Rather than respond, he pointed at the upstairs of the house. “How did you sleep last night?” he asked, his hand on my arm again, as though it belonged there even though we both knew it didn’t.
“Like a dream. I didn’t want to get up.” I took a sip of the rich coffee and closed my eyes. “Oh, that’s good.”
He chuckled, but it wasn’t relaxed. “It is good, and it’s better because I’m outside eating breakfast in the yard with my best friend and not in a fancy hotel, dressed in a suit and pretending to care.”
I eyed him carefully. “How did you sleep last night?”
He grabbed his fork again and stabbed at some hash browns. “I can’t say I did much sleeping. I stood in your doorway, watching you for a good long time.”
“Creeper,” I teased, giving him a shoulder push, but he didn’t laugh like he usually would. “Mathias?”
“I was worried about you.” He pushed his plate away from him and pulled his coffee cup closer. “Was it another seizure? I noticed that you took a headache pill upstairs with you.”
My breath whooshed out of me. “Yeah, but I was already overwhelmed. Ridiculous, considering my life thus far, but standing out there”—I motioned to the yard—”everything crashed down on me. I felt like someone poured all my issues, along with a few new ones, over the top of my head. My brain couldn’t process everything fast enough.”
He nodded and gave me a sad smile. “Dr. Newsome said that could be an issue for you, remember?”
“I’m trying not to remember, okay? I just want to be a normal woman without the stigma of what I was.”
“The stigma of what you were?” He leaned back in his chair, waiting for me to answer.
“The drug-addicted baby, who became the learning-disabled child, who became an insolent teen, who became the needy baggage to the successful best friend. That’s the stigma of what I was and what I am summed up in one sentence.” The silence between us was broken only by the birds singing and the wind blowing through the trees. “Are you ready to talk business now?”
“Let me get my computer.” He stood without making eye contact and as he walked away, I couldn’t help but think he wanted to say something else. This time, I was the one who’d said the wrong thing.
♥
I stared at the paperwork spread out before me and shook my head. I’d been going through the information for the last forty-five minutes once he gave me a brief explanation. Because my mind processes things slower than his does, I wanted to be alone with the paperwork to go through it at my pace. Now that I had, he’d disappeared, but he had some explaining to do. I pulled my notepad over by me and took a few more notes, then leaned back in my chair.
“Mathias!” I called, wondering if he could hear me without having to get up and hunt him down. I stacked papers back into folders and cleaned up the table, ready to stand when he came out of the garage on the side of the house.
“All done?” He pulled a chair out and sat with a look on his face that said he was frustrated. It said something else too. Something I couldn’t put my finger on.
“I’m done, but I’m confused,” I said, resting my chin on my hand.
He grabbed the computer and lifted it over by him. “I’ll do my best to clear it up. What are you confused about?”
“Why you sold every business that wasn’t within a two-hundred-mile radius of Plentiful, to begin with.”
“I told you,” he said, then took a drink of the water I handed him. “I’m simplifying my portfolio.”
“Mathias”—I leaned forward—”you’ve liquidated over three-quarters of your holdings. That’s more than simplifying. That’s almost total destruction of your business and finances.”
His eyebrow went up slowly. “I have more money than I can spend in a lifetime, and that’s without the businesses I still hold. Once I have all the sold businesses cleaned up and off the books, I’ll buy more failing businesses around here. You know the game. I buy, fix, and flip.”
“If that’s the game, why do you still hold part ownership of Butterfly Junction?” I tapped the folder with that information.
He tapped it back. “Because Butterfly Junction is in Plentiful. I was going to sell my shares to Gulliver, but the more I was there, the more I wanted to stay. No one else is going to understand our vision for the company. Besides, Gulliver and Charity have become friends, and God knows I need friends more than I need money.”
I tipped my head in acknowledgment of how accurate that statement was. “Fine, I’ll trust that you know what you’re doing.”
“At least you trust me about something.” His face was stone-cold unreadable when he said it.
I didn’t know how to respond, so I motioned at all the folders in front of me. “You’re now a proud owner of a marina, an environmental business, a restaurant, a honey farm, and several other businesses I’m not entirely sure of what they do.”
“Those are money market companies. They invest and recoup losses, that kind of thing.”
“You’re telling me you bought businesses that do what you do for a business.”
