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Making it to the door, I pushed my back into it to open it, and held the door open with my body to allow Melody to walk through with her ice cream tubs.
“I’m parked right here,” she said, jerking her head in the direction of the white SUV.
As soon as I got the ice cream in the back of her vehicle, I thanked her again and made my way back inside my shop. Crossing the room quickly, I got myself behind the counter again and apologized, “I’m so sorry about the delay. What can I get for you today?”
“Oh, I’m actually not here for ice cream,” he confessed.
The minute the words were out of his mouth, catching me off guard completely, I gave myself a moment to take the man in.
He was handsome. Tall, with a full head of dark hair and a set of piercing blue eyes. And he was wearing a suit and tie with a peacoat on top of it.
While it wasn’t impossible for a guy who looked and dressed like the man standing in front of me to want to grab himself a scoop of ice cream, it wasn’t common. And now that I was taking him in, I could see how out of place he seemed to be.
“Okay. How can I help you then?”
Offering a sympathetic look, he said, “I’m not sure if you can. I’m looking for Rhea Marks. Is she around?”
How did this man know my name?
“You’re looking at her,” I told him.
Surprise washed over him, and he spent the next few moments taking me in. Evidently, he wasn’t expecting me to be Rhea, but I didn’t have the slightest clue why that was.
Shaking his head as though needing to rid it of the thoughts inside, he pulled out his wallet, slid a card out, and held it in my direction. “I’m Wyatt. Wyatt Westwood. I wanted to stop in to speak with you about a letter we sent to you earlier this week and the subsequent response we received from you.”
I’d already taken the card from Wyatt, but the second I learned who he was, I dropped the card onto the counter in a way that indicated I thought I might get some sort of disease from it. “I’m not sure there’s anything to discuss, Mr. Westwood.”
I could hear the air as it rushed past his nostrils while he pressed his lips together in a thin line. Evidently, that wasn’t the response he was expecting or hoping for.
“Please, call me Wyatt,” he corrected me. “And I realize we might have gotten off on the wrong foot with sending that letter to you. We should have come directly to you to talk about it.”
I smiled in return, but it was forced. “It’s really okay that you sent the letter instead of coming here.”
“But your response says otherwise,” he noted, his head tipped curiously to one side.
I shook my head and explained, “My response would have been the same either way, Mr. Westwood.”
“Wyatt,” he corrected me again.
I chose not to respond. Instead, I narrowed my eyes on him and didn’t allow the intensity of his own stare to intimidate me. I’d practiced this. I knew how to appear just as unbothered and confident as the next guy. I didn’t need to be wearing the fancy suit and have millions of dollars to my name to know what I wanted, how to get it, and what I was willing to do to keep it.
When I made no move to speak, Wyatt finally caved. “I understand you’re saying that now, Rhea, but?—”
“It’s Miss Marks,” I corrected him. Two could play this game.
Wyatt’s chin jerked down slightly. “Right, Miss Marks. Like I was saying, I understand your initial response and reaction is to decline, but I think it’s worth sitting down to have a discussion about this.”
“Worth it for who?” I countered.
He cocked a brow, confidence brimming from every feature on his handsome face. “I’d like to think we can make it worth it for everybody involved.”
Half of my mouth quirked up in a smile as I stared at him with such disbelief. “You’re all the same, aren’t you?”
“Pardon?”
“All of you rich guys,” I clarified. “You all think it just comes down to throwing your money around. I hate to break it to you, but it doesn’t work that way.”
Wyatt looked at me like he could see right through me. If I were a different woman, if I wasn’t as tough as I was from all I’d gone through already, the look in his eyes might have made me shudder.
