Okay, enough. They were just eyes. Watching Claire too closely, taking her measure. “You were here first. I’ll leave you to…” She shrugged.
“Just exploring,” he said.
“Right. I’ll leave you to your exploring.” She pivoted in the water and kicked off toward the sparkling curtain of the waterfall and daylight beyond.
“Claire.”
She wanted to pretend for a moment her hearing was no more acute than a human’s, but of course that ruse was thin. And immature. She turned back. “Yes?”
Tai cocked his head to study her, his face expressionless. “This is what you want? Avoiding each other all day?”
“I’m not avoiding you. I just don’t have anything to say to you.”
He shrugged, one hand skimming the water with a light splash. “And if I have something to say?”
“Well, do you?”
“I mean today, generally, if I have something to say to you at any point.”
“You don’t need to ask about Slake It Off. You see the accounts every month as is your right.” A right he was about to lose in the next few weeks, but he’d get no heads-up from her. He probably wouldn’t try to stop her, but just in case, Claire planned to spring it on him only when she was ready to sign the paperwork.
“You’re doing great,” he said. “Growing profits every month.”
“I’m good at my job.”
He nodded.
“And there’s nothing else we could possibly need to talk about.”
Tai latched a hand onto the back of his neck as if she might actually be getting to him, though his expression didn’t change. “It’s not about needing to talk. It’s aboutnotneeding to avoid.”
“Well, like I said, I’m not avoiding you.”
He made a scoffing sound that echoed off the cave walls.
Refusing to snub the best man, engaging politely—all her resolutions evaporated. She slapped the water between them and wished it were something more solid and satisfying.
“Look, Tai, if you really want me to say it, I will. I’m not interested in a friendly chat with someone whose word can’t be trusted.”
The first ripple of a feeling passed over his face, tightness in his mouth and around his eyes. “I honored our contract to the letter.”
So Ryker was right. This idiot still believed the contract was the thing that mattered. “And our dreams for the business? Our partnership and our vision—did you honor that?”
Did you honor our friendship?
“You changed the vision, Claire, not me. You woke up one morning and decided our café and record store was now a blood bar.”
“And I had every right to do that.” Curse it all, why did he still have the power to make her mad? “I own the building—not half of it, all of it. You’re literally an investor.”
“Exactly,” he said.
She blinked. “What?”
“You own the building. It was your choice. I never contested the decision.”
“You didn’t bother. You never cared in the first place what I did with the business. It wasn’t a vision to you. It was money. To you, everything is money.”
“No,” he said.
