Or what? The words almost came out of her mouth, too, but the waitress saved them both. Marianna took a steadying breath. She was getting to him this time. And she wasn’t going to let him stop this game.
The waitress took Simon’s order quite attentively. Her gaze lingered on the hard muscles straining at the sleeves of Simon’s shirt, then walked away. Marianna rolled her eyes.
Simon rubbed a hand over his face. “Why the hell aren’t you taking this threat more seriously?”
Marianna’s shoulders sagged. “I am taking it seriously. That’s why I’m sitting here right now.” She sighed. “Look, I’ve been dealing with some of this stuff with William for the past year. For a while, I spent too much time worrying about it. Trust me, that’s worse.”
His expression softened. He studied her for an extra beat, as if he was really seeing her, seeing the strain of all those years of keeping up appearances. He took a breath, like he was going to ask more, but that wasn’t where she wanted this conversation to go. “Any more rules I should know about? Or is it my turn to ask a question?”
Simon raised his eyebrows. “Your turn.”
“You never told me why you were outside my father’s house in Miami,” she said.
He blinked in surprise, as if that was the last thing he had expected her to say. He was quiet, just studying her with his liquid green eyes. The old familiar heat sparked in his gaze, fixed steady on her. They sat in silence, and she wondered if he would answer at all.
Finally, he said, “I came to Miami to visit my father’s grave, to say goodbye to that part of my life... I guess I was doing the same thing at your house. Saying goodbye to those memories.”
She bit her lip. He might actually be giving her the truth.
“Then I screwed up your plans?”
He smiled a little. “I guess. Though it was a bit more complicated than that.”
If they were still eighteen, he probably would’ve found a way to work another meaning of the wordscrewedinto his answer. But she hadn’t quite figured out this new version of Simon.
“My turn again,” said Simon, crossing his arms. “I want more information about what I walked into on your front lawn. More than what you sent to Blackmore Inc.”
She relented. “Ruiz Imports has been dabbling in different exports, and it usually doesn’t make much of a profit. William has called it testing the market. We try it for a bit, then drop it. And I’ve never thought much about it.”
He nodded.
“But now I have to sign off on how much we spend on these new ideas. Different products, different countries, and we never seem to stick with any of them. The stuff we get into makes no sense—one week it’s oranges, and the next it’s fertilizer. So I started looking into it.” Marianna glanced away. “Well, you saw William’s temper outside my house, and you heard about the car chase.”
Simon visibly stiffened, clenching his jaw. In the end, this was why she had come. Because Simon still had that drive to protect at all costs. Even her. She felt it back on her Miami driveway, and she could see it now.
He nodded for her to continue.
“One of these ventures right now is to export fertilizer to Goodwin Enterprises, here in Australia,” she said. “Except I think there’s too much money involved for just fertilizer. William probably would have hidden the inconsistencies better if he knew I’d be looking, but I haven’t been involved in these kinds of details in the past.”
Simon’s eyes darted around the restaurant, and she looked, too. The crowd by the bar was growing.
“But why did you come here?”
“Because Joseph Goodwin is my godfather,” she said quietly. “I haven’t seen him in many years, but I still think he’s one of the few people who wouldn’t be loyal to William over me.”
“I see.”
Her memories of Joseph Goodwin were hazy, far back to when her mother was still alive. Family dinners. Christmas. And then he was gone. A card every birthday, nothing else. The few times his name came up in the years since then, her father gave very little away except to say that Goodwin would always be there when she needed him. It was time to put that statement to the test.
“With Goodwin’s help, I can hopefully figure out the Ruiz Imports mess.” She paused. “And you’re here, too. For safety.”
Simon didn’t say anything for a long time. Was he considering what this all meant for her? Or them? When she booked her ticket to Sydney, she had spent a long time dwelling on the coincidence that Simon had appeared at this time in her life. Was it fate bringing them back together? Had Simon asked this question, too? No, he didn’t believe in fate. Life had already dealt him far too many blows to look for meaning in these flukes.
Deep lines creased Simon’s brow. “What do you want me to do?”
“I was hoping you could help me look into some of the details.”
“What do you mean by ‘look into’?”
