The next moment, he pushed open the door.
“Gareth, why the hell didn’t you knock?” Penny greeted him as he closed the door behind him and on Hazel. From behind her desk, she looked at him, irritated. “But since I have you here, why did Blake Ford wake my boyfriend up last night so he could help him separate emotions from the game?”
“I have no idea.”
“Are you sure? Because Jack said I should thank you.”
“Your boyfriend has taken a few too many pucks to the head,” he retorted sharply.
Penny snorted. “Do you know when Hazel is supposed to arrive to finalize Devreaux’s contract? I haven’t been able to reach her all morning.”
Well, she’d been busy. “She’ll be here directly.”
“Good. Then we can sort out the contract before the game. I’ve already printed everything out.”
He looked skeptically at the papers on her desk. “You…don’t want to change anything else in the contract?”
“Should I?”
He raised his eyebrows. “I don’t know, Penny. Isn’t the sum too high for you, and you want to bring me to my senses?” he asked coolly.
His sister frowned and rose with a sigh. “Yeah, sorry about that. I saw Dad accidentally had you in the CC. Man, he’s getting old.”
Gareth pressed his lips together and stuffed his fists in his pockets. “That’syour apology?”
“Apology?” she asked, astonished. “What do I have to apologize for?”
Was she serious? “Oh, I don’t know, maybe for sending Dad the damn numbers in the first place?”
She frowned. “But he asked me to.”
“He asked me too! But our numbers are none of his damn business.”
“Well…” Penny rocked her head back and forth. “It was his team for almost thirty years.”
“So what?” His voice was growing increasingly louder, even though he wastryingreally hard to hold back. “That doesn’t give him the right to persuade you to interfere in my work!”
Penny blinked. “But he didn’t. Sure, he wanted to, but he’s wrong!”
His eyebrows furrowed abruptly. He must have misunderstood her. “What?”
Penny sighed. “Gareth, Dad’s wrong. I think Devreaux is worth even more and you got a bargain. Just because he tells me to do something doesn’t mean I have to. Dad’s a control freak, and he drives Mom crazy when he doesn’t get the information, so I give it to him. I do it to ease the pressure on their marriage and…” She hesitated.
“And what?” Gareth asked uneasily.
With a heavy sigh, she walked around the desk. “You don’t care what he says anyway, so I thought no harm would be done.”
“But I do care,” he blurted out, even though he wanted to bite his tongue at the same time.
“What?” His sister looked at him wide-eyed and, cursing, he began pacing in front of her.
This wasn’t Penny’s problem; it was his. He had no desire to drag her into his problem. Apparently, Hazel was right: Penny had no idea what he was feeling or how much their father upset him. He didn’t want to hurt his sister just because she'd hurt him, and it wouldn’t be fair to yell at her for something she didn’t understand. And no matter how hard it was for him to talk about this crap and open up…he owed her an explanation.
“I care about all of it!” he whispered tensely. Each word stuck in his throat, but he spat it out anyway. “It’s putting so much fucking pressure on me.Everythingthat’s happened over the last year is putting so much fucking pressure on me! Having to compete against you to secure my place here. Having to trick our own fucking parents into agreeing with our decision that the best way to run the Hawks was together…” He ran a hand through his hair nervously. “Having Dad breathing down my neck, second-guessing my every decision. I can’t fight for their fucking acceptance anymore! I’m too tired for this.”
Damn, he truly hadn’t wanted to raise his voice and shout the last sentence, but it was probably too late for that now. But Penny apparently wasn’t looking at him in shock because of his volume. She had pressed her fist to her heart and her eyes were shining.
“It…it's stressing you out?”
