‘I told you not to let them know how important that was to me,’ she murmured then let go of his hand to turn back to Mauri. ‘Where?’

‘There’s a bedroom ready for you and your husband upstairs, next door to the one being used by your sister. If you will hear our offer, we will take you there, and you will be free to have all of your possessions back, and I suspect there’s a particular object of importance to you up there.’

‘What is your offer?’ she asked.

‘We don’t care,’ Dax said, taking her upper arm. ‘Come on, we’re leaving. What’s up there can be replaced, I’ll buy you a new one.’

‘You can’t buy me,’ she said, wrenching her arm back and landing him with her ire. ‘I didn’t marry you for your money.’

‘Why did you marry him?’ Brad asked, and he lowered to sit beside his father. The man who had threatened Ivy went out of a side door, but Dax knew it wasn’t over, he would take care of that guy at the first opportunity.

‘I married him because I love him,’ Ivy said, folding her arms. ‘Is there another reason that a woman would marry a man?’

‘Dozens of them,’ Brad said. ‘You were sure it was love?’

‘We’ve made it this far,’ Ivy said.

Dax came up behind her and brought his lips to her ear. ‘Stop engaging him.’

‘What’s the worst that they can do?’ Ivy asked. ‘They’ve proven that they’re not going to hurt us, even if they threaten it, we know it’s not in their best interest to try and scare us.’

‘You didn’t appear to be scared at all,’ Brad said. ‘Even with a gun aimed at you point blank, you didn’t blink. Most women would be weeping and pleading.’

‘Ivy isn’t the weeping type,’ Dax muttered.

If they were going to be stuck having this conversation until Mauri relinquished Ivy’s possessions, then they had better be comfortable doing it. So Dax led his wife to the couch she had occupied when he entered and seated them both. As long as he maintained his focus on Brad and Mauri, he could just pretend that the other women weren’t here.

‘There was nothing for me to be afraid of,’ Ivy said. ‘That’s the great thing about being married to a man like Dax. Few people take the risk of threatening my life because the consequences would be grave for them.’

‘As we’ve just highlighted,’ Mauri said. ‘I am sorry that we had to take such measures. But if we had allowed you to run after Dax then you would not have heard us out.’

‘You mentioned an offer,’ Ivy said.

Dax rested back on the couch, lifting one ankle to the opposite knee. Ivy twisted her body toward him to address Mauri and Brad and pressed her hands into his thigh. ‘You’re not interested in their offer,’ Dax said to her.

‘No, I’m not. But they said we had to hear it, then I could get my things and go. So the sooner we hear it…’

‘We want to offer you the chance of a vacation,’ Mauri said. ‘Two weeks in the California sun.’

‘Why would you want to—‘

‘We can afford our own vacation,’ Dax said.

‘We want you to spend two weeks at the beach house, with your relatives,’ Mauri said, glancing over at the silent women, Dax didn’t follow his eye line.

‘You want to facilitate some big reunion?’ Dax asked. ‘Sorry, we’re not interested.’

‘You have to be,’ Brad said.

‘If you do this, you’ll have the time to consider the offer that I made to you before,’ Mauri said. ‘Then if at the end of it you choose not to agree, we’ll provide you a million dollars, no strings attached.’

Dax didn’t like the way that Ivy shifted. He wanted to throw the offer back at Mauri without any hesitation. But the offer of money did bring clarity about why their relatives had come. ‘How much did you offer them?’ he asked, bobbing his head in the direction of the other two women. ‘That how you got them here?’

‘Financial incentive is effective,’ Maurice said.

‘What’s the point of this?’ Ivy asked. ‘What do you expect to happen?’

‘Family is important, I’ve always believed that, but it’s become more relevant to me recently. When I’m gone, Dax won’t have that parental figure in his life anymore. He and Brad have always tolerated each other, but we know what his relationship with Trystan is like. I don’t want him to be alone in the world.’

‘And you thought that bringing my relatives into it would tempt me to coerce him?’ Ivy asked. ‘I don’t have the influence over Dax that you think I do.’

‘Yes, you do,’ Mauri smiled. ‘You’re sitting here now negotiating with me while he remains silent because he will do what you tell him makes you happy. He doesn’t want to lose you. He turned his back on his life for you.’

‘Not for me, because of you and your unreasonable demands,’ Ivy said. ‘If I had influence over Dax, we wouldn’t be here now.’

‘I’m not expecting you to answer this minute,’ Mauri said. ‘We prepared your room and invite you to spend the night. We can complete our negotiations over breakfast. You’re free to leave at any time, from here or from the beach house if you choose to. There is a lot at stake, and it would be foolish of you both to turn your back on an offer of financial stability that you won’t receive again.’

‘Show us to our room, my husband and I have to talk,’ Ivy said and Dax’s eyes closed.

This was an impossible decision to make. He didn’t want to be Mauri’s puppet anymore, but in a few months Mauri would be out of the picture for good. Now they had the chance of a small fortune even if they didn’t choose to take over the empire, and he could use that money to take care of Ivy for the rest of their lives. She was right, they needed to talk.

Chapter Eleven

For the first time in a long time, it seemed like they didn’t know what to say to each other. The party was still going on downstairs, but they had been shown upstairs to a beautiful room, which had a white carpet and blood red sheets on the four-poster bed. The grand space was at the front of the house, so it had a large window, currently covered by drapes matching the colour on the bedspread.

Brad had given Dax his jacket back, but it was cast aside, as were his shoes and shirt. Now just wearing his pants, Dax strode the width of the room, checked out the bathroom, then came back into the room and slid his hands into his pockets.

‘Ok,’ he said. ‘You were right.’

‘You should get used to that,’ she said, pulling the pins out of her up-do and putting them on the dresser by the nightstand.

‘What are we doing here, Minx? Why don’t we just leave?’

‘If you want to then we can,’ she said. ‘But a million dollars is nothing to ignore. And I don’t want tonight to change how you feel about Mauri. I think… seeing my sister there was a shock, but he tracked down your mother. How does that feel?’

‘When I came back here after Brad told me Mauri was sick, I was… I wanted to ask about my history, wanted to ask questions about where I came from.’

‘Now you can.’ And now Ivy understood what that unknown other thing was that had been playing on his mind.

‘Not sure I want to,’ Dax said. ‘She’s a stranger.’

‘Your identity is tied into being an orphan. You’ve identified yourself that way for a long time, all of your life. It’s not easy to change your whole self-image in a single minute.’

‘Maybe I don’t want to change how I look at myself,’ he said. ‘For all the shit I’ve been through, all the shit I’ve done, things worked out ok.’

‘Right now, you’re my husband. You’re a fighter, a friend, and you’re an ex-enforcer, but… none of those have to change if you let yourself be a son too.’

‘You think this is a good idea?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know what I think,’ she said, sitting on the bed and hooking her heels up on the frame beneath the mattress. ‘When I saw you storm out of that room… I wanted to follow you, then that guy came out of nowhere.’

‘I’ll take care of that,’ Dax said, finding his scowl again. ‘Don’t worry.’