Page 39 of Kiss Me Again

I nod. “When has that ever stopped you?”

He chuckles. “When my CFO has done nothing but bitch about cost, hasn’t been in contact with our investors, and stopped listening to me after he drank all my coffee, asshole.”

Lily was right, after all. Iaman asshole. “I’ll make a new pot.”

-

16

Cormac

“I don’t need a new pot of coffee, Cormac, I need support here,” Beau grumbles.

But I make the coffee, anyway. It might clear the Lily-scented fog in my brain. As I pour the water into the machine, I tell him, “I’ve already secured the financing from Clint Bryson—

He laughs once sharply. “Clint Bryson is a temperamental old coot, and if you think a handshake is the same as money in our accounts, you are sadly mistaken.”

I whip my head around so fast that my headache threatens to return. It seems he has forgotten our roles. “Iam the Chief Financial Officer here, Beau. I know how money works, and I don’t need you to tell me how to do my job.”

“Oh really? I wasn’t sure anymore.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You took a day off!”

His words leave me baffled. “Huh?”

“Since when do you take a day off in the middle of the week, Cormac? You. The workaholic. The one I can count on to be in the office early and late, the man who gives me shit for taking vacations, took an impromptu day off.”

“So?”

“So?” he asks, incredulous. “We are in the biggest project of our lives. This is the most important thing we have ever done. For you to just up and take a day off—

“That’s where you’re wrong, Beau. Very, very wrong.”

“Are you joking? What the hell else is even close to this?”

I press the button on the coffeemaker, trying to calm down. It’s not his fault that he doesn’t get it, and if I snap at him about all of this, he never will. Calmly, I sit across from him. “My children, Beau. They are the biggest project of my life. The most important thing I have ever done. It’s bad enough that I come to work early and stay late. That I’m a workaholic. I love my job, don’t get me wrong. Working for our company is all I ever wanted to do when we were kids. But that was long before I had my own kids.”

He takes a deep breath to calm himself. I can see the argument in his eyes, but also that he knows better than to say it out loud. “Look, I love my niece and nephew, and I didn’t mean to imply anything by what I said about the job—

“I know you love them.”

“But I still need your support here, Cormac. The day you became a father didn’t mean you stopped being my brother.”

“Look, I appreciate you want me around—

“Needyou around.”

I half-smile. “I get that. But do you know why I took yesterday off?”

“You said something about the beach.”

“I needed a half a day off to spend it with my kids doing something fun. And for once, I felt fine doing that. Do you know why?”

He shrugs. “Why?”

“I felt comfortable taking the time off because I know I can trust you to handle things around here.”