Page 47 of Taken With You
But clearly he wasn’t managing it all as well as he hoped. And he definitely hadn’t learned how to slow down.
“You’ll both be thrilled,” Garrick said, “that I’ve been thinking of making some changes.”
“Good.”
“Seismicchanges.”
“Even better. Are you doing this because of Amanda?”
“No. Not really. Maybe a little. Yes.”
“You’re big on the equivocal answers today.”
“For reasons I can’t begin to understand, being with her has peeled my eyes open.”
“I bet it has.”
“But she lives three thousand miles away.” He dug his fingers into the leather arm of the chair. “And I can’t stop thinking about her.”
“Boy-o,” Logan said, drawing the word out with a rumble of a laugh, “you’re in the thick of it.”
“She wasn’t part of the plan.”
“Men make plans, and the gods laugh.”
“Enough with the Ecuadorian proverbs.”
“It’s Yiddish. Sort of,” Logan said with a smile in his voice. “So this isn’t just bedroom fireworks, right?”
“Hell if I know.” A worry floated up to choke him. “Maybe I’m just following Dominic’s path.”
“You’re not Dominic.” Logan spoke sharply.
“He fell for a woman hard, too. Two women, in tandem.” Garrick pushed up out of the chair. He glared out the window but saw nothing, his shoulders tightening. “Each time, he thought she’d save him from himself, and neither woman could.”
“Listen. I loved your brother, you know I did. He was funny and ambitious and energetic and full of life. But when he married the first time and the second, he never yielded his work responsibilities an inch. Never. I heard all the stories, and witnessed some of them myself.”
It felt disloyal to agree, but Garrick knew it was true. Dominic had started the company in the garage of their childhood home and had never lost that underlying sense of panic that someday, soon, he’d lose it all. Both of his marriages had started well and ended bitterly, and Garrick knew his sisters-in-law had both been accommodating until they couldn’t do it any longer. In this office, just next to Dominic’s, Garrick had had a catbird seat to all the drama and dysfunction. Garrick had always forgone deeper relationships to avoid that kind of misery.
But he hadn’t found a deeper happiness, either.
Until Amanda.
“You’ll manage better than Dominic,” Logan said, “if you decide to put a ring on her finger.”
“Slow down, slow down.” Garrick pressed his forehead against the window glass, watching the lights flick on in the skyscrapers in the gloaming. “I haven’t figured this out.”
“Whether you’re in love?”
Through the phone, Garrick heard the faint sound of tires driving onto gravel and not a damn other thing.
“I can’t answer that question for you,” Logan said. “But if I had to guess, I’d say you’re a goner.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Drumming newly-manicured nails on the steering wheel, Amanda drove up the gravel road that led to the cabin. Already, her palms were sweating. Not because the launch party was the winery’s first big event. Not because she’d be making a public speech in an hour or two. But because she hadn’t seen Garrick since he’d left for New York after their lovemaking in the cave. Today, she would lay eyes on the man she loved amid a crowd of his family, her colleagues, and strangers. Her professional cool felt as thinly painted-on as the dried lacquer on her nails.
Guests shouldn’t be arriving for another hour, but there was already a small crowd chatting on the veranda as she pulled the car to the usual spot in front of the cabin. Shelley had insisted Amanda spend the day getting her hair and nails done in San Francisco, where she was living since she’d moved out of the cabin, rather than linger around the winery trying to ‘help.’ Shelley had hired plenty of help. Even now a valet was striding across the graveled drive to open her door, holding out a hand for the car keys.
