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“I do,” she said.

Aside from most on William’s side of the family tree, the rest of the Bond family was way out of her league. All of them millionaires or more. Some billionaires. Or at least heir to a billion-dollar fortune.

She also knew no one sat around and lived off their trust funds either. They all worked. Or so she’d heard since she’d lived on this island.

“I went to school for what is my passion.”

“Everyone should have a passion and go after it,” she said. “You’ve made comments like that.”

“I have. I believe it. If you don’t go to school for it, you should still try to work toward it. I’m not trying to brag.”

“Please,” she said. “You like to and we all know it.”

He laughed at her. “Okay, maybe just a little. But I’m good at what I do. Right out of school, I could have just opened my restaurant. I had the money.”

She snorted. “A trust fund?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m not going to apologize for that. I still worked hard to get Duke’s the way it is. And if I was taking the easy way out, I’d just be my own boss from the first day. But I didn’t. I wanted to learn everything I could. I worked in a few different restaurants. And in those restaurants I had people taking credit for my dishes. My creations. My ideas.”

“When you’re the employee it happens,” she said. She’d worked in enough jobs where she didn’t get credit for her work.

“I know that,” he said. “I accepted it to a point.”

“This is why you encourage so many people?” she asked. “Why you tell customers that it’s my dessert and not yours?”

“Yes. I shouldn’t take credit for something that isn’t of my doing. And because I’ve had this happen a lot I knew it was time to open my place. I can be a tough boss, but I think I’ve relaxed some. In the beginning many would tell you I wasn’t like I am now.”

“You were building your reputation,” she said.

She was continuing to eat and was through the first piece of her French toast. “I was. That reputation means a lot to me. I’d had a few employees leave and try to take recipes with them. They came to the island to get them and experience only to take off after.”

“That is going to happen anywhere, I’d imagine.”

“It will and it does. But going into Southside, I didn’t want to put the work into something, turn it around the way I knew I could, to have someone else just take over. That would make me a consultant and that isn’t how I work. Or not how it was set up. I’d put a bigger fee up if that was the case.”

He was smiling. “Not a bad idea to do that though,” she said. “If you ever get sick of being in the kitchen.”

“Nothing I’m interested in right now.”

“And when I used the wording of sliding in and continue to run it, you thought I was one of those people in your past?” she asked. She didn’t want to feel bad for him, but she did understand more now.

“I knew you weren’t. It was a knee-jerk reaction more than anything. After you left I played the conversation in my mind more about how things were phrased.”

“That’s right,” she said firmly. “I saidifyou didn’t buy. And all I did was ask your opinion about if I could do it. You could have told me more about the contract and chose not to. Why?”

“I like it when your voice gets more confident like that. I talked to Hailey yesterday.”

She knew her face paled. He went to his lawyer. Did she make that big of a mess of things? Could she have ruined this for her parents too? “Why?”

“Because I wanted to let her know. She put me in my place. Said it’d be hard to prove anything. That if I didn’t buy Southside, your parents could sell it to you, and you could do what you wanted. I had no recourse. The contract was with them and them only.”

“I wouldn’t do that though,” she argued. “If I knew about it I’d never have even thought or suggested it. I only asked about it because you’ve made me feel like I was strong enough to take on a challenge like that.”

“I know. Kind of like my words thrown in my face.”

She frowned as she started to eat the second piece, then moved the fruit around on the plate instead while she thought of her next words. “That’s not nice to either of us. That you think I’d throw words in someone’s face or that it’s a negative thing where I’ve felt I’ve gotten stronger as a person? Maybe you don’t like that in a woman. I don’t know.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t mean it that way. Just that here I am trying to get you to be the best person you can be and loved how you’re thriving. And you come to me for something and I act like a fool. It’s more along those lines.”

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