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“If you intend to look after Kit, then there won’t be anything to be worried about.” Stacy smiled. It was a harsh reminder, but it was intended good-naturedly.
“I haven’t made a decision yet. I’m going to need to think about this.” I got up as the waitress appeared with the first few plates of food. Although I’d ordered, I walked away from the table.
This was all too much for a moment, the familiar ache I’d carried inside me for several weeks back after just a few days of it fading. I hurried out of the restaurant and tried to figure out where to go from there. Given I didn’t have access to any of the huts right now, I knew I couldn’t hide as I’d done the previous time I had been here, but there was a small garden that would give me some privacy.
I walked toward it, trying to slow my pace and force back the tears. None of this really made any sense. I kept coming back to the same one question. Why would Lukas do this? Why would he put so much effort into making a project tailored to me just to get me to accept another job? Why would he do this after the way he had been hurt before?
His friends had as much as admitted he’d broken up with me out of fear of me being just like his previous girlfriend and using him to make money or get a project done. And here he was, handing me a project after breaking up with me? Was this intended to mock me?
As soon as I’d found a bench a little more out of the way, I sat and tried to process all this. When Daniel had asked me to come back to listen to a pitch, I had assumed it would be a little ideahe had. Lukas had told me Daniel had some property and he was making more money than ever.
I’d thought I would be doing a smaller project for Daniel to help the quarterback progress, not something this large again. But Sarai and Daniel had gone to all this effort.
Saying no to something Lukas was involved in would have been easy, but after Daniel and Sarai had gone to so much effort to make it work for me? Both of them had put their reputations on the line. I was angry, and touched, and I didn’t know which one I felt more.
Several minutes passed as I wrestled with the situation. I didn’t want to let my friends down. They cared, and that much, I believed. But in knowing what to do about the decision, I was more conflicted. Saying yes might give Lukas a clear conscience I didn’t feel he deserved.
Before much longer passed, a few of my friends appeared. Matt and Stacy, both looking through the gardens for me. They had a small carrier bag that appeared to have at least one takeout tub or something similar in it. No doubt, my food.
“Don’t tell me you ate already?” I asked.
“Enough,” Matt replied. “None of us wanted to leave you alone for long. We brought all the food along with us. Eat it or not, but we’d like to join you while you contemplate this. If you want to talk to us, we promise to listen, but either way, we were not going to let you lose out on a good meal if there was a chance you actually did want it.”
I couldn’t help but laugh as they sat with me and passed the food back out. I had good friends if nothing else. Maybe they could help me get through all my feelings and figure out what was best for me to do.
CHAPTER NINETY-FIVE
Lukas
I was pacing again. I knew it and couldn’t bring myself to stop. I just needed to. I knew Daniel and Sarai had met up with Kit and I knew both of them had promised to do their best, but I didn’t know if she had said yes or no and I was waiting for that moment.
Despite repeatedly telling myself I wasn’t doing this to win her back, I couldn’t help but feel the only way I would get her back was if she said yes to this. If she said no and went back to England, then I was unlikely to ever see her again.
Obviously one didn’t automatically lead to the other either. But it was as close as I could get. If she didn’t stay, there was no time to make it up to her. And I didn’t even know how I could do that yet. I’d spent the entire week working in one capacity or another. Despite my first project with Sarai being done, I still had a few loose ends to tie up.
On top of that, I had neglected some of my other stuff in the push to get Sarai’s project done on time, and I needed to clear a backlog of ideas, changes, and all sorts of other situations that needed my attention and expertise.
My team had done their best and I had Henry’s aid, as usual, but that didn’t mean I was on top of it all yet.
Sarai and Daniel had come up with a very ambitious plan, especially on top of needing the first project to make money, and I needed the earlier one to pay me well to be able to afford what I was doing for Kit. At least to some degree.
Financially, I was stable. The advantage of being a world-renowned architect was that I already owned a fair amount of property and the secondary income from renting out what I didn’t use ensured any debt and utilities on them all was covered. My income from my company gave me the lifestyle for everything else.
And if I didn’t bring paying work into my company, then it couldn’t afford my wage without being hampered for the foreseeable future. I would need to work on something, or hope Richard could generate the cash we needed.
Because we were essentially trying to get another project off the ground before the previous one had time to really settle into an earning period, the investors were also a little twitchy. It was dangerous ground to be on, because they would know they had the upper hand in any negotiations. So far the reputation of the four of us was holding it together, but I knew we could only trade on that for so long.
Yet again, I checked my phone but there still wasn’t a message from either of my friends. It didn’t bode well for me getting a yes if Kit hadn’t replied yet. It had been long enough that I was sure they would have explained the plan already and could have gone over the details we had twice.
I knew now Kit wasn’t entirely financially motivated, but that hadn’t stopped me wanting to make it as enticing as possible for her. And Daniel had said he’d take care of all of the rest of the concerns she’d had. I didn’t know what they were, other than I was supposed to stay away from her unless she approached me.
It was something I’d agreed to readily enough, but it didn’t stop me wanting to rush to the vacation park and get down and grovel in front of her right now.
“Still pacing?” Henry asked as he came in with coffee and bagels for both of us. It was supposed to be a distraction to have lunch with him, but I wasn’t sure I could stomach any of it.
“I feel like I’m always pacing, unless I’m doing something to actively help these days.”
“I’m not going to argue with that assessment.” Henry put the lunch on my desk and dug into his own from the comfort of one of my guest chairs.
