Reborn to Dodge the Bad Marriage novel Chapter 126

Chapter 126 The Winning Bid

Adrian looked at how certain she sounded and believed about half of it. “You have a way?”

“I do!” Mandy stood up, smiling through a face still wet with tears. “Believe me, Ace. I’d give my life for you. Winning you one project is nothing.”

Adrian frowned at her. “What are you going to do? Don’t do anything stupid. It won’t work.”

He assumed she meant to go after the official running the bid, and he’d already looked into him. That official had no interest in women.

Mandy looked at him, crying and smiling at once. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to do anything stupid. I’ll see you at the hall.”

Then, she turned and walked out, straight to where she was going.

Two hours later, in the hall where the bidding was held, Nora sat in her seat and looked over the company representatives who had come to compete.

Julian turned his head. “Why didn’t you sleep a little longer?”

“I want to see the result myself,” Nora said. “That’s the only way I’ll settle.”

She needed to watch Adrian take Orion with her own eyes.

After all, she’d dug the hole, and now she got to watch him walk into it one step at a time, sure he’d landed something that would put him on top of the world.

And then, at the exact moment he was highest, he’d come straight back down into the mud.

That’s what despair looks like.

“Nora, you’re here too?” Mandy came in through the door with Adrian and clearly hadn’t expected to see

her.

“I’m sitting right here and you still have to ask. Are you blind?” Nora’s eyes went to her empty hands, and one corner of her mouth lifted.

Any other time the two of them turned up together, Mandy would have his arm or his hand, showing ¡everyone exactly who he belonged to.

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They still came in side by side, but Adrian kept a clear gap between them, and there was no arm and no hand anywhere in it.

The look on Nora’s face made her furious, and she set her teeth.

He glanced at her, then said to Mandy, “Sit down.”

The seating worked out neatly, and Adrian ended up right beside Nora.

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Chapter 126 The Winning Bid

Mandy couldn’t hold the jealousy in and glared at her. “Don’t waste your energy, Nora. We’re winning this today.”

“Juan is very good at this. Don’t call it before the end.” Nora turned her head to look at her. “Those marks on your neck haven’t faded yet, have they? I have a good ointment. Do you want it?”

The color went out of Mandy’s face, and she straightened her scarf until the marks were completely hidden.

Nora watched her do it and let out a small laugh.

From right beside her, Adrian watched that small smile come up on her face, and something in him shifted.

This close, he could smell her, clean and light, and the angle of her profile looked more than ever like whoever had pulled him out of the rain.

“You…”

Mandy tugged at his sleeve. “Ace, it’s starting.”

Adrian looked up at the people filing into the seats at the front, and the thought that had just crossed his mind slipped away.

The bidding on Orion began.

Each company got up and tried to outshine the last, laying out its position, its plan, its key people, its forecasts, and what everyone stood to gain….

Adrian came up soon enough, and he started on the plan.

Nora and Julian both turned to look at him with cold faces full of alarm, exactly like two people who wanted to stop him and couldn’t.

Mandy raised her eyebrows at her, pleased with herself.

Adrian finished, and the applause came back loud enough to fill the room. They liked the plan.

Julian went next, steady and unhurried, laying out where his company was headed, what it brought to the bid, the numbers behind it….

The confidence coming off him pulled every eye in the room onto him.

Nora looked up at him and couldn’t help thinking that if Orion hadn’t been a project he’d chosen to drop, he could have turned the whole thing around even after she took the proposal.

Adrian had nothing to match that.

Mandy watched Julian leave him in the dust and nearly snapped the pen in her hand.

Then, she remembered that the Westons were going under, and it settled her.

When he finished, Mandy couldn’t help saying it under her breath. “Nora’s heart isn’t with Julian, is it? This project is ours.”

Julian’s voice came back cool. “You should worry about yourself. Mr. Pierce looks very bothered about last

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Chapter 126 The Winning Bid

night.”

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Finished

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