Page 31 of The Merger

“Unfortunately.” He takes a breath. “But I did call you for a reason.”

“What’s that?” I ask, refilling my bottle with water.

“I just got off the phone with Carys and she said you hadn’t gotten back with her about the Plantcy proposal.”

Yeah. About that …

I pop the bottle in the fridge and pace a slow circle around the kitchen island.

I’ve gone back and forth over this since we met three days ago and can’t decide whether to hire her. Because, on the one hand, it’s a terrible idea. My gut tells me to run the other way. I’ve wanted to fuck that woman for years, and unfortunately for me, the more I’m around her, the more I like her.

She’s drop-dead gorgeous. She’s passionate and driven. She’s kind.

Despite knowing that my instincts are always right and they’re screaming at me to tell her no, something inside me clings to the idea. And when I try to shake it off, it claws its way back into my psyche.

“Every time he looks at me, he sees a disappointment.”

Carys’s words echo through my head—words I’ve used when discussing my father.

The look in her baby-blue eyes when she spoke that sentence haunts me. The pain was evident. Her sadness was palpable. I wanted to pull her onto my lap and hold her close until she understands that she’s nothing close to a disappointment.

How could she be?

She started a business. She took her future into her own hands. The woman had the courage to come to me for a job, something that many grown men are too cowardly to try.

“Gan?” Tate asks, prompting me for a response.

“I haven’t made up my mind.”

He sighs. “Will it really hurt that much just to let her work a few hours a week?”

Maybe more than you know.

“I mean, hell. Take her wages out of my check if it’s that big of a deal to you,” he says.

“Why don’t you just hire her yourself? Buy some plants and let her go play with them at your house?”

“That would be charity, and even if she would accept it, I wouldn’t offer because it would kill her. It would make her feel incapable and shitty, and some of us don’t like doing that to other people.”

“What are you saying?”

“That you’re an asshole, but I still have hope that somewhere beneath the ice, you can find your heart.”

He’s not here, so I don’t hide my smile.You might be annoying, and I might give you shit, but you’re a good man, Tate.

“Look, I don’t love the idea of you two knowing each other,” he says.

“Well,youintroduced us.”

“Under duress. But, now that it’s done, she needs this, Gannon. She’s trying so hard to grow this business that she believes in, and she just needs some help.”

I scratch the top of my head, my frustration mounting.

“Please, Gannon?”

I roll my eyes and heave a sigh, ensuring my brother knows I’m irritated. “I’ll think about it.”

“You can’t keep her on the line forever. She has to make money for her rent and if you’re going to be a complete dickhead and turn her down, she needs to know so she can find something else.” He huffs. “I’m being beckoned to the silent auction table, so I gotta go. Think about this, Gannon. Do the right thing. I know that you know what that means.”