Page 39 of Until I Have You

I shake their hands.

Mr.Garrison is short and stocky with a mostly bald head while his wife looks to have spent a small fortune on cosmetic surgery and keeping her hair silvery light blonde.“So pleased you could make it today.”

“Yes,” Mrs.Garrison says without much flourish, stepping into my office.She scans the area for a place to sit, her eyes landing squarely on Bonnie.“You run a daycare here, Mr.Wallington?”

Bonnie is ensconced in whatever she’s doing on her iPad and doesn’t hear them through the headphones.

“I’m afraid –ha!”I step in front of Mrs.Garrison and direct her to a chair in front of my desk.“Since this is the weekend, and my daughter doesn’t have school, I’ve brought her into the office with me…”

“No nanny, Wallington?”Mr.Garrison asks in a crunchy, smoker’s voice.

“I…”

Bollocks.What kind of CEO of a wealth management company doesn’t manage to get a nanny?

From the outside, it probably looks like I’m a broke bastard.

“You know, we’ve just moved a month ago, and Bonnie is still adjusting.I prefer to have her with me when I can.But if her presence makes you uncomfortable…” The words feel like sand in my mouth.“I can have her go to a conference room.”

Mrs.Garrison huffs.“Seems like you should have taken care of that before we arrived.”

I maintain a friendly smile, though I’d like to kick them both out of my office, wedge the toe of my loafer right into both of theirarses.

They’re the ones who arrived early tomyoffice.

Sure, I had to solicit the meeting, as I’ve been having to do with all my new clients.But for them to walk into my domain and act so pompous and wretched?

They are the last kind of people I’d like for clients.

However, I can’t afford to be picky right now.

“Leave her,” Mr.Garrison says, plopping down into his chair.“Let’s get this over with.I want to hear the pitch, and I want to be out in half an hour.”

“That can be arranged,” I say in a plain tone and sit across from them at my desk.Let’s get this over with indeed.

§

“You’d have thought I was asking them to give me an organ,” I complain, my eyes dancing across Central Park below.

“Well, to people like them, you are.Their money is their organ,” Edwin says from his spot across the room.

I turn back to my friend and have to withhold a laugh.

The image of him sitting in a low-slung easy chair with a baby laying across his chest while we talk is not one I ever anticipated.

It’s sweet, though, how his son is absolutely milk drunk, passed out on his chest.“I’m meeting with them again tomorrow.I’m already dreading it.”

“We do what we need to for the deal, don’t we?”

I shake my head.“You have money like that.I mean, we both do.Do we act like that?”

“I think we’ve learned the hard way what matters,” Edwin says, giving baby Liam a pat on the back.

I hum.“That’s true.”

“Some people never take the time to really look at themselves in the contexts of their lives.They get comfortable being miserable.I know I was for a long time.”Edwin shrugs one shoulder.

I shake my head.“Why am I doing this, Ed?”

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