“You’re worried.”
“I am. Hence the family council.” She was smiling, but her eyes were still full of unease.
“Is it related to our conversation before I left?”
“Yes. I’m still processing it, but I wanted to process it with my family.”
“You’re mad at me?”
“Not exactly...but I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me everything.”
I pressed my thumbs gently in the nape of her neck, deciding to lay all my cards on the table. “Because when I talked to you on Thanksgiving about this, you closed up. I could practically feel you slipping away, and I didn’t want to risk that happening again.”
Tess dropped her gaze to my chin. “You’ve been so withdrawn and silent during these past few weeks instead of letting me in so we could work through this together. I thought...” Her voice wobbled a bit. “I thought I’d done something wrong.”
Fuck!
“Tess...babe. I was just trying to protect you.”
She swallowed, nodding. “But I don’t want you to do that. You’re taking all the tension on yourself all the time, and that isn’t good, you know? You’ll get tired of it...of me,” she whispered.
“No, I won’t. Ever. I love you.”
“I spoke to Skye, and we’d like to tell you to please not handle the situation with Albert any differently than you usually would. If we weren’t together, I mean.”
“What are you saying?”
“I spoke to my family, and if you were to freeze the investment for a while, they could extend us a credit line until things work out.”
“You’d rather borrow money from your family, which you’ve told me you don’t want to do, than trust me to fix this?”
Her eyes flashed. “No, I’m looking for options so you don’t have to put your business in danger. Because I love you, Liam.”
Fucking hell, this woman. She was infuriating. Did she really trust me that little? That was worrying me more than anything else. I knew Tess loved her independence. I knew her dad leaving when she was a child affected her more than she let on. She’d practically told me that one of the reasons she’d always been so self-sufficient was because she hadn’t wanted to depend on anyone else financially—not even her family. I wasn’t asking her to depend on me, just to trust me.
“You can’t go rogue. We need to decide these things together,” I said in a measured tone.
Tess threw her hands up in the air. “You’re the one who didn’t involve me in your decisions.”
There was a knock at the door. Isabelle poked her head inside.
“Sorry to interrupt, but the customer is asking for you, Tess. Also, we can hear your voices a bit. I propose you continue the conversation later on. Liam, we have plenty of goodies outside. I will have Josie stop by the changing room with snacks for you too, Tess. Things make so much more sense once your belly is full and you have some sugar in your system.”
Tess chuckled. I smiled too. Isabelle was something else.
Tess hurried outside the room to her customer.
“Come on.” Isabelle laced an arm around mine, practically dragging me from the room. “I wasn’t joking about the sugar.”
“Is that your official therapist advice?”
She laughed as she led me to the buffet.
“Hell no. That would be to not push things tonight. Tess and Skye are running on adrenaline. Once everything’s over and they’ve rested a bit, I’m sure they’re going to see things more calmly.”
“Listen to Isabelle. She knows her stuff,” Hunter said. He was right next to us, helping himself to snacks.
“Awww, thanks for being such a supportive brother-in-law,” Isabelle replied with a wink.