“Wow, and I thought my family was crazy. At least all my mom does when she’s upset is mix up ingredients and overbake everything.”
I met Noah’s eyes, and he paused midway through putting a piece of fruit in his mouth. “You’re not joking.”
“I wish I was.”
“I’m so sorry. How could your dad do that? What happens if you can’t or don’t want to get married within that time? Or at all?”
I shook my head. “Shares will go on sale. Business partners get first refusal, and I don’t have enough personal money to buy them.”
“There has to be a way out of it. Shit, Lior, we’re not in eighteenth-century Britain.”
Yeah, I knew that. My father, apparently, didn’t agree. “Trust me, I’ve been looking at all legal avenues, but everything’s a dead end.”
“Why would your father do that to you?”
I sighed. “He had an amazing, happy life with my mom, and when he wrote the will, he was pushing me to get married because, at the time, I was?—”
“With Pierce.”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t sound more like a deflated balloon.
“Shit.”
I didn’t want to sit in my room indulging in a woe-is-me pity party. “Are you done with breakfast?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s catch some more sessions. The conference isn’t over yet.”
I couldn’t decipher the way he looked at me, so I ignored it. Pity was the last thing I wanted Noah to feel for me.
With my hair still wet from the shower, we walked through the hotel to the attached conference center.
Pierce didn’t show his face all day, so I assumed he’d either gone back home early or decided to stay away from the conference.
As the hours ticked by, my time with Noah was coming to an end. Soon, we wouldn’t have any reason to be in touch.
I had my plate brimming to the top with work, finding a husband, avoiding finding a husband, and trying to keep my family’s business in the family. There was no time to even grab a meal with a business friend. So why was my brain trying to come up with reasons to see Noah again?
“Hey, you okay?” he asked.
We were in the front row for the closing keynote speech. Noah had been invited to be part of a final panel so he had front row seats for him and a companion.
“Yeah, I’m good. Why?”
“Don’t know. Seemed like a dark cloud just came over you. Your eyebrows did that thing like when you saw Pierce yesterday at the bar.”
“Nah. Just tired. We’re not all twenty-something-year-olds who can survive on energy drinks and sunshine.”
“First of all, I’m thirty. And second, energy drinks and sunshine are overrated. Give me a greasy breakfast and two Advil any day.”
His unbreakable spirit was infectious. Boundless energy, an incorrigible flirt, sweet and caring. Why couldn’t I have met him ten years ago?
I cringed. That would have made him twenty.
Business connection or not, he was still too young.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, so when the keynote ended and Noah joined the other speakers on stage, I pulled it out.
