Page 24

Pride swelled in my chest at what she’d been able to accomplish in such a short time. But I still worried we’d be delayed in the opening, costing us more money each and every day. “What about the furniture?”

“You let me handle that,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.

We parked and went into the restaurant, where Farrah fawned over everything from the clear glass light fixtures to the rugged brick floors and rich leather booths. I didn’t notice the details like she did, but I liked the feel the place gave when we walked in. Not too upscale but nice enough to avoid feeling like a sports bar.

A server took our orders, and Farrah and I sat, her sipping a strawberry lemonade and me with a tea. In our seats facing the windows, the sun came through and shined on Farrah, bringing out the different colors in her hair. It wasn’t just brunette, like I’d thought earlier. Now I noticed all the shades of blond, brown, and everything in between.

She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “I’m feeling a little bad for unloading all that about my ex earlier.”

“Don’t feel guilty,” I said. “Whatever happened between you two must have been pretty bad.”

“I’d say so,” Farrah replied, looking down at her glass. “It’s hard, you know, because I don’t want to talk bad about him to the kids, but they look up to him like he’s such a saint, and it hurts every time.”

I just didn’t understand. In the time I’d known Farrah, she’d only been kind, hardworking, endearing to everyone she met. “How could he have let you go?”

The words were out of my mouth before I could control them, but I couldn’t find it in me to regret them. Solving puzzles, finding solutions was what I did best. And some depraved part of me that didn’t know how to hold a boundary with this woman hoped maybe this was the key to staying away from her. Maybe this information would give me some kind of red flag to make me stay away—because the obvious fact that she was my employee, newly divorced, with three children just wasn’t doing it.

Farrah drew her straw in a slow circle around her glass, making the ice tinkle. “When you have kids, they become your sole focus. Twenty-three hours a day, you think about them, worry about them, clean, cook, and care for them... And then the other hour you’re probably asleep or putting off something you should be doing just to take a shower and comb your hair.” She let out a small sigh. “Maybe if I had focused more on our marriage, it would have made a difference, but I didn’t even know there was a relationship-ending issue between us until I went in for my yearly exam.”

My heart squeezed in my chest, terrified she’d tell me she had some incurable disease, something that would take her from me. From her kids. And that he’d left her for it.

But instead, she said, “My gyno said she does an STD test as a precaution for every married woman, and mine came back positive for HPV. I thought it had to be a mix-up with the tests, but when I confronted him about it, he told me everything. The cheating had been happening for years. He’d pick up moms at school events. Sleep with women on business trips. He even slept with his secretary. We had that woman over at our house for dinner multiple times and I never knew.” She shook her head, blinking quickly. “I couldn’t stay with him after that. Not when the man I thought I knew had been lying to me foryears, taking time away from his family to sleep with other women, without ever batting an eye.”

My grip on my cup was so tight, I thought it might shatter. But the way Farrah talked about herself, the fact that she thought it could have been her fault for not putting in enough effort—it made me just as angry as that jackass who let her go.

This woman was fucking gorgeous. Curves for days. A chest that would overflow even in my large hands. A smile that melted someone as frigid as me.

This guy was a loser.

A fucking joke to think he could do better than the woman in front of me.

Better than his children waiting for him to just show up.

“Look at me, Farrah,” I said, my voice as intense as my grip on the drink.

Her brown eyes collided with mine, delicate as the petals of a bluebonnet, raw as the edges of a glacier.

“Don’t you ever let a man tell you that you don’t deserve his full attention, his loyalty, and his love. Because you do, Farrah. There’s not a part of you that deserved what he did.”

9

Farrah

I thought about what Gage said for the rest of the day. We didn’t talk much as we worked, but it felt like a lighter kind of silence, not the hard, uncomfortable cold shoulder he’d given me all week.

Toward the end of the day, my phone rang, and I recognized the number from my rental application. “Oh my god,” I hissed as I swiped to answer. I could feel Gage’s eyes on me as I said, “Hi, this is Farrah.”

“Farrah, this is Francesca. I saw your application for the house on Pine Street and loved the note you included. Any chance you’re free to tour the place this evening?”

“Absolutely!” I said, doing a happy dance in my chair. Gage had an amused spark in his eyes.

“How does half past six sound?”

“Sounds perfect, see you then!”

When I hung up, Gage said, “I didn’t know your voice went that high.”

I rolled my eyes at him, standing to get my purse. “I’m calling Shantel so we can get something about eavesdropping added to the company handbook.”