I couldn’t believe he hadn’t told me any of this. I couldn’t believe that he hadn’t told me that he had two homes. Of course, the more I thought about it, he probably had several more. For all I knew, he might have a cottage on every single lake in Ontario.
I raced home to change, crying like a lunatic in the shower until the water ran cold. When I got to work ten minutes late, I blamed the slow subway, plastering on a bright smile. I acted like the happiest hairstylist ever, as if I were being judged on my performance.
My workday was absolutely swamped again, and I had no idea whether it was from Dan’s employees, or whether the women who came in yesterday called their friends to recommend me.
I didn’t even have the energy to care. I gave everyone precisely the haircut they were looking for, and snipped, straightened, and curled until I was dead on my feet.
I missed Dan already. I needed to talk to him. I desperately needed to know why he tried to start a relationship with me without being honest. But in my extremely limited experience, once trust was broken, I’d never seen it repaired. I was too shattered to think beyond the fact that I was heartbroken.
By the time I shuffled through the workday, I felt like a zombie.
CHAPTER EIGHT
* Dan *
I have never pretended to know for one second how women work, or how they think. I do know that their emotions seem to be stronger than men’s, and I knew that my choice not to tell her the full truth right away was based on logic. I never meant to hurt her. But now that I analyzed that decision more clearly, I could see where a sweet young girl would see my untruths as a betrayal. She didn’t have any point of reference. She didn’t know that I was a good, trustworthy guy. She didn’t know that I had gone through my father’s entire company with a fine-toothed comb, straightening out anything that I saw as the slightest bit shifty.
They were always little things in corporations that weren’t right, but they had always been that way, so nobody questioned them. I went through and questioned everything. I started from the ground up, ethically and environmentally, and made every possible improvement.
That has been my personal badge of honor for so long. But Katy probably didn’t care about my business practices. Only how I treated her.
Maybe instead of explaining the parts that she didn’t know, I should tell her everything. My entire life. Lay my heart on the line. I might as well, since my heart could barely beat without her now.
Cancelling the Jasper meeting, I called my closest team into the boardroom, including the video and audio techs. “Folks, this is a strange project. I need you to condense my entire life into ten minutes. Every thing of note that I’ve ever done needs to be squashed into a ten-minute presentation.”
“Is this for an awards show, sir?” the head of marketing asked.
“No.”
“How do you want this angled, sir? To promote your environmentalism or anything in particular?” the head of research asked.
“No. This is to show my future wife exactly who I am, so she will hopefully forgive me for hiding myself from her.”
There were so many shifty-eyed glances between everyone at the board room table that I would have chuckled if I weren’t so miserable. “We’re going for brutal honesty here, folks. Imagine it was going before a jury. Imagine that my own mother was going to be grading this.”
“We’ll see what we can do,” the head of the video team nodded. “We can show you a draft in a few days.”
“I need the final piece done by five pm. So I’ll need a draft by two. Laura and Stacy will order lunch in for everyone, and coffee and muffins will be arriving in about twenty minutes. All I ask is that you do your best. Above all else, be one hundred percent honest, and as clear and succinct as possible.”
I trudged to my office and slumped at my desk. There had to be more. I knew that I couldn’t just hand her flowers or jewels or presents. She would think I was trying to buy or bribe her.
After about thirty solid minutes of me staring blindly out the window, Laura came in and set a coffee in front of me. “Sir, is there anything I can do to help?”
“Sit, please.”
I looked at her, and she could probably see the fires of hell churning in my eyes. “Laura, can you please help me think like a woman for a moment?”
She raised an eyebrow.
“I know, I know,” I said, holding up my hands, sighing heavily. “You met Katy. Did you see how perfect she is for me?”
“To be honest, sir, I didn’t see the two of you together, exactly. But I did see that Katy is a very special young lady. She loves her work. Watching her face light up every time a new customer came in was incredible.”
My eyes flew wide as I stared at Laura. “That’s it. That’s why we click so well. I’m trying to improve the world, and she’s trying to improve one person’s life at a time. I get that now.” I nodded, thinking at lightning speed as I took a sip of coffee.
“She listens so well,” I said. “And I love that she was very precise. She didn’t take my word for it about measurements, she pointed. She worked with me.”
Laura smiled warmly. “I noticed that too. It made me feel more relaxed that we were figuring out what I needed together instead of her just telling me and playing the part of the expert.”