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“You damn near turned down this job to go back there again and we both know it was over her.”
“That was when I thought she was too green to protect herself.” I refill my glass. “She’s been with them for six years. She doesn’t need her hand held.”
“She knows the company’s in trouble,” he assumes, downing his own drink.
“She knows.”
“And?” he prods when I offer nothing more.
“You aren’t going to let this go, are you?”
“No,” he says. “Because friends don’t let friends deal with shit alone, as you’ve proven over and over both professionally and personally. Talk to me.”
“We have a contract to deal with.”
“That we’ll handle.”
I inhale and let out a breath. “She wants me to go to Denver. She wants me to save them.”
“Them or her?”
“Both. My grandmother sent her.”
“Gigi?” he asks, incredulously. “Why would she think that you would ever help Gigi?”
“Obviously, that’s why Gigi sent Harper. Or the whole clan of them sent her.”
“You think they know you two hooked up?” he asks.
“When I look into her eyes, no, I don’t believe she’d tell them or use me. When I’m with that woman, I’m one hundred percent into her. She seems honest, sweet, smart, too smart to be with those assholes. When I step back like now, I see six years of her with them. Something doesn’t add up.”
“You almost went back to them just to be a part of a family unit,” he reminds me. “Maybe she needs that unit.”
“It doesn’t feel right.”
“But she does, correct? She’s not one of them.”
His question comes from understanding. He’s the only person I talk to, the only person in this world I really trust, outside of a few of my SEAL buddies, and we never speak. We’d die for each other, and be there for each other with one phone call, but they don’t know me beyond blood and sacrifice. Grayson does. He knows about the moment I saw her on that stage. He knows how it affected me. He knows how I reasoned that away, as some Bastard/Princesshead game I’d put on myself. “Six years, Grayson,” I repeat. “That’s loyalty, not obligation.”
“But she doesn’t feel like one of them,” he presses. “You keep saying that for a reason, and you have the best instincts I’ve ever seen.”
“I have a head for numbers. I have a head for statistics. That’s not this. I can’t trust my instincts when it comes to a woman I want to fuck. Maybe I just want what I didn’t have or can’t have.”
He studies me for several long moments, not entertaining my musings. He gets right to the point. “You don’t want to turn your back on her. What are you going to do?”
“I told her to get out of there and I offered her a job.”
“Which you knew she’d decline,” he comments, lifting his glass in my direction. “Where does that leave you and her?”
“I made sure she knows the door is open. She can leave.”
“You mean she can come to you.” He leans forward. “Do you really think she knows she can come to you?”
“I repeated the offer more than once.”
“In a short meeting after a six-year wait for a reunion. How do you know anything about her and her motives at this point?” He taps the table. “Let’s be honest. Let’s get to the meat of this. We both know the state of that company for reasons you probably don’t want to share with Harper. We both know there are things going on that spell trouble.”
“Get to the meat, Grayson.”
