The Bluff (Graham Brothers, #2)(90)

James walks toward me, his face still a hard blank, his jaw and shoulders tight. When he lifts his hand to slam my laptop shut, I flinch. The sound is so incredibly final.

The thing is, even in his state of silent fury, James is wildly beautiful. Maybe wild and beautiful is a more apt description. He’s like the big grizzly bear you really wish you could hug even though you know it would probably rip your face off.

“Do you want me to—”

“Why did you do this?” he asks, stepping back and crossing his arms.

“I did it because I wanted to. For you. I like thinking this way, planning, visioning. Going to the conference really helped me get an idea for what this place could be, how to bring your dream to life.”

“My dream.”

“Yes.” I’m agreeing, but it feels more like surrendering, and not in the peace treaty way. More like a surrender preceding imprisonment or maybe banishment. My mouth itches to find a smart comment or a sarcastic retort. Protection for myself. But I know that would make it worse.

“I didn’t ask for you to do this,” James says.

“I know.”

“I didn’t want you to do this.” He sweeps a hand toward my closed laptop. “I didn’t want this at all. I don’t want any of it.”

He gestures now to the room at large, and I’m consumed. He doesn’t want this building? The brewery itself?

“All of this got away from me.” James is muttering now, not looking at me, not really looking at anything, his eyes wild and unfocused.

So, yeah. Clearly, I should have listened to the part of me saying it would be better to wait for this conversation. This is like the fake website times a thousand. Or a few hundred thousand. I categorically underestimated how upset James was or overestimated the power of my presentation.

I have no more words. At this point, it seems best to just let Mount St. James erupt and assess the damage later.



“You talked to my family about Dark Horse. About the financials, the business plan. You showed them this presentation?”

His voice is so full of hurt, so calm, so deadly, so painful. I feel like James has taken a spoon out of a drawer and is using it to scrape out everything in me.

I swallow hard and nod. Another miscalculation. I thought I could get some confirmation from James’s family about my ideas. I thought it would give me the last bit of courage needed to show James.

“Did you have, like, family meetings?”

“No. Nothing like that. A few phone calls.” I clear my throat. “And a video chat.”

The harsh lines of his face hurt to look at.

“I like your family,” I add in a small voice.

“I like them too. Doesn’t mean I want you talking to them without me about Dark Horse.” He shakes his head. “This is what happens when I’m not in control. When other people make decisions. I end up here.” James laughs, short and humorless. His gaze fixes on the floor, and he scuffs the toe of one boot across something only he can see.

I don’t fully understand what he means or what’s so wrong with talking to his family, with accepting help from people who care about him. “Is here so bad?”

He raises his head then, slowly, like it’s being pulled up by a puppeteer who’s mid-yawn. He doesn’t need to say the word. I see the yes in his eyes. Hear it in his silence.

“Why won’t you let the people who love you help you?”

If he knows I’m counting myself in that group of people who love him, he doesn’t react, which is probably all the answer I need.

“I don’t need help.”

I grab my laptop, sliding it inside my bag, gathering my purse. “I think I’ll go.”

Please come after me, a part of me begs, even as the bigger, smarter part of me knows he won’t. Nothing good will come of that now. James needs … well, I don’t know what he needs.

I thought I could read him. Tonight showed me how wrong I was.

I’m almost to the door, my chest suffering from a psychosomatic gunshot wound, when I hear two quiet words that make me pause.

“You’re fired.”

The bubble I was worried about since Austin? I’m pretty sure it just popped. I turn slowly. James isn’t looking at me, but I wait an almost unbearable length of time for his eyes to meet mine.

“Firing me once wasn’t enough?”

James says not a word. Makes not a sound. Moves not a muscle. Just one blink is all I get.

And for some reason, this infuriates me.

Maybe I chose a poor time to present this idea to him. Maybe I should have waited until a day or two had passed from this horrible disaster. But still!

“Well, you’re fired too—as my boyfriend, or whatever you were.”

The words feel like the perfect circle, the exact revenge, and also a huge mistake. Breaking up isn’t what I want. Neither is being fired. I feel like a double loser. And yet, I don’t feel like James is giving me a choice.

The man wasn’t lying when he said he wasn’t soft. He’s a grump through and through. A grump whose biggest fear is dancing but will do it when a little girl asks. A grump who held me close and offered comfort when I had a nightmare. A grump who threw a man in the pool for touching me. A grump whose kisses could melt the polar ice caps.

Not that we want that—I’m just saying, his kisses could do it.