“Not anymore.” She heard regret in his voice. She wondered if he was close with anyone.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. At least you’re close with your family.”
Am I? She wondered if she really was, or if the closeness was only because she had gone into the family business. What if she’d chosen another path? Would she be as close to her parents?
“I had a brother,” she said, not sure what had prompted her to be so honest.
“Oh?” His dark eyes were keener now as they lit upon her. “Had. Past tense?” At her nod, he touched her shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”
“I was five. Jack was ten. He was coming home from Little League with his best friend and his family when they were hit by a drunk driver.”
“My God. That’s horrible.”
Her throat tightened. “I don’t remember a lot of it now. I was pretty small. But my family... Suddenly all their hopes and dreams for him transferred to me. There was a lot of pressure as the only child. I didn’t want to disappoint them. And there was a lot of pressure to remember that I had chances and opportunities, whereas my brother’s had all been taken away.”
“You still have a right to your own life.” She looked at him sharply, so he dropped his hand. “If that’s what you want.”
“I do. I just don’t want to have the conversation.” She reached inside her pocket for her phone. “I don’t like what I do, Eric. I dole out the remains of what was once love and commitment. I look at it in terms of dollar signs and assets. God, do you know how awful it is when children are treated as assets? Or even family pets? To know that victory for my client means someone else is having their heart broken? Or that children are caught in the middle of a god-awful tug-of-war?”
She admitted something finally, in the fading light of a Pacific sunset, on the shores of a remote lodge with a handsome stranger. “I don’t want to do this anymore. And I have no idea how to tell my family or what to do next.”
He, too, took out his phone. “I’m all about the next deal, and time is always of the essence. Lost minutes can be lost thousands of dollars, even millions. And what do I have at the end of the day? More assets that I sell off to make more money, which I then invest in buying more assets. I’m very good at making money, Molly. But I suck at making anything that lasts. Including my marriage. The breakup was all my fault. Murielle probably would have worked at it if I had.” He hesitated. “If I’d put as much effort into our emotional security as I did into our financial.”
“Maybe...she just wasn’t the right person. Because don’t you think you’d have been there if she was?”
“I’d like to think that. But I’m not sure I can push the blame off on something as simplistic as ‘not the right one.’”
Silence fell for a few moments, and then Molly brightened. “So, what are we going to do about this, then?” She shook her hand with the phone cradled in her palm.
He lifted his phone. “Maybe we need to make a ritualistic sacrifice.”
“I thought we weren’t going to throw them in the ocean.”
“We’re not. We’re going to smash the hell out of them.”
A laugh escaped her lips, an incredulous and delighted sound. “We are?”
“Yep.” He looked around and found a somewhat flat rock. “Okay. We put them down here. We need another rock to smash them with.”
“No one will be able to reach us.”
“I left the name of the tour company. Did you?”
“Of course.”
“Then they can reach us in an emergency. Are you in or are you out?”
Excitement rippled through her veins. Maybe this was a first step toward moving into her own independence. Choosing for herself.
She found a rock a little ways away, one that fit nicely into her hand, with a sharp edge on one side. “Will this do?”
“That looks perfect. Do you want to go first?”
“It’s your idea. I think you should do the honors.”
He took the rock and tossed it up and down in his hand a few times. “Okay. You ready?”