Page 58 of Breaking Emily's Rules
She stood, hand on her hips.
He stood up and joined her. “I followed his wishes.”
“But you didn’t have to listen to him. You should have picked up the phone and looked us up. Told us he was dying. Did you ever think maybe our mother wanted to say a final goodbye to the man she once loved? That maybe I wanted to say goodbye to my father?”
And there it went again. The now-familiar tightness in his chest.
“Look, you can take it out on me. That’s fine. Just don’t blame it on him. You’re right, I could have called you. But I didn’t.” He made his way to the door. “All I’m asking is for you to let me sell the flight school to the buyer who won’t change everything about it. It’s what Dad wanted, if that matters to you.”
“I don’t know if I can do that. It’s not fair. This whole thing is just not—fair.”
“Fair is the weather.”
He left her standing in the conference room. In a perfect world, they might have grown up together straight into adulthood and had deeper and lasting family ties. A bond or connection that went beyond mere biology. But it wasn’t there anymore, and seemed it never could be now.
“Wait. Mr. Mcallister,” Sarah’s lawyer called out.
He chose not to listen but kept walking out the double glass doors and outside into the bright California sun. It wasn’t until he reached his truck that he allowed himself to take a good solid breath of air.
Damn.
He’d lost his temper again and the meeting had accomplished exactly what he’d expected. They’d made negative point five progress. Sarah possessed the gift of making him feel like a jerk when he was trying to be a good guy.
Or in other words, she managed to see right through him.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t picked up the phone half a dozen times and thought about contacting Sarah or his mother. Sure, Dad had asked him not to do it, but maybe he wasn’t in the best condition to make those choices. Maybe he should have vetoed his wishes and done the right thing. But in the end, Stone had settled into the familiarity of following orders up the chain of command.
He’d been asked, not ordered, but the wishes were clear. It wasn’t up to him to decide if they made sense or if anyone would regret them. Tough decisions were made dozens of times a day, and the one thing he realized was he’d never make everyone happy.
So why was he allowing the guilt to eat him alive?
Sarah would continue to fight him and if she did for much longer, he wouldn’t blame his buyer for backing out. What would happen to the airport then and all the small businesses that depended on it?
Yeah, he cared. He wasn’t sure when that happened. Stone slid the key in his ignition and got the hell out of the office suite’s parking lot. He needed to blow off some steam.
Today was a clear day, the kind of day Dad would have loved to fly. He used to say aviation wasn’t so much a profession as it was a disease. Stone hadn’t always understood what Dad meant, but he did now. He wasn’t at all sure he could go a day without flying. These days it didn’t seem to matter so much that it wasn’t a jet.
But now he wondered what Dad would think about Sarah wanting to go with the highest bidder. Hell, maybe wherever he was right now he didn’t care anymore. Might even say “do what you think is best.” But Jedd had a baby on the way, and he needed the job. Stone also couldn’t accept an entire airport being gone. The Air Museum, gone. The Shortstop Snack Shack gone. All because land in these parts had reached the kind of high value some people only dreamed about.
But dammit, money wasn’t everything.
He walked through the airport hangar, toward the back and his office. He caught sight of Jedd over by the Snack Shack getting coffee and waved. No Cassie, though. Probably on her two-hour lunch break. Would be nice if every now and again she’d help him save her job.
Stone opened the door to his office to find Emily sitting behind his desk. She swiveled then got up rather suddenly, like she’d been caught in the act of pretending to be the boss. When she rose, he got a better view of what she wore, and what a view it was—a short red clingy dress which showed a lot of curvy leg. His favorite kind of dress. The type that made him grateful for his twenty-twenty vision, even if he preferred X-ray vision at the moment.
He allowed his imagination to take a little tour inside that dress. “Hey. It’s not your lesson day, is it? You might be a little overdressed.”
She walked around from behind his desk. “I came by to see you because I’ve been thinking.”
“Uh-oh.”
She reached up and smacked his shoulder. “Smart ass.”
“Okay, what’s up?”
Admittedly, she always had his attention, but now she also had his curiosity. Their one-date deal was done, and she’d made it clear there would be no others. Okay by him. All right, even if it wasn’t okay, he had to admit she was right. He hardly needed the distraction, and she’d proven to be one hell of a distraction.
She moved oddly around him, like circling her prey. “Would you consider a second date?”
