Page 55 of Worth the Trouble

“I’d wait. It isn’t the same. Horses aren’t going anywhere.”

“And resent Cecelia for it every day she succeeds.” He said it gently, which was worse. “I know that marriage, Mr. Dennison. I was in that very marriage.”

That was Cecelia’s mother. Jason set it aside and left it where it was.

“Her mother left when Cecelia was six,” Reginald said, to the glass. “Do you know what I did the next morning? I went to work. I went to work and I built her a company to grow up in, and I held every door she needed to walk through.” He looked up. “It was the only life I knew how to build.”

“Then it’s built,” Jason said. “Let go of the door.”

Reginald’s hand came off the glass. For a second there was nothing on his face at all, and then there was a great deal, and then there was the man who’d walked in.

Reginald reached inside his jacket and took out an envelope, thick and plain, and laid it on the tablecloth. He didn’t push it. He let it sit there.

“What’s that.”

“Capital. Enough to start properly. Licensing, a location, stock, whatever a man in your line needs to do it right the first time.” He said it as easily as he’d ordered dinner.

“What’s the catch.”

“Walk away from her. Tell her your feelings have changed. Tell her whatever a man tells a woman. She comes home with me, and you have a business by spring.”

The food came. The waitress set the plates down and asked if they needed anything. Reginald smiled at her and said no, thank you. Neither of them picked up a fork.

“Does she know you’re doing this?” Jason asked.

“She knows I’m having dinner.”

“She knows you’re having it with me. I told her.” It went in. Reginald’s hand stopped on the glass. “She’ll know why before breakfast.”

“You’d tell her.” Not a question, and what moved behind it wasn’t anger.

“I said I would. On the phone. You didn’t believe me.”

“No man tells a woman everything.”

“Then you’ve been meeting the wrong men.”

Reginald’s hand flattened on the cloth beside the envelope. For a moment he looked every one of his years and a few he hadn’t gotten to yet. “Mr. Dennison. Take the money. Build something. And if, in a few years, she’s done playing at independence and wants to come find you, that’s her business.”

“That money’s hers.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“It’s her trust, or it’s her salary, or it’s whatever you’ve been holding over her head since she was nineteen. It’s hers. You should be sliding it across a table at her and asking what she wants to build with it.” Jason’s hands hadn’t moved. “Instead you’re sliding it at me and asking me to break her heart for it. I don’t know what to call that, sir. But it isn’t looking after.”

Silence. The kind that reached the next table over.

Reginald stood. He picked up the envelope, folded it in half, and held it out. When Jason didn’t take it, he set it down beside Jason’s plate, between the steak and the water glass, and rested two fingers on it.

“Think about it. Make a list. I’ll know your answer when it clears.”

He put bills on the table and walked out, and the hostess stood up straighter as he passed.

Jason sat there.

The waitress came back by and stopped short at the empty chair. “Is everything all right?”

“Fine,” Jason said. “He had somewhere to be.”