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I’ll make him take me seriously if it kills me. “Don’t make me choose between you and Charlotte. You wouldn’t like the outcome.”
Max drops into his chair, eyes wide now. “Are you serious?”
“Deadly.”
His expression is the closest to hurt I’ve ever seen on him. “Wow.”
I slap my hands onto his desk before I even realize I’ve walked over here. “You made her walk away from me to get the job she wants. That was cruel. And weird. And control freakish. And I’m prepared to walk away from you to get the woman I love.”
This is exactly the opposite of the story Dad told me about him making up with Eric, but his point was to not let the person you love go without a fight. And he was right. I, sure as hell, am going to fight for Charlotte.
“Love.” Max leans back and blows out a lip-rippling horse breath.
“Yup. It’s been a month. And I’m no less angry about it than I was when you made her leave the wedding. If it had been the flash-in-the-pan infatuation you think it is, I’d have started to feel better by now. And I haven’t.”
He steeples his fingers under his chin. “And does she know how you feel?”
“I think so.” I turn away from the desk and push my hands through my admittedly oily hair. “But I’ve never had the chance to explain it properly.”
“And she means so much to you that you’d throw your big brother in the trash for her?”
I spin back to face him. “Now you’re being melodramatic.” I find myself pointing at him. “And I wouldn’t be throwing you anywhere. You’d be throwing yourself. This is all your choice. It’s you who’s decided family and business don’t mix. It’s you who can’t deal with it. Not me.”
He’s calm and steady. And weirdly not angry, not even on the verge of it. I came here fully expecting a shouting match. But Max looks completely relaxed, and nowhere close to a fighting mood. The only emotion I can read in his expression is concern. Or is that regret in the vertical lines between his brows?
“Sounds like you’ve really thought this through,” he says.
“I haven’t thought of anything else since the wedding. And eventually it came to this. You made Charlotte choose between me and the job. And you made me choose between the family agreement and Charlotte. I’ve been brainwashed into thinking I had to choose you. But I don’t. Just like Charlotte walked away from me for the greater good, I can walk away from you for the greater good.”
“Like you say, though,” Max says, “it wasn’t an agreement with just me. It was a family agreement. Are you seriously prepared to walk away from us all? From the whole family?”
“I don’t think the others could give two shits about the subclause. We only shook on it to prevent a repeat of the Connor nightmare. And that’s never going to happen again. He’s engaged, and happy, and totally together, for fuck’s sake.”
“So you think everyone would be okay with you seeing my assistant?”
“She won’t be your assistant for much longer. She’ll make a big success of the Joyntz takeover and you’ll make her a full-time project manager. And I bet she’ll be an executive not long after that.” I pace back and forth in front of the desk. “And I think the family would want me to be happy, and I think that as long as Charlotte and I are happy together that’s all they’d care about. Certainly a lot more than some childish unwritten rule you came up with.”
“And you think I wouldn’t feel like that? That I wouldn’t want you to be happy?”
I narrow my eyes at him. “What are you talking about? Of course you wouldn’t feel like that. You don’t feel like that.” I gesture at his entire supercilious being. “Clearly.”
He rises from his chair, slowly, like a submarine breaking the surface of the ocean. “Here’s the thing,” he says, pushing his hands into his pockets and taking leisurely strides around his desk until he’s facing me. “If you’d have let me finish my sentence when you came charging in here looking like an unkempt jogger, you’d have heard me say that I was just about to leave.”
“Well, pardon me for holding you up for something as insignificant as my lifelong fucking happiness.”
“Christ, Elliot. I was about to leave to go see you.”
“To see me?”
He nods.
“To my apartment?”
“Yes.”
“Why? You weren’t speaking to me.”
“I was coming to see you because we weren’t speaking.”
