“I’ll just go ...” Daisy started to say she was going to ride with Nora.
“You can take Daisy,” Nora said.
“Nora ...” Her heart thundered when she looked up at Zach. The truth was, he wasn’t offering anything other than a ride. It was just that Nora had gotten in her head about it.
You’re attracted to him.
Maybe. Okay. More than maybe. She was attracted to him. What woman wasn’t attracted to him? He was ... Zach Woods. It wasn’t like he was her friend or anything. It’s not like it would break anything if the two of them ...
“Thank you,” Daisy said.
Nora shoved her.
“Nora.” She gritted her name out through her clenched teeth. The town square might as well have suddenly become a high school cafeteria.
Nora grinned, more than a little wine drunk herself. Daisy felt stone-cold sober.
Andalone, as Nora’s car pulled up and she waved, getting inside quickly.
“I’m just parked over here,” he said.
“Okay. Okay.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m good. I ... I’m very good. In spite of the fact my husband is marrying a woman who’s ten years younger than us.”
“He’s an asshole.” Zach was matter of fact. “I need you to know that. I also need to talk to you about something.”
“What?” Her heart hammered. Was he going to say he liked her? Would he kiss her? She was getting way ahead of herself.
“What?” she said again, trying to sound a little bit less keen.
“I want to sell my portion of the business to you.”
“What?” She was entirely sober now.
“I own the majority of it. So if you bought it from me, you would be the majority owner.”
“But . . . but . . . I can’t afford it,” she sputtered.
She looked across the street, at the light on in Soraya’s apartment window glowing above the apothecary. A reminder that she was in the real world and not having a delusional fantasy, because this didn’t feel like it could possibly be real. It just didn’t.
But Zach was looking at her in a way he never had before. No one had looked at her like this before. She wouldn’t have been able to fantasize this if she wanted to. “I’d like to sell it to you for a penny.”
“Zach, I can’t let you do that. I can’t ... accept that. It was an investment for you, and there’s no way ...”
“I have plenty of money. I invested in this because I met him, and he had a young family, and he was trying to get this thing off the ground. I invested in it because ... It’s hard for me to explain it. Thepoint is, I don’t need the money. I also think what he’s doing to you is shitty. I’ve seen some messy breakups. Entertainment is a small industry. People break up, and they still have to work together. It’s notunlikea small town; it’s not unlike what’s happening to you. I hate what he did to you. I know everything you did for the business. I don’t do much as far as the day-to-day running of it. I just ... own the majority of it because I paid all the money to start it up, and I collect a percentage in repayment.”
She was dizzy. “I get how it works. I did the books, remember?”
“I know you did. You did the majority of the organization. I want to make sure a fair percentage of that goes to you.”
“You already arranged to have those sets built for the play, and they’re so ... beautiful—they must have cost a fortune.”
“I have connections to set builders. It’s not that big of a deal.”
“It is, though. I just don’t ... I don’t understand why you would do all this.”
