She forked another bite into her mouth, her gaze going distant like she thought of marketing plans or the words she’d use when contacting the person.
The rest of breakfast eaten, they quickly cleaned up the kitchen, and he went to his room to change out of his gray sweats and T-shirt before emerging again, phone in hand as he frowned at a message Ana had sent to him and Quinley as a group. A link to an article featuring a photo of him and Quinley side by side.
Quinley was in the process of setting her prepaid phone down on the counter.
“I’msorry, Elias,” Quinley said.
He paused at her words. “I haven’t read it yet. What does it say?”
Quinley wrinkled her nose and made a face. “Someone at the gas station where we stopped for snacks remembered you. They…released security images of us together in your truck.”
His hand tightened on the phone he held, but then he tucked it into his back pocket and walked toward her. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s get out of here. I’ll show you the reason I booked this cabin.”
Forty-five minutes later, they stood at a waterfall that poured into a small body of water too big to be a pond but too small to be a lake.
“This was so worth sneaking out through the window,” Quinley breathed.
He shrugged off the backpack he’d thrown together for them and dug inside for water and an apple, handing them to her. “Keep your energy up. You’ll need it for the walk back. Going down uses an entirely different set of muscles.”
She made another face, and a soft chuckle left him before he could squelch it.
They made themselves comfortable on the rocky ground around the watering hole, both lost to their own thoughts and bodies resting from the hike.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Quinley said after a long stretch of silence. “Jobwise, I mean. I’m smart enough to know working with my father will be extremely uncomfortable now, and—I think maybe it is time to change things up. I have enough in savings to last me for a while, and—I think you Blackwells and your penchant for entrepreneurship have inspired me to start my own advertising company.”
He nodded at her words, at the glint in her beautiful eyes as she rose to the challenge. “I’m glad to hear it. From what you said, you haven’t enjoyed working with your father for a while.”
“I haven’t. I always told myself I never wanted to be my father’s competition, but maybe I do. Not out of spite or greed but to justshowhim what I’m truly capable of. It dawned on me during the hike that my father has always passed female clients down to me because he didn’t consider them worth his time. And as for me, Iknowhe limits me because he passes clients to male peers with less experience, just because they’re men. I’ve…allowed it up to this point. Which is on me, not him. Sowhy notstart my own company specializing in social media marketing and give women-owned businesses or women-focused businesses a place where they’re valued? I’m doing it anyway and getting paid less for it at the moment.”
“That sounds like hefty competition for your father.”
“It could be, but only if he continues to devalue half his client base. My dad is…off-putting. Oh, he can be charming and flirtatious and say all the right things, but I know shrewd, business-minded women see him for what he is, and he knows it. He doesn’t like them, so he sticks to the ones he can control. Women…like my mother.”
Elias frowned at her words. When he thought of women he’d admit to liking a certain amount of control in certain areas—one in particular—but not the way Quinley described. How boring would that be to know a woman would bow down to his wishes all the time? Cowed by his temper and whatever other methods he used to compel her to do his will? That wasn’t how his father had treated his mother. Wasn’t how his brothers treated their wives. No, mutual respect was the key.
“I have you to thank for the encouragement, Elias. And for a lot more.”
“You’re welcome.”
She tossed the apple core into the woods beside them and drank a bit more water before putting it into one of the side pockets of the backpack, a small smirk hovering over her lips.
“That look on you seems dangerous,” he said, his voice low with more than a little interest in the woman she was in this moment.
“I want to celebrate, but I doubt you’ll do what I wanna do.”
He simply raised an eyebrow in question.
“I’ve never swam beneath a waterfall, and it’s kind of a bucket list thing.”
“That water is freezing cold.”
“The sun’s out. And we’d warm back up fast going down the mountain.”
“Quinley…”
She began yanking at the straps of her boots and had them off along with her socks in a matter of seconds.
“Quinley, this is a bad idea.”
