And if I could nail this contract with Gianni, I could prove just that.
I was prepared to celebrate. I called my chef and told him to prepare a celebratory dinner because the future of my company was on another cusp. I drove back to the house and relieved Brooke of the kids, but before she went to leave I grabbed her hand again to stop her.
I didn’t want her to go.
“Stay and have dinner,” I said.
“I can’t,” Brooke said. “I need to get back to Morgan.”
“Then invite her. What happened with Gianni today was massive. I want to celebrate. Come on, Brooke. It’s a good meal prepared by a five-star chef. Where el
se will you find that on the island?”
“I don’t need to eat five-star meals to be happy,” she said.
“It’s just dinner. Nothing else.”
I watched her mull it over before she pulled out her phone. She had a quick conversation with Morgan, but I could tell she wasn’t happy. She rolled her eyes as she hung up the phone call and I could hear my chef striking up the stove in the background.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Yep. Morgan’s found herself a man to spend the evening with,” she said.
“Good for her?”
“Eh, if she’s having fun then that’s all that matters.”
“Good, then stay and have dinner with us. You can brag to her about all the wine you got to drink that she missed out on,” I said with a grin.
That joke seemed to lower her walls and she finally agreed to stay. I knew it wouldn’t be easy to earn Brook’s trust again. I had really screwed things up in the past and I had a ways to go to make up for it.
I was grateful that she was giving me the chance – at least I’d hoped she was.
My chef prepared beef wellington along with a slew of vegetables. We ate until we couldn’t eat any longer and I talked with Brooke about what this would mean for my company. I was reminded of how easy it was to talk with her, something that was so very hard to find. She seemed so genuinely interested and soon two hours had gone by while I talked her through all the new additions to my company’s technology.
I missed having someone interested in things that interested me.
After I put the kids to bed, I found Brooke with a glass of wine in her hand. She was standing out on the porch, her arms wrapped around her body. I poured myself a glass and stepped out behind her, feeling her body heat radiating against my chest like it had the first night we’d met all those years ago.
“How’s it coming with that writer’s block?” I asked.
“I’m halfway there,” she said. “Got enough wine in my system to make me do things I might regret later on.”
“Oh, come on. You never regretted a damn thing you did in college.”
“No, you’re right. In the end, I enjoyed our time together,” she grinned. “I wish I could say the same about the last few months,” she said quietly, her face falling just a bit
“What happened?”
I watched her shoulders heave with a sigh before she threw the last of her wine back.
“He cheated. Lied. Stole from me.”
“What?” I asked.
“Yeah. It was a whole fiasco. He was charming and romantic, attentive to me when we were together. Morgan was the one that found him in a restaurant with another woman. Had she not taken pictures, I probably wouldn’t have believed her.”
“No man should treat a woman like that.”