Page 85 of Hostile Takeover

Shaking my head, I laughed. “This could be so much simpler if you just… let yourself do you what you felt.”

“If I did that, I would’ve run you over weeks ago.”

“Damn, it’s like that?!”

“It was,” she admitted with a shrug. “Now…”

“Now what?”

“Now I only want to run you over about half the time.”

I grinned. “Okay. I’ll take what I can get.”

I turned to head to the shower, but before I could get all the way through the door, she spoke up again.

“Orion,” she called.

“What’s up?”

“Thank you for today,” she said. “For everything.”

I shook my head. “I’ve already told you; you don’t have to thank me for any of that. And I’ve already told you why.”

Instead of saying anything else, she simply nodded, and I moved on to take my shower. Through the time I was in there, I reflected a bit on the conversation just then, one of the first that was just… Cool.

Casual.

It was… kind of nice.

And when I left the bathroom, to find her still in my bed, peacefully sleeping again…that was even nicer.

TWENTY

NALANI

“You’re wearing the earrings.”

Instead of giving him the satisfaction of a response, I flaked another bite of honey-glazed salmon off with my fork, stabbing the piece to lift it to my mouth.ThenI met Orion’s gaze, my expression neutral as I chewed.

It wasn’t until his eyes narrowed a bit, indicating I’d gotten just the tiniest shred of a rise out of him, that I smiled.

The win was small, infinitesimal, to be honest.

But every victory counted when I was fighting a losing battle.

Hell, at this point… I was sufficiently trounced.

I wasn’t conceding though.

Never.

More than a month had passed since the wedding now, and I was—grudgingly—settling into myMrs. Sterlingtitle. The house he’d moved me into was home, I never spent a dime of my own money, and many ofNectar’sbig vendors were suddenly much more generous with their wholesale discounts.

Those were the easy things to accept.

The surface level stuff.

Changes I could happily take advantage of.