“If you’ll arrange for me to meet her tonight, I’ll hand everything over to you. Every note, every idea, every slide. It’s yours. In return, I expect you to end whatever you’ve got with her and to fuck off. You don’t get to see her again. She’s mine. And she’s going to stay that way. You will forget every minute of every day—or night—you spent with her.” When my brother looks as if he’s going to protest, I shut him down. “Look, you asswipe. I’m potentially giving you one point seven million dollars for this privilege and the title of the number one agent on the island. So I don’t want to hear another fucking word.”
“I wasn’t going to object. I simply had a few questions.”
He probably wants me to paraphrase the presentation so he can be sure it’s up to snuff. Fuck him. “It’s going to sell the Stowes. Don’t worry about that.”
“I’m not.” He shakes his head. “Do you love her?”
Why is he asking? First, I’ve already shown my hand in the most obvious way. Second, why the hell does it matter to him? “Do we have a deal?”
“Yes or no, Maxon? Do you? I’m not budging until you answer me.”
I chug the rest of my drink and slam the stem on the table. “Yes. Of course I love her. I made a huge mistake the day she disappeared from my life. I know that. I’ve tried to tell her…” I toss my head back and draw in a deep breath, looking for patience and calm. “I’ve been a fucking mess since she left.”
Griff smiles. It’s the first genuine curl of his lips I’ve seen him wear in…well, years. “I should tell you a story.”
What? I just admitted that I’m falling apart and I’m completely in love, and Griff wants to blab out some tale? “Now?”
He holds up a finger. “It’s relevant, I promise. You might eat your dessert before it becomes a puddle.”
I look down and see that my ice cream is rapidly liquefying. I’m not broken up about it, per se. But the dish is in front of me. Wasting it seems a shame, and Griff is going to pontificate about something, so I might as well keep busy while he does.
The first bite is heaven. The next is no different, just sweeter. I moan. “This shit is good.”
Griff laughs, and it’s almost like old times, hammering out how we’re going to approach a client or a property over a meal. We did it so often when we were business partners. I miss it. I miss him. Even though I’ve spent the last three years thinking I hate him…I don’t. I can’t. I don’t respect him for being a dick to Britta. And I’m pissed as hell that he even looked twice at Keeley, but that’s my fault far more than his.
“Yeah.” He finishes another bite of the dessert, then wipes his mouth. “It’s the only thing, besides the view, I ever liked about this place.”
“Ditto.” Too many memories of uncomfortable anniversary dinners here for me, too. “All right. Tell me your story.”
My brother sucks in a deep breath and lets it out as if he’s gearing up to say something major. “When I left following the secret deal and your split with Tiffanii, I…um, had trouble sleeping and concentrating. Four months later, I started seeing a therapist.”
I rear back. Griff stating that is basically an admission he’s not perfect—something he’s sorely resisted owning up to in the past.
“For the record, now that I have nothing to lose, I didn’t stab you in the back over the ‘secret deal.’”
Griff rubs at the back of his neck. “I’ve suspected that for a couple of years.”
I can’t help it. I stare at him like he’s the most ridiculous bastard on the planet. “Why didn’t you call me, then?”
“Honestly? I didn’t think I could. I’d fucked up so big. I thought you would hate me forever, especially after I compounded one mistake with another by moving Tiffanii in with me. She told me so many lies… That you cheated on her. That you’d been working that secret deal for months and hiding it because you wanted all the glory and profit. That you got her pregnant and threw her out.”
That fucking pisses me off. “You believed that? It’s utter bullshit!”
He holds up a hand. “I know that. Now.”
“Why did you believe her at all?”
“She came up with just enough paperwork to be persuasive. Somehow, she copied the signature page of your listing agreement with that prince, which included the date…but none of the terms about confidentiality. She recorded a video of her pleading with the locksmith who re-keyed your place the day you threw her out. She even had a positive pregnancy test from her doctor. No idea how she manufactured that…” He sighs. “I think at the bottom of all that, I heard Dad’s voice telling me that partnering up with the competition wasn’t blending forces to make something better, just cooking up my own demise.”
Yeah, I’ve heard that speech of his about ten thousand times myself. I remember fighting the pull of his constant browbeating and brainwashing when Griff and I were kids and during most of our partnership.
“I believed in us,” I grind out between clenched teeth. “We were doing great things.”
He nods slowly. “Amazing things. But I needed someone to help me get my head on straight.”
“So you saw a therapist?”
“Yeah. Dr. Wilson was useless. Couldn’t stand her or her leading questions. It seemed like she talked more than she listened. But she had this receptionist… At first, I noticed her because she would send me apologetic glances when I stormed out. Finally, she started talking to me. Small talk at first. But she sounded so compassionate, you know. Eventually, those chats led to longer discussions outside the doctor’s office. She asked me questions that really made me think. It wasn’t long before I realized that this woman who merely answered the phone was far more helpful than the woman with PhD after her name. So we started having coffee, walking along the beach. She listened. She played devil’s advocate. And she refused to take a dime for helping me.”
That’s pretty selfless. “So what did she want?”
“Nothing. A friend, I guess.” He shakes his head as if he’s still not sure. “To help. That’s who she is. Anyway, she told me I’d been wrong. She’s been telling me that for over two years.” He laughs at himself. “She’s the first beautiful woman I’ve ever spent hours and hours with and didn’t want to nail.”