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“I once saw your father take half a cookie from a baby’s mouth and eat it,” Thatcher said with a straight face.
I snickered, almost choking on a grape. “Ten bucks says it was the child of a voting constituent and he was doing it for a photo op.”
He shook his head, clearly trying to hide a smirk. “I wouldn’t take that bet.”
“I’m not my father, you know.” I hadn’t intended the words to come out sounding so damn serious, but it was too late to pull them back. Instead, I shoved a roll of thin salami into my mouth to keep from following it with even more unnecessary honesty.
“No,” he said softly. “Definitely not.”
I wanted to ask him what the hell that had meant—whether it was a compliment or an insult—but it was probably better that I didn’t know.
No taunting. No challenging. No schmoop.
Thatcher slid into his seat—was two hours of proximity too soon for me to have assigned us each seats? Definitely—and McGee got the bus underway again, cruising us smoothly back onto the highway.
“So…” Thatcher cleared his throat, looking suddenly awkward. “I know this trip was even more unplanned for you than it was for me. I hope you didn’t have to cancel any plans to be here.”
“Not really. And don’t feel like you need to make small talk to entertain me if you’d rather not,” I said politely. I kept my gaze on the cracker selection. “We’re going to be on this bus for days, after all. I’m fine being left alone.”
After several beats of silence, I worried I’d offended him—figured I’d do it unintentionally—and found his dark eyes watching me even more intensely than they had the night before through the narrow slits of his mask.
“You’re used to being left alone.”
It wasn’t a question. Thatcher said the words with a certain sympathetic finality. As if he knew more than I did about my personal life. As if he had some insight into my psyche that even I lacked. As if he pitied me.
It made my stomach churn.
“Nonsense,” I said lightly. “I’m never alone. I have more friends than anyone I know—more than I want, half the time—and plenty of people to warm my bed every night. I think you might be projecting.”
His eyes never left me, and he took his time responding. Meanwhile, I chewed a grape into teeny, tiny pieces and told myself that I would not get pissed off, no matter what personal, provoking thing he said next.
But what came out of his mouth was, “You’re right. We’re going to be on the bus for days. So you shouldn’t feel like you need to hold back. If you have something to say to me about work or… or whatever… then say it. Speak freely.”
Thatcher’s tone wasn’t condescending or patronizing. He was… sincere.
Oh, god, the man had no idea what he was asking for.
I opened my mouth to tell him—politely—that he should mind his own damned business and stay out of mine, but my tongue had a mind of its own around this man. “Okay, then. I want to know why someone as smart and successful as you doesn’t have a social media strategy for any of his holdings.”
“Beg pardon?” Thatcher blinked at me, so comically surprised that I would have laughed if I wasn’t trying to keep my emotions in check. He’d given me permission to speak freely about “work or whatever” and seemed shocked that I hadn’t wanted to talk about our… whatever. But I wasn’t touching non-work topics with a ten-foot pole.
I gestured wildly with the cracker in my hand. “While you were napping, I was researching PennCo’s recent history. You run a multibillion-dollar corporation with a massive global presence, yet PennCo Fiber is stuck in the fucking dark ages, even compared to the other players in the industry. Why? And why won’t you—or Layla—at least allow someone to try bringing the company into the new millennium? I could maybe understand if the company was run by a decrepit octogenarian, but you’re…” I tried to block out the images of his sexy, fit body. “Not,” I finished lamely.
His eyebrows scrunched together. “We do have social media accounts. They’re printed on all of our marketing materials and on our websites.”
I threw up my hands, my restraint burning away. “It’s not about having an account, Thatcher; it’s about having a strategy. What’s your brand about? What’s the story you want to tell? How do you want to make people feel? My dad’s campaign has better branding than you, and he has the worst-run social media platform I’ve ever seen. Hell, Willow Honeycutt—you know, the woman who runs the Artists’ Retreat and Centering Center back in Honeybridge?—has a better strategy than PennCo, and her entire feed is pictures of her doing a very bendy downward dog in front of the same tree, week after week after week. At least I know what her business is about. It’s criminal how wasteful this is. Even if you never had another PR crisis like the Nova incident, you still?—”
“Okay,” he said calmly.
“—need to have a basic… wait, what?”
Thatcher shrugged, his cashmere sweater shifting across his wide shoulders with the movement. “If you say we don’t have a social media strategy, I believe you. Come up with one. Pitch it to Layla. She’ll hear you out.”
I wanted to throw the charcuterie tray across the bus like a Frisbee. “If you recall, I brought it up in this morning’s meeting as a potential part of her multipronged approach, and she spoke to me like a child.”
Thatcher lifted one shoulder. “Well, she wasn’t at her best today. She was getting sick, even if she didn’t know it yet, and had a sleepless, stressful night.”
Jealousy came like a sweet, sharp stab to my chest. Sure, it was great that JT believed in me, but what would it be like to have someone like Thatcher believe in you? To have his loyalty and know he’d give you the benefit of the doubt? For damn sure, I’d never know.
