Page 134 of Dancing in the Rain

When she’d run upstairs, he and Peyton faced off again, the air around them heavy and electric.

“She knew something’s wrong,” he said roughly. “We have to do better around her.”

Her eyes closed briefly. “Yes. You’re right.”

He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to pull Peyton in for a hug, but not like Chloe’s. A totally different kind of hug. He wanted to feel her curves against him, to wrap her up and tell her everything was fine. To tell her he was sorry he’d hurt her, that he was working hard to be a good enough dad for Chloe and a good enough man for her. But judging by her unyielding posture and her cool gaze, he wasn’t there yet.

So he said nothing, took the schedule, and left.

—

“This is the dream team.”

Peyton smiled at her friends gathered around the table in the restaurant where she’d invited them to meet for lunch—Aidan all clean-shaven and businesslike in his expensive suit and tie, Jax with his shaggy hair, hipster glasses, and black turtleneck, Hannah’s red hair glowing against the moss-green sweater she wore. They’d all been surprised to see one another since Peyton hadn’t told them the others would be there.

Jax grinned.

“What dream team?” Aidan frowned.

“You’re not happy in your job, are you?” Peyton asked him.

He grimaced. “Fuck, no.”

“Neither is Jax.I’munemployed. Hannah, how’s your job going?”

She shrugged. “It’s okay.”

“Jax and I had lunch back at the end of October and he was saying that if he could have a dream team of reputation managers, it would be us.” She gestured in a circle to include all of them.

“I’m not a reputation manager,” Aidan said slowly.

“But you’d be so good at it.” She smiled. “And having someone who knows the law would be a huge asset.”

“I don’t do reputation management, either,” Hannah said, her forehead grooved.

“But you know marketing. Think about it…with Jax’s tech skills and the experience we have with both day-to-day reputation management and crisis management, a lawyer and a marketing specialist…it really is a dream team.”

“What are you suggesting?” Aidan asked, interest sparking in his eyes.

“I think we should start our own reputation management company.”

They all stared at her. A smile broke on Jax’s face first. “I am so in.”

Aidan sat back in his chair. “That’s kind of crazy.”

Peyton pouted.

“But also kind of genius.” He tipped his head to one side.

“I don’t have any money,” Hannah said. “We need money to start a business.”

Peyton nodded. “Yes. We’d need to do a business plan and figure out what our start-up costs would be. It might not be that much. We’d need office space, obviously, office furniture and computers, access to programs and resources for social media monitoring and SEO evaluation, insurance, a budget for advertising…”

“And clients. We’d need clients.” Aidan lifted an eyebrow.

“Well, yes.” She looked at Hannah. “Depending on what it all looks like, you could stay at your job until we get up and running. Maybe you’d rather be an employee than a partner?”

Hannah pursed her lips. “I don’t know. Let’s talk about that when we know what kind of money we’re looking at. I get bored easily. I don’t want to invest a bunch of money into something that I’m going to bail on in a year. On the other hand, if it was my own business…and it was up to me to make it succeed…maybe I wouldn’t be bored.”

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