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He gaped at her. “You’re joking right?”
“No.” She took a step toward him, eyes flashing. “You don’t even care about your coffee shop. You wouldn’t pour your blood, sweat, or tears into that place if you had been the first-born of your family and got to inherit the ranch. But this?” She gestured wildly at the shop. “This is everything.”
He let out a derisive laugh. “You know what? I can’t believe I actually fell for it.”
She sobered, staring at him as if not understanding what he was getting at. Heck, she probably didn’t see what she was doing to them.
“You don’t care about anyone but yourself. No, I’m wrong. You don’t care about anyone or anything but this place. You don’t know how to be happy. You think happiness is something you find in hard work. News flash. It isn’t. Haven’t you ever heard the old adage that you should work to live not live to work? This shop? Yes, it’s your passion. It’s the thing that you love doing. But it shouldn’t be the thing that tears you away from a loving relationship.”
“You want to talk about love? You want to discuss passion? What about your passion for everything out in the country? Your shop is literally a prison compared to where you find happiness.” She snorted as she shook her head. “This is my escape. And if it doesn’t survive then I won’t have anything.”
“You would have hadme.” He heaved, sucking in the oxygen he felt he couldn’t get enough of. That was what this all boiled down to. She loved the bookstore even more than she loved herself. There was no room in her heart for anyone else.
Just then the air conditioner kicked on. He glanced up then let out another laugh. “Well, isn’t that nice? Your bookstore is telling you it loves you, too. You know what? I thought you’d changed. I thought you could think of someone else for once—that you could give something, sacrifice something to make them happy. But I was wrong.”
She glowered at him. “You’re just jealous I know what I want and that I’m happy with it. You need to find your own passions and not piggyback off what I love.”
Her words shattered him.
Love.
Her love didn’t stretch to their relationship. She only loved him when he was taking care of her business. Daniel shook his head and strode toward the door.
“Where are you going? Are you going to tell them you’re not interested?”
He stopped, not facing her. “Give it up, Megan. I’m not going to tell them anything. That book reading is going to happen at the Mountaintop Java and there’s nothing you’re going to do about it.”
She gasped. “You wouldn’t.”
His shoulders felt heavy, weighing on him as he took his final steps toward the door. When he reached it, he paused. “You might think I’m doing this for my own good, but you’d be wrong. I’m going through with this because it’s just good business sense. I didn’t steal it from you, and I most definitely wouldn’t prioritize it over you if our roles were swapped.” He glanced over his shoulder toward her. “If this has taught me anything, it’s that you and I are very different and it’s better to know that now than down the road when someone might have really gotten hurt.”
Megan still glowered at him.
“I have employees who depend on me. The funny thing is that if it were just me? I probably would have declined just to make you happy. But I don’t see where that would benefit either of us. I think it’s best if we stop seeing each other.”
She didn’t argue. Not a single word or movement to suggest she disagreed with his statement.
“Goodbye, Megan.” Daniel pushed the door open and slipped out, no longer feeling the euphoria that had come with today’s events. He’d been wrong about Megan after all. She didn’t love him, didn’t want to prioritize him or his business.
She was just using him.
CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
Megan couldn’t breathe.
Her heart felt like it had been thrown into a boxing ring during the big fight and stomped on. Her stomach was clenched and wadded up tightly like a crumpled ball of paper. She didn’t know if she could even move without losing her balance at this point.
Everything felt hazy in her mind and even it seemed to ache with the same intensity as the rest of her body.
This had to be a dream. She had to have fallen asleep at her desk and been unable to be woken up.
No, not a dream.
She was trapped in a nightmare—one that had dropped her into her own personal purgatory. Everything she knew about her life was unraveling before her eyes. The string was dangling and sweeping through her fingers. No matter how hard she tried to catch it, she couldn’t.
“Excuse me, ma’am. I said I would like a huckleberry lemon tea, please.”
She blinked and stared at the customer in front of her.
