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And now because she couldn’t let the offense go, she came off as pathetic. This was now her issue, not his. He’d apologized.
Graham brushed his knee against hers, jarring her out of her reverie. “So much would be solved if you would just change your mind and come back.”
“For you,” she said quietly. “But not for me. Falling back into who I was, forgetting the total dismissal my father gave me, would be taking the easy way. But it wouldn’t be the right way. Not for me.”
“So you’re going to teach the old man a lesson, huh? And in doing so, make my task harder? Hurt the company you loved?”
“I’m not being spiteful. I’m doing what is right for me. My father manipulated me again today. He knew what his announcement would do to me, but he tossed that ace onto the table.” She wondered if her father had used the cancer card to manipulate her. Otherwise, why hadn’t he told her and her brothers when he’d been diagnosed? Why hadn’t he told her before going to a headhunter and hiring someone to run the company? She didn’t understand him any more than she understood the reason she sat beside Graham in the dying light of the day.
“So you’re going to keep this wall between you. You’re going to work for Monique… work on stealing the very accounts you helped bring to Ullo? That’s your plan?”
“You make me sound like a bad person. I’m not. I have never known anything other than my father’s company. See? I say ‘my father’s’ because it’s his. He didn’t bother to consult me on any of this. If he had told me and asked me to help him plan, I would have done that. He didn’t. Because it’shiscompany. I’m devastated about the cancer, but that doesn’t change anything.”
She stood and stepped away. She didn’t want to talk about her father anymore. No more allowing the love she felt for him to mold her intent. Nothing had changed her goal: to prove herself to everyone. To prove to herself she could make her own future without her father’s name, without her father giving her all she had. This was business.
It’s not personal… but it felt that way.
“Tess,” his voice followed her, pricking at her resolve. It was business between her and Graham, too. She shouldn’t have asked him back into her world, shouldn’t have showed weakness in front of him.
“We should head back to the car,” she said, moving in the direction they’d trod minutes before, not bothering to look over her shoulder.
He spun her around. She jerked her arm away, but he didn’t release his grasp. “Tess.”
Armor in place she looked up at him, at the softness in his blue eyes. “What?”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“You know what’s wrong with me. The same thing that has been wrong with me since the day I walked into an ambush in my father’s office. Life has been bitch-slapping me, serving me up shit sandwich after shit sandwich. I’m pretty full on what life’s been giving me. Look, you were nice to come and get me, to play the knight on a white horse, but I shouldn’t have asked it of you.”
He dropped his hand. “So nothing between us has changed?”
“How can it? You’re still you. I’m still me. And between us is a gap full of hurt, anger, and betrayal. Nothing has changed.”
Graham’s mouth formed a line and gone was the softness he’d lent her when she’d needed it. “I’ll take you back.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
GRAHAMLOOKEDDOWNat Tess as she stood in front of him, chest heaving with emotion, green eyes resolute, and his heart ached.
He should take her home and be done with her. After all, she’d made everything so damn difficult in his life. Things were supposed to be good—he had a decent job and a steady paycheck. Emily had fallen back into the same easy relationship they’d shared that summer. Monique had taken the high road… for a little while at least. Life smelled like a summer rose.
Yet Tess was the thorn pricking him.
He thought about her constantly. The way her skin felt beneath his fingertips, the scent of her hair, the way she’d made love to him, fierce and tender at the same time. He wanted her desperately.
But he was so far away from having Tess, he might as well be standing on the other side of the world.
And her leaving Ullo had made his workplace a living hell. Not only was he juggling more than what he’d signed on for, but the staff resented him. The coffee Billie brought him was old, papers were misplaced, and a cold shoulder would have been welcome compared to the icy reception he’d received. It was a wonder he didn’t have frostbite.
Everything would be so good if Tess would come back. Damn her stubborn pride.
“Don’t shut the door, Tess,” he said, giving a last-ditch effort to bring her to him… even if it was begrudging.
“The door is already shut.” Her delicious lips pressed into a line and she crossed her arms.
“No, it’s not,” he murmured, brushing her hair back from her face.
She batted his hand, even as something hummed between them. He felt the buzz of desire and knew she felt it, too. “I can’t, Graham. Things are too complicated. We made our beds, and now we’ll lie in them whether they’re lumpy or not.”
