I could hear the edge in her voice. I knew I was walking into dangerous territory. “Well, yes.”
“What happens when we fail?” she asked. “Because that’s what businesses like ours do, Kent. We fail. We’ve been failing for years. What happens when your several million dollarsdisappears into a black hole of bad Christmas tree sales and empty lodge rooms?”
“That’s not going to happen.”
She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Oh, really? You can guarantee success now? That’s quite a superpower.”
“I’m not guaranteeing anything,” I said, frustrated that this wasn’t going the way I’d hoped. “But failure isn’t an option here. I won’t let it happen.”
“You won’t let it happen,” she repeated, shaking her head. “God, do you hear yourself? You think you can just will a struggling business back to profitability through sheer determination and money?”
“Money helps,” I said. “And so does experience. I know how to run businesses, Sylvie. I know how to market, how to scale, how to?—”
“How to destroy,” she interrupted. “That’s what you know how to do.”
The accusation stung. “Look, even if the worst-case scenario happens, even if everything goes to hell and we lose every penny I invest, there’s still option B.”
“Which is?”
“I buy the property anyway. At fair market value, not the offer my family made. Your family gets enough money to start over somewhere else, debt-free, with money left over.”
She stared at me like I’d grown a second head. “And you? What happens to you when you’re out several million dollars?”
I shrugged, trying to make it sound casual even though the amount would definitely hurt. “I’ll still be rich, Sylvie. I won’t be broke. I won’t be living in a cardboard box. I’ll just be less rich.”
“Less rich,” she said slowly. “Must be nice to live in a world where losing millions of dollars is just being ‘less rich.’”
The bitterness in her voice made my chest tighten. I was handling it all wrong. But I had a feeling no matter what I said was going to offend her in one way or another.
The silence stretched between us. I waited, hardly daring to breathe, while Sylvie processed what I had just proposed.
“Can I think about it?” she asked finally.
Relief flooded through me. She hadn’t said no. She hadn’t walked away or told me to leave. She was willing to consider it.
“Of course,” I said. “Take all the time you need.”
“I’ll need to talk to my family. Get their input. We don’t make major decisions without everyone being on board.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything else.”
She nodded, but I could see the wheels turning in her mind, probably already thinking through all the ways this could go wrong, all the reasons she should be suspicious of my motives. She expected an investment at the very beginning. She didn’t trust me now.
I knew I had to address the elephant in the room, the fact that business wasn’t the only thing I’d come back to discuss.
“Sylvie,” I said, taking a half-step closer. “I need to apologize. Again. I know I’ve said I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’ve properly acknowledged how badly I hurt you.”
She looked up at me. I could see the pain in her eyes.
“I lied to you,” I continued. “I used your trust against you. I made you look foolish in front of your father, and I know how much that meant to you—having his respect, being seen as capable of handling important family business.”
Her throat worked like she was trying to swallow around something difficult.
“But more than that,” I said, my voice dropping to barely above a whisper. “I hurt someone I care about. Someone who showed me kindness and joy and what it felt like to belongsomewhere. Someone who made me want to be better than I’d ever thought I could be.”
“Kent—”
“I will never hurt you again,” I said, cutting off whatever protest she’d been about to make. “If you give me the chance, I’ll protect you. I’ll stand by you. I’ll be the kind of man who deserves your trust and your faith and your?—”
