her face.

“Do you want a bigger apartment?” I asked, willing to bend over backward to make this happen. It wasn’t even about Dad anymore. Not fully, anyway. My father looked sufficiently convinced Madison and I were an item. I’d kill Julian if he uncovered the truth. And I meant that literally. “There’s a vacant one in my building. Three bedrooms, two baths, sick view. Doesn’t your little friend from Croquis live there? Steve?”

“Sven,” she groaned. “And he’s my boss.”

I knew who Sven was. We did business together. I just wanted to work the “friends” angle and remind her why she wanted to live next to someone she was friendly with.

“You could be neighbors. The place is ready for Daisy to compromise every piece of furniture inside it.”

And I, apparently, was ready to never get her deposit back and shell out close to 750K in total for the pleasure of taking her on another date.

“Daisy is content humping dollar store plant pots to satisfy her needs,” Madison replied sunnily, opening her little pocket mirror and applying lip gloss. I liked that she didn’t paint her face to a point where she looked like someone else. She normally put on lipstick and mascara and called it a day.

“Money? Prestige? Black & Co. shares?”

I was officially the worst negotiator in the history of the concept. If my Yale professors heard me, they would take my degree, roll it into a cone, and smack me in the ass with it. I drove slowly to prolong our negotiation. I was not above kidnapping her if that didn’t work.

She shook her head, still staring out the window. She confused and infuriated me. The dazzling simplicity of her—of not doing something just because it didn’t feel right—was both refreshing and frustrating. In my experience, everyone had a price, and they were quick to name it. Not this chick, apparently.

“What would it take?” I grumbled, trying another tactic. The ball was in her court. I hated her court. I wanted to buy it, pour gasoline on it, and then burn it down. For the first time in my life, someone else had the upper hand. An unlikely someone else. And all because my idiotic brother-cousin (what was he to me, anyway?) had a hard-on for seeing me fail. Everyone else in the family ate up our romance and asked for a second serving. Katie had even prodded me about who was planning Mad’s bachelorette party. She wanted to take her future fake sister-in-law to Saint Barts, for fuck’s sake.

The worst part was that Julian was barking up the wrong tree. I didn’t give a crap about the CEO throne. I mean, I did, but I also knew my place as Dad’s successor was secured. For the first time in my life, I’d done something for an entirely unselfish reason. Whoever said giving was better than receiving was high, because I was definitely not having a merry time doing the charity work.

Still, if Dad found out I’d lied about Madison, he’d be heartbroken, and that was a chance I wasn’t taking.

“Anything?” Madison tapped her lips thoughtfully. “You’d do anything?”

Well, lookee here. I’d finally found something she enjoyed other than getting eaten while sprawled on my granite kitchen island—busting my balls.

I offered her a curt nod.

“And remember, whatever it is you give me, I will only go to one dinner with you,” she warned.

“Crushed,” I drawled sarcastically—again, zero self-control. “Get on with it, Mad.”

She bit her lower lip in concentration, giving it some genuine thought. I imagined she was going to try to inflict as much damage as possible. This was a person who preferred a heating pad to a Tiffany & Co. pair of earrings. A highly unpredictable specimen of a woman. She’d castrate me if she could.

Finally, Madison snapped her fingers in the air. “I know! I’ve been wanting to sleep in for a while now. But ever since you gifted me Daisy—bless her heart—I need to walk her at six in the morning. Any later than that, and she starts scratching the door, crying, and pissing in my shoes. If I go to that dinner thing, you have to walk her every morning for a week. Weekend included.”

“I live on Park Avenue. You live in Greenwich,” I retorted, twisting my head in her direction so she could appreciate how aghast I felt toward her idea.

“And?” She snapped her pocket mirror shut and shoved it back into her purse. We held each other’s gaze on a red light for a moment. I felt my jaw tightening so hard my teeth ground one another into dust. A honking sound from behind us snapped me out of our stare-off.

“And nothing,” I muttered, willing the throbbing vein in my forehead not to pop all over the leather seats. “It’s a deal.”

She laughed with delight, her throaty, sexy voice filling my car and giving me an uncomfortable semi. “Jesus, I can’t believe I dated you.”

I can’t believe you chose this bullshit over a brand-new Park Avenue apartment.

“I don’t know what we were thinking,” I agreed solemnly.

We weren’t dating. You were dating me without my knowledge. If I hadn’t woken up in time, we’d probably be married and pregnant by now.

Now I was thinking about pregnant sex with Madison, and the semi became a full hard-on.

“It was just the sex, wasn’t it? And movies. And eating. No real talking was involved,” she murmured, resting her head back against her seat, her hazel eyes dim.

That sounded about right. We’d talked very little in the months we’d seen each other. Madison had seemed intimidated by me, something I hadn’t bothered rectifying, as it had made our eating-fucking-sleeping arrangement supremely comfortable for me.

“If it makes you feel any better, my no-mingling policy extends to all humans, not just girlfriends,” I offered.

“That does not make me feel any better. I walked around thinking you thought I was stupid,” she accused.

“Not stupid.” I shook my head. “Not overtly brilliant, either, but definitely competent.”

Didn’t they say the truth would set you free? Why did I feel so fucking chained into this uncomfortable moment, then?

“Wow. You are like Mr. Darcy’s evil twin, but sans the charm.”

“So basically an asshole?” I groaned.

“Pretty much.”

I double-parked in front of her entrance. Pediatric Guy was slumped on the stairway. His kneecaps, ears, and Adam’s apple looked like they should be attached to a person at least twice his size. He was lanky in a half-formed-teenager way, his chest caving inward. He had glasses and an intelligent nose I highly suspected women like Madison found attractive. His cheek was propped against his knuckles as he read a wrinkled paperback like some kind of Neanderthal. An actual book with pages and everything. I bet he physically went to the supermarket for his shopping and got his own takeout instead of ordering Uber Eats. This was the kind of heathen she was associating herself with these days.