Page 63 of So Wrong It Must Be Right

“I’m not saying I’m giving up either,” he said, rubbing his thumb back and forth across her cheek as he cupped her jaw. “I’m just saying if you ignore all of the complexity and challenges that are going to be put before you, it will not go well.”

“It’s not complex. All we have to do is have a secret relationship for a while. It won’t be all that different from when we were emailing and it was a secret even to us.” She grinned at him, but there was no humor in him, no lightening.

“Here’s the thing.” He looked her straight in the eye, the light graze of his fingers never wavering, and it made her heart flutter and dive, even though she knew—damn it all, she knew—it wasn’t going to be a goodthing.

“I don’t want to go back to that,” he said, firm and sure. “If I wasn’t in love with you, maybe it would be fine to be a secret, or to pretend, but that’s not what I want this to be. It’s not what it should be.” He dropped his hand and stood, pacing away from her.

For the first time her heart fluttered in fear. She’d been so certain he would agree, but this seemed very close to him refusing. Flat-out.

“It’d just be for a little while,” she said, embarrassed at howweakandpleadingshe sounded.

“You say that, but if your grandmother doesn’t approve now, she’s never going to approve. That’s fine. I don’t need your grandmother’s approval any more than I need my own family’s approval, but I think you do.”

She got to her feet. “I do not.”

“If you didn’t, Gallagher’s wouldn’t be the thing you’ve been working for, your whole life. If your family didn’t matter, if their feelings didn’t matter, it wouldn’t be your roots. There has to be some love of family and wanting to please them, to be as completely consumed by it as you are.”

“I love Gallagher’s because it is my soul.” She fisted a hand to her heart. “Because I was born that way. Because it grew into my blood and into my bones. Gallagher’s is me, and how I handle that, how I involve myself in it, has nothing to do with making my family happy.”

“You were willing to buy my land even though you didn’t agree with your uncle about its use.”

“I was doing what I had to do to get what belongs to me,” she returned through gritted teeth. “What I always planned.” Why was he being so damn difficult about this?

“Good for you. Good for you for getting what you always planned, but it doesn’t always work that way for all of us. Some of us never get what we planned.”

“Is that what this is about? You’re jealous.”

She didn’t know how they’d turned this into a fight. She didn’t know why he was questioning her like Kayla had questioned her. Why he, of all people, couldn’t understand this was what she needed.

“You know what? Maybe I am. Because you have everything I didn’t get. Now you want me to believe in something while ignoring everything I know. From my experience. From my life. You’re not listening to me at all. You’re just marching on this path you have in your own brain and you won’t . . . Why should I stand here and compromise with you when you won’t compromise with me?”

“I am compromising. If I wasn’t compromising, you wouldn’tbehere. I would’ve broken it off with you. I love you and I want to make this work, so here I am. Fighting.”Because I have an ounce of courage, asshole, she barely restrained herself from saying.

“Okay. Let’s say we do this. It’s a secret, you get your director position, and no one catches us. What about the next thing?”

She blew out an annoyed breath, fisting her hands on her hips. “What do you mean, the next thing?”

“In the few short weeks we’ve been together, we’ve run into two huge challenges that require you to choose between Gallagher’s and us. So, what about the next time? The time after that? What about the time when there is no choice, and there is no compromise? Who do you choose?”

“Both. I will find a way to have both.” How could he not see that she wasn’t going to lose this fight? She didn’t lose, not Dinah Gallagher.Gallaghers don’t fail.Grandmother’s words, which would prove to be the thing Dinah needed to win.

“Dinah . . .” He linked his fingers behind his head, looking at her with such pain in his eyes she almost forgot about her frustration with him. “I don’t know that I can put my heart on the line for another damn thing I know I’m going to lose.”

“What do you want me to say to that? That I would pick you? That I would give up everything I love and I’ve built, for you?” How could he ask that of her, when she was saying they could have both?

“I don’t want to ask that. I don’t. I don’t want you to choose me over Gallagher’s. I’d never in a million years want that for you.”

“But?” she demanded, because there was abut, and how dare he? How dare he care and love and be sweet, but not be willing to bend a little?

“But maybe this is impossible. Maybe there is no compromise. No answer. Because no matter how much we love each other, I don’t know that either of us would ever pick each other over the things we’ve built.”

“We won’t have to make that choice. I believe in us, in what we can do, if we try hard enough.”

“I don’t believe in that, Dinah. I can’t.”

It was Dinah’s turn to sink into the couch like a tree falling in the forest, because no matter how much she believed, if he didn’t, she didn’t know how to make this work.

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