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“Of course you can. And if that doesn’t work… well, I would wager you have the brains to come up with a different solution. Do something to show her that she matters.”
“But what if I don’t matter to her?”
His mother’s features turned serious—almost stone-like. “I can’t say that I know Megan as well as I know others, but I think I know her well enough to be confident when I say she’d never value a thing over a person—even if it’s her business. She’s not capable of something so cold-hearted.
Daniel hoped she was right. With what he was about to do, there would be no going back.
CHAPTERTWENTY
“Aren’tyou supposed to be at work?”
“I’m not going in.” Megan muttered bitterly.
Gabby gasped from the doorway. “That’s two days that I’m aware of that you’ve skipped out on work. This doesn’t have to do with a certain someone, does it?”
“I should have never told you that we got together. It was stupid because it was doomed to fail.” Megan was sprawled out on her bed facing away from her cousin. She had a book open in front of her and while she’d read the same paragraph at least seven times, she wasn’t willing to look Gabby in the eye and admit that their last conversation had really thrown her.
“Well, you did. Has anything been worked out between you two? You know, since the other day?” Gabby entered her room and sat on a rocking chair that would one day be the same that Gabby would rock her children to sleep in. But rather than relax into it, she sat perched on the edge. “Please tell me you two had a talk.”
Megan stared hard at her page. If Gabby thought for even a second that she was going to break down and confess that she’d allowed her heart to get broken and she wasn’t willing to repair it, she was sorely mistaken. There was zero chance of that happening.
“Come on, cousin. I wanted it to work out just as much as you did.”
“What makes you think I wanted it to work out?” she snapped. “Maybe Iwasusing him so I could further my own career. Maybe I was lying when I said I wouldn’t.”
“Except you’re no Wallstreet Wolf and we both know it. You can run a company like nobody’s business but you’re not going to step on necks to do it. So what’s going on? You still avoiding him—pretending that nothing is wrong?”
This time Megan lifted her dark gaze to her cousin. “No one is pretending anything. We haven’t talked and I don’t think he’d be interested in what I had to say anyway.” If he had, he would have come to her first. Of that much she was certain. Maybe she’d pushed him too far. What if he wasn’t willing to come to her because she’d been the bully she’d always been?
Her throat closed up and emotion burned at the back of her eyes. She hadn’t wanted their relationship to end. And that was what had her in such a foul mood. “He was just being so selfish,” she mumbled numbly.
Gabby’s brows shot up. “Daniel?Selfish? Don’t you think you’re projecting a little? He doesn’t have a selfish bone in his body. He’d willingly give you the shirt off his back if he thought you needed it.”
“I just don’t think I can get over the fact that he wouldn’t give me the book tour when he knew I wanted it so bad.” There, she’d said it out loud and now she looked like the villain because if the roles were reversed, she definitely wouldn’t have given the reins over to him. She flushed and turned her face to her book but there was no hiding just how embarrassed she was over the situation.
“Megan,” Gabby whispered, “even if he did that, it wouldn’t prove his love for you. It’d just prove that he’d be willing to let you walk all over him and neither one of you would benefit from that sort of relationship.”
“You’re going to have to elaborate,” she murmured.
Gabby sighed. “Did you give him an ultimatum? Were you trying to guilt trip him into going against what would benefit him just to make you happy?”
Megan winced.
“Megan! He’s got a business to run, too. You can’t force him to hand over something like that. It’s totally different if he’s capable of doing so and offers, but you can’t just insist he sabotage his livelihood.”
Her blush deepened and she groaned. “Don’t you think I know that? You made your opinion very clear the last time we talked.”
“Then why are we still having this discussion? Seems to me that you already know what you have to do. Stop moping and go talk to him.”
Megan shook her head. “I can’t face him. Not after what I said. He wouldn’t want to see me anyway. He probably hates me now.” Her voice broke and a tear dragged down her cheek before she could wipe it away. It landed with a plop on the book in front of her.
“He doesn’thateyou.”
“He’d be stupid not to.” Megan took in a shuddering breath and glanced up at her cousin. “This whole time we’ve been getting closer, I’ve learned a lot about him. Like how he doesn’t even like the coffee shop. He would rather run the ranch with his brother.”
Gabby’s brows lifted even higher.
“I know. It’s dumb because he could easily do it. There’s plenty of work to be had on that ranch. We both know it. And yet he’s being so stubborn because he thinks the only way he’s going to be able to provide for his family is if he steps away from it and does something different. So, I told him he should just have a talk with his family and they’d probably welcome him back with open arms. But… like I said. He’s so ridiculously stubborn he won’t even listen to me.” It was all coming out now—the stuff she’d purposefully left out of their last conversation, one of the bigger reasons she’d felt put off by him keeping the reading at the coffee shop.
