Page 107

DARCY

The dirt felt wrong in my hands. It didn’t smell the same either. I knelt in my garden, trowel digging into the soil around my tomato plants, but the usual peace wouldn’t come. The familiar rhythm of weeding and pruning that always centered me felt hollow today. Empty. Like going through the motions of a ritual that had lost all meaning.

I sat back on my heels and stared at the raised beds I’d built with my own hands. The peppers were thriving. The squash was coming in nicely. Everything was growing exactly as it should be. The basket of beautiful tomatoes and peppers I picked earlier sat beside me. The plan was to make salsa.

But I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to make strawberry jam or pie. I was surrounded by perfect veggies and I wanted none of it. I always told myself if I got a little time off, I’d spend it in the garden building new trellises. I wanted to take out some of the decorative boulders and put in new garden beds.

Now that I had the time, I didn’t have the desire.

I hadn’t been to work in four days. Four days. The longest stretch I’d taken off since forever. I always worked. I worked weekends and holidays, desperate to prove I wasn’t just the boss’s daughter. I’d sacrificed friendships, relationships, any semblance of a personal life, all for that company.

And what had it gotten me? A bunch of old men in suits deciding I still wasn’t good enough.

I yanked a weed from the soil. The roots came up clean, which should have been satisfying. It wasn’t.

The truth was I didn’t know what to do with myself when I wasn’t working. My whole identity had been wrapped up in that place for so long that without it I felt untethered. Lost. Like a ship that had slipped its anchor and was drifting aimlessly in open water.

I moved to the next row, attacking the weeds there with the same restless energy. My knees ached from kneeling. Sweat trickled down my back despite the mild afternoon. I didn’t care. Physical discomfort was easier to deal with than the mess inside my head.

The board could go fuck themselves. I had said that to myself no less than a hundred times.

I deserved that CEO job. I’d earned it a hundred times over with late nights and brilliant ideas and profits that spoke for themselves. I refused to beg for something that should already be mine. A woman had to know her own worth, and I was worth more than they were giving me credit for.

So fuck them.

I could get a job with a rival company this afternoon if I wanted to. There had been several companies sniffing around for years. Cartier would probably roll out the red carpet. Hell, I could start my own company and watch Corwin Gems scramble to compete.

But I wasn’t ready to make any decisions yet.

I sat back again, wiping dirt on my yoga pants. My phone sat on the patio table. I’d thought about calling Beau at least fifty times in the past few days. I had picked up the phone. Stared at his contact. Put it back down.

I still felt like shit about our last conversation. The look on his face when I’d called us fake. I’d hurt him. Badly. And I wasn’t sure I could take it back even if I wanted to.

The problem was that I still didn’t know if I was mad at him too.

He’d asked me to sneak off with him. He’d wanted to find a bed. And I’d said yes because apparently when he looked at me with those eyes and that smile, my brain stopped functioning. That part was true. But was it his fault that I’d made that choice?

No. That was on me. I had a voice. I was a fucking executive and very capable of rejecting a proposition. And at the time, I didn’t have any reason to expect a meeting with the board. My responsibilities had been mostly finished for the day.

But he’d walked out. Left me standing there half-dressed in a hotel room while my career imploded. He hadn’t stayed to talk it through. He didn’t try to help me figure out what to do next. He’d just delivered his judgment and disappeared.

Figure out who you are.

Easy for him to say. He’d always known exactly who he was. Confident, charming Beau Blackwell who could talk his way into or out of anything. He’d never had to prove himself to a board of directors who’d already decided he wasn’t good enough before he walked in the room.

I stabbed the trowel into the soil again, taking out my frustration on an innocent patch of earth. The afternoon sun beat down on my shoulders. I should probably put on sunscreen. I didn’t move to get any. Instead, I kept working, kept pulling weeds, kept trying to find the peace that usually lived in this garden.

A shadow fell over me.

I whirled, trowel raised like a weapon, my heart trying to escape my chest. The silhouette resolved into a familiar figure, which should have relaxed me. Instead, I felt my jaw clench.

My father stood a few feet away, hands raised in surrender, looking at the small shovel in my hand. The shovel wasn’t the danger. I was.

“Easy there,” he said. “I come in peace.”

I didn’t lower the trowel. “What do you want?”

He dropped his hands, his expression shifting to something I rarely saw on his face. Uncertainty. Maybe even guilt. “I came to apologize.”