Page 32 of Accidental Vegas Vows

“Olivia,” he sighed, pushing his perfectly styled peppered hair back away from his face. He looked out the window, his eyes locking on to something, and my stomach sank. He wouldn’t look at me. “I appreciate your enthusiasm and your passion regarding this, and frankly, your passion for everything in this space. But we simply can’t afford that right now.”

What? Blackwood Energy Solutions was one of the largest sustainable businesses in the country. I’d seen his house. I’d seen this building. How could he not afford that? “What do you mean?”

His tongue dragged along the edge of his top teeth, his jaw ticking. “I mean, although I understand where you’re coming from, Blackwood cannot afford to eat the cost of that right now. We need positive cash flow.”

“It would be positive cash flow. You’d just have to wait for it to pay for itself,” I offered.

“We can’t wait for that. Not at the moment.”

I blinked at him. Since when was Blackwood not able to wait for their returns? Plenty of our projects operated in similar ways, whether that was setting up a project just for a return from the government or flat-out donating our resources. That didn’t make sense. “Are you punishing me?”

His gaze snapped back to me, his eyes blowing wide. “What on earth would I be punishing you for?”

I let the silence fall, let him sit in that for a moment in case he wanted to come to the conclusion himself, but from the perplexed look coating his features, he wasn’t getting there on his own. “For how I spoke to you last night,” I explained.

“Absolutely fucking not.”

“You sure about that?”

“Liv.” My spine stiffened. Has he called me that before? “Look, I wasn’t going to say anything because I don’t want any of the staff panicking, but the company is dealing with some monetary problems, okay? No one’s job is at risk, but it means we’re a little… tight. It’s nothing to do with you or how you spoke to me. That was entirely justified.”

He leaned forward onto his desk, his eyes darting to the analog clock beside him. I didn’t know what to say to him — I didn’t think it was unfair of me to assume that it had to do with us, but I guess I was wrong.

“I understand you’re passionate about it,” he continued, his voice softening, deepening. As much as I wanted to forget what had happened between us at his house, that voice, that angering voice, brought me right back to it and had me crossing my legs. “I will take your idea on board and see what we can do. Genuinely. But I can’t promise anything, princess, not just yet?—”

He cut himself off. Wide eyes met mine once more, and my cheeks heated, my lips pursing. “Please, don’t?—”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. He flicked the screen of his laptop back upright, diverting his attention to that instead. “My head’s in so many places. It’s probably best if you go.”

The longer I studied him, the more I noticed the lines above his brows were deepening, and the space beneath his eyes had darkened. He looked exhausted, and the way that he carried himself usually—tall, proud, sure of himself—was almost nowhere to be found. He was hunched over, fumbling his words, not quite right.

Despite what had happened between us and the anger I harbored toward myself because of it, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit sorry for him.

“Can I help?” The words came out before I’d thought them through. His eyes met mine again, unreadable. “You’ve got a lot going on. Is there anything I can do to take some of the load off?”

His mouth opened as if he had words prepared, but quickly shut.

“What are you working on?” I asked, plucking up the courage to step further than the wingbacks. I set my bag down in the chair and came up beside him behind his desk, leaning down to get a good look at the screen.

Children’s beds.

That’s what filled his screen — bed after bed, exorbitantly priced, some shaped like race cars and others with frames and princess-style netting.

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” he breathed. The sentence was so fucking raw, so exhausted. It made my chest ache for him. “I don’t know what he likes. I don’t know what he’s used to. I don’t know anything.”

“If it’s any consolation, I don’t know much about kids either,” I offered, and he shot a small smile at me in return. “But I was a kid more recently than you, so…”

He snorted, ringed fingers coming up to cover his mouth. He turned the laptop so it was facing me fully. “Yeah, fine. You’ve got a point.”

I scrolled to the next page, and then the one after. We studied them in silence, bed after bed, each one of us liking some more than others or straight up disagreeing on one shaped absurdly like a dinosaur. I tried to keep in mind the basics — when I was kid, what did I want? Of course I wanted something cool, but I would have regretted that two years down the line when I was no longer into the big red dog. And considering Damien had no idea what Noah was interested in…

“This one,” I said, clicking into the listing and pointing my finger at the screen. A simple black bed frame, double sized, big enough for him to grow into and basic enough that it could change with him. “You can find out what he likes when he arrives and get him some bedsheets that go along with that.”

His brows knitted as he looked up at me from his office chair, and I groaned my frustration.

Flicking into another tab, I pulled up the most basic graphic sheets I could find to get my point across. An all-over print of the original Alice In Wonderland illustrations on basic, polyester fabric. “Something like this, for whatever he likes.”

He shook his head in disbelief as he turned the computer back to him. “I didn’t even know you could get sheets like that. I always had basic ones growing up.”

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