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The truth was that the current state of the company made it hard to justify the $1.5 million purchase I’d agreed to the night before. We were already in the black. The wax museum sale helped keep our noses slightly above the water line, but we were sinking quickly and without more sales of a similar size (or several smaller ones), the company would be inching closer and closer to bankruptcy. Before too long, that closet would be out of room and we’d have to figure out a solution other than to keep doing what we were doing.
I closed the closet door to avoid looking at the metaphor any longer and pulled up a spreadsheet of the company’s finances, instead. While we currently had the funds to go through with the sale, it was like putting another four or five boxes into the closet. Afterwards, there wouldn’t be much room for error.
But that wasn’t my problem. At least not today. We could do a quick turnaround on the house and recoup most of the money, bringing us not to far back to where we started from. Hell, depending on the extent of the damage, we might even justify renovations which, with a little bit of luck, could get us close to breaking even, but the price that Rebecca extorted from us was too high to even hope to break even.
I wanted to ignore all our problems. Close out of the spreadsheet and call Sloane into the office, making love behind the closed blinds. If we were quick enough, maybe nobody would even suspect anything. But even if we got away with it, it wouldn’t offer anything more than a temporary distraction.
She listened to my story about my father the Zeppo, but I’m not sure she comprehended just how deeply it affected me. It felt like I was doomed to destiny.
The office, once my haven and safety away from the rest of the outside world, now felt more like a coffin and a reminder of the horrible personal decision I’d made the night before, which forced my hand into an even worse business decision. I had to get out and go somewhere else where I could breathe and think clearly. With any luck, I’d be able to come up with some sort of magical solution.
I grabbed the keys to my car and left my office. On the way out, I ran into Abigail, who I recently promoted from intern to agent.
“Where are you going, Mr. Hartford?”
“I just need to check on a few of the properties,” I said, which was a lie. I had no intention of doing anything even remotely related to work. “I should be back in an hour or two.”
I didn’t bother to look at her as I ran out. Hopefully she didn’t have any questions for me.
When I got in my car, I just drove as far as I could, on autopilot. But my brain, in its tired, trance state, ended up taking me exactly where I needed to go: my mother’s retirement home.
CHAPTER15
***SLOANE***
Keeping secrets has never come easily for me, but I pride myself in being able to keep them. And I love them more than anything because it means whoever told you the secret trusted you with it. Still, it could be a huge burden to hold onto, especially when it’s something about you and fills you with excitement.
But I walked into the office that morning with every intention of keeping the events of the past twenty-four hours private — a shared secret between Wesley and me. Unfortunately, the happiness was too much to keep inside. Courtney, my office bff, who sat at the desk next to mine, noticed something was up almost immediately when I sat down.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Not much,” I offered. “How’s your morning going?”
She didn’t take the deflection. “No, no, no,” she said. “I see that look on your face. Something’s going on.”
“Nope,” I said, forcing a smile. “Just being my normal, happy self. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
And then, like I always did, I kept talking, and I revealed too much.
“You know, just a normal everyday day,” I said, my brain telling me that if I said it enough, she’d eventually believe me, even as it made it more and more clear that I was hiding something. “Just like every other one. Yup.”
My mind was functional enough, even with the lack of sleep, to know that this was a failing tactic, so I tried a new one.
“You’re acting weird, though,” I said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Courtney laughed at that.
“Yeah,” she said, “I’m acting weird. Let’s go into one of the conference rooms and talk about it.”
The office had small rooms — large enough for three, maybe four people at the most — which we used for personal discussions so as to not distract the others who were working. They weren’t entirely soundproof, but if we kept our voices down, nobody would hear us.
Part of me didn’t want to follow her because then I’d be tempted to talk. And I didn’t want to talk, even though I kind of did. It was just that I was scared about getting too excited. Wesley revealed a lot about his past to me the other night and, in doing so, revealed a part of himself that I’d never seen before. Sure, he was always sexy, but when h revealed that he had a past and feelings, he became an actual person. And that was dangerous because I was liable to fall for him.
Despite my reservations, I followed Courtney into one of the unoccupied rooms and closed the door behind me. We sat across from each other, and she leaned in towards me.
“You’re glowing like a lava lamp, Sloane,” she said. “You met somebody. Spill the tea. I want all the details.”
This was incredibly uncomfortable for me, not in a small part because I thought I was doing a decent job of hiding my excitement. After all, I was always happy. I always glowed, ever since elementary school. That’s what my first grade report card said, anyway. That’s what being a ray of sunshine was all about.
