“I don’t think you need my help. I really don’t.”
Tara frowned and peered up at him with those big blue eyes that somehow seemed to reflect the whole world. “After all of the work we did? You don’t want to take credit? I thought you wanted to step out from behind the shadow of Johnathon. I thought it was time for you to put your career first.”
“Maybe I’m tired of doing that. Maybe I want you to have your own win, Tara.”
“Or maybe you’re trying to save your own hide because you don’t truly believe in this project.”
He had to be honest. “I’m still not sold on Seaport. I’m sorry. I wish I was. But I am sold on you and your vision. If anyone can make this work, it’s you.”
Tara shook her head and got up from her seat, the barstool leg scraping against the floor. “I was worried about this. You don’t want to put your name on this project. You don’t want to put your stamp of approval on it.”
He reached for her, over what felt like a monumental difference. “I told you. I want you to have your own win.”
She scanned his face as if she was looking for answers or perhaps some hint that he wasn’t being truthful. He wasn’t sure what he had to do to convince her. “I know you, Grant. You’ll always put your career first. That’s why you never got married. That’s why you could never settle on one woman.”
He almost wanted to laugh at that. The assumption she’d made was remarkably off base. “That’s not the reason.”
“Johnathon always said you were the perfect partner because you were married to your work.”
Grant didn’t want to get angry with the dead. He’d already done plenty of that as far as Johnathon was concerned. But he greatly disliked that his best friend had painted him in that light. It couldn’t have been further from the truth. “I worked hard. That much is true. But that was because I believed in the vision of the company and I enjoyed the challenges I had set out before me. But it’s not the reason I never got married.”
She smirked and cocked an eyebrow at him. “Right. Too many fish in the sea.”
He shook his head. “No. I never settled down because I couldn’t have the perfect woman.”
“You mean you couldn’t find the perfect woman. That’s a myth, by the way. There is no perfect person.”
But there was. At least for him.
“Look, Tara. This weekend has shown me a lot. You and I work well together in every sense. But I have feelings for you. Strong feelings.” That was as far out on the ledge as he could go. He was still gun-shy. Her rejection stung that badly.
Tara swallowed hard. “How am I supposed to believe that when just last week you were being truly unkind to me? How am I supposed to believe that when you won’t stand by my side and make the presentation with me?”
“You have to believe it because it’s true. I know that you said you only want to see me as a colleague, but I need you to at least try to see me as more than that. And if you don’t, I think we’re at an impasse. I can’t work with you and feel the way I feel about you. I couldn’t do it when Sterling was first getting started and I can’t do it now.” As soon as he’d said the words, he realized that he’d finally let the cat out of the bag.
“What did you say?” There was already an edge of betrayal in her voice, like she knew what was coming.
“I don’t want to dredge up the past. I want to talk about the here and now. About us. About everything that happened this weekend. It has meant something to me. I think I’m falling in love with you.” The words had been tumbling around in his head for so long that it was liberating to finally say them. It was also scary as hell.
“No. Don’t muddy the waters by saying that to me. I want you to tell me what you were talking about when you said that you couldn’t work with me when Sterling was first getting started.”
It was time to finally come clean, even when he knew this might be the point of no return. She might never forgive him for what he was about to say. “When Johnathon told me his concerns about having you work at the company, I sided with him. I told him that it was better if you went.”
Tara’s jaw tightened and her eyes blazed with a hurt he’d never seen. “Excuse me? You bought into that whole idea that we couldn’t work together because we were married?” She shook her head and crossed her arms, as if she needed to protect herself from him. “I can’t believe you backed him up on that. It was the stupidest excuse ever.”
He sucked in a deep breath to steel himself, hoping against hope that he could make a plausible argument for why what he’d done before was wrong, but he was prepared to make amends now. “That wasn’t the argument he made, Tara. He may have told you that, but that wasn’t what he said to me.”
Tara’s eyes were wide and pleading. “Then what did he say?”
“He called you a distraction.”
“We were married. I was nothing of the sort. If I was, he wouldn’t have left me.”
Once again, Grant was tempted
