Page 121 of Tempting Wyatt
He jerks his hand forward and spills his coffee all over the stack of papers in front of him.
“Oh God, I’m so sorry.” I rush to grab some paper towels and begin soaking up the spilled black coffee.
“It’s okay. I got it.”
Somehow, Wyatt has aged several years in the hours since I’ve seen him. The bruises on his face from the bar fight have faded away, but the shadows under his eyes are dark. He’s exhausted.
Once we clean up the mess, I set a few nearly ruined papers on a hand towel to dry. Upon closer inspection, I see that they’re invoices. Past-due notices and threatening letters from multiple creditors.
The table is full of them.
“Wyatt, these are—” I begin, but he holds a hand up.
“It’s fine. I’m fine.” He waves his hand across the table—thankfully, there’s no more coffee to spill. “Just couldn’t sleep, so I was trying to get ahead on some of these.”
Stepping closer, I lean over his shoulder and see columns of addition and subtraction problems he scrawled in the margins. There’s no getting ahead of them. From the looks of it, they’re already several months behind.
“What’s the math mean?”
He sighs heavily, and I see it. The weight of the world on his shoulders.
“Trying to figure out how to pay these without letting anyone go. We currently have twenty people on payroll. Twenty families who’d be devastated by the loss of income.” He rakes his hand through his hair.
I don’t know what to say, so I just settle a hand on his shoulder.
“Winter in Montana is brutal. For us, for our employees. There’s only so much we can do. And we’ve stretched every resource as thin as we can.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
His eyes meet mine like he’s seeing me for the first time. “Like what?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve worked on lots of fundraising campaigns. I had some ideas about marketing that your mom could do to help sell her pies and such and maybe even self-publishing a cookbook.” I nod to the table. “Or I can just make some more coffee and help you organize these?”
I don’t know if I help at all, but for the next few hours, his shoulders lift just a little.
I make coffee. I sort invoices by vendor and date. I use my trusty, dusty writing accessories from my purse—highlighters, sticky tabs, binder clips, and colored pens—to help him make sense of it all so we can put it in a spreadsheet.
I watch in awe of this man who cares so much about everyone else that he goes without sleep. We do all kinds of creative math to try and salvage every cent we can without costing anyone their job.
My brain compares him to Malcolm without me consciously deciding to. Malcolm got off on firing people, celebrated it, made a scene of it. He regularly used destroying people’s lives toset an example, he called it, anytime anyone had disappointed him or disobeyed him on set.
This man—this beautiful, bruised, larger-than-life, world-weary man—loses sleep, trying to figure out how to save everyone and their jobs.
In less than a week, I’ll be cut off. Cold turkey.
No more teasing, no more watching him watch me. Nomore Wyatt, no more ranch, no more Logan family dinners or making jam.
And I already know the withdrawal is going to behell.
I might even miss the stubborn ass. And Jasper, too.
When the sun comes up, I curl myself into his lap and start to doze off. And I fall a little bit in love with a man I might never see again after this week ends.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
ivy
AFTER A LATE NIGHT WORKING ON the Logan family finances, I wake up in Wyatt’s bed. He must’ve carried me here because I distinctly remember falling asleep in his lap. He’s already gone, though he did leave me coffee. Bless him.
