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“Exactly.” Amelia nodded with more enthusiasm than she felt. “A girls’ day. That means that we can do lots of fun things together, just us girls.”
“Okay.” Grace gave a toothy smile and Amelia wished that she could cheer herself up as easily. “Daddy home soon?”
“I’m sure he will be,” Amelia said. She took a deep, calming breath. Liam would be home soon. His disappearance brought up her insecurities from her first weeks here, but Liam wasn’t the same guy he’d been when Amelia first arrived. He’d shown over the last week that he was ready to put Grace — and her — first. One Sunday at work didn’t change that. Right?
CHAPTER 18
LIAM
Liam was furious with himself.
All the way to work, he was fuming. He had no idea how he could have let a mess like this happen. Since he’d become CEO several years ago, there’d never been a fumble like this in corporate history. Sure, the error was fixable enough — Liam had a few people to speak with and a few emails to send, and the company would lose some money, but the mistake could be fixed. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he had trusted someone to make decisions for him and he’d been let down.
Over the last week, Liam had been so focused on Grace and Amelia that he hadn’t spared much time for work. Ryan had been right on Friday — the pile of things Liam needed to do was growing far too large. Even without this mistake, he needed to return to work. He couldn’t live in family make-believe land anymore.
No matter how much he might want to.
Ryan was already there when Liam arrived. He nodded.
“Good morning.”
“Morning.” Liam passed the reception desk and strode purposefully into his office, where he booted up his computer. Ryan followed. “What’s my agenda?”
“First, we need to address the purchasing error,” Ryan said. “It looks like one of your department heads purchased the services of a consulting agency but failed to consider the taxes on the service — which is why we’re facing a significant loss.”
“Understood. Do we want to work with that agency?” Liam felt out of the loop. Usually, he would have been brought in on a decision like this — no, he would have been the one making a decision like this. Now, after a week of light work, he had no idea why they had chosen this particular consultant.
Perhaps that was where his annoyance came from — not because of the mistake or the lost money, but because he hadn’t been involved.
“Yes, they’re a good agency, and we need them to do a review of our corporate policies for this year’s audit,” Ryan explained. Liam felt another pang of frustration. Even his assistant knew more about what was going on at the company than he did.
“Okay, then. I’ll sort that out with accounting. What else?”
“R&D wants to introduce a new product targeting preschoolers,” Ryan said. “They want to work with color-and-shape recognition, basic drawing and writing skills, numeracy, that kind of thing. But they need your approval to move forward.”
“I’ll look over the proposal.”
“It’s on your desk.”
As Ryan continued, recapping the week, Liam felt more and more the burden of all the work he’d missed or put off or delegated. At the barbecue, Stanley had suggested that Liam should think about what could be delegated and that the answer was work, not family. Yet now Liam was realizing that his work couldn’t be delegated either. So many things needed his approval and oversight. When he wasn’t here to give it, mistakes happened.
By the time Ryan was done explaining, Liam knew that he more than had his work cut out for him. He dove in, beginning with the consulting agency, then moving on to the new product, a stack of contracts, an inbox full of messages…
The next time Liam looked up from his computer, it was late afternoon and the sun was streaming through his window. He glanced at his phone and saw several missed messages from Amelia. The first asked when he would be finished with work. The second was a picture of Grace posing with a statue of an elephant, grinning broadly. The third asked if Liam wanted to meet them for dinner.
These were the kinds of texts they’d exchanged frequently over the last week, but now Liam could barely look at them. He felt pressure to be home with Grace and Amelia, but he felt equal pressure to stay at work and do everything he needed to do.
Over the last week, he’d been so caught up in making sure his family looked real — and exploring his feelings for Amelia — that he’d completely dropped the ball in his day-to-day.
He sent a quick message to Amelia saying he wouldn’t be home until late, then turned off his phone. He needed to focus. As much as he wanted to be present in Grace’s life, the child would have no future if Lilypad fell apart and he became destitute. And there was no point in exploring his feelings for Amelia further if he couldn’t navigate his job as well.
Liam returned home late that night. Grace was already in bed, but Amelia was sitting up in the living room in her pajamas, sipping a mug of tea and reading. When Liam entered, she looked up. Her expression was pleasant, but Liam was sure he could detect a little annoyance behind her beautiful brown eyes.
“It must have been a busy day,” she said lightly. “Would you like to sit with me for a bit? We can order dinner and talk things through.”
Sitting with Amelia and ordering dinner sounded lovely, but Liam was in no mood to talk things through. He was sure that Amelia would be annoyed with him for missing the zoo day, but she couldn’t expect him to let his career go completely. So, Liam shook his head.
“I’m just going to head to bed. I’m exhausted.”
