Page 41 of Wife By Accident

“What did your boss do?”

“He never thought anything I did was good enough. At the conference, I got a couple of great leads, but he wouldn’t let me come to the client dinner. He invited my male coworkers instead.”

“What a jerk.”

“Thank you,” Olivia smiled. “He did stuff like that all the time. At the conference, he made me come early to set up, and let them sleep in, even though he knew I’d arrived in the middle of the night. He always said I was doing things wrong, no matter how hard I tried. I hope you aren’t like that with your employees.”

“I’m not.” Leo raised his eyebrows. “I hope.”

“I’m sure you’re not. You don’t seem like that kind of guy.”

“Well, it was just a little while ago that I was running the company with my brother,” Leo said. “I guess I remember those days and feel grateful that we have any help at all.”

“What was that like?”

“When it was just me and Kyle?” Leo smiled. “Hard. Fun. We had a tiny office over an Ethiopian restaurant, and we had a lot of late nights. It was so much work, but we were in it together.”

“That must have been nice.” Olivia smiled, too, and it made her eyes look somehow even greener, her lips even pinker. “Do you at least like Ethiopian food?”

“It’s not bad,” Leo said, and they both laughed, even though it wasn’t really funny. “Do you?”

“I’ve never had it.”

“You should, sometime.”

The conversation trailed off, and Olivia sighed, her gaze back on the view. “You’re so lucky to have this place right on your doorstep. Do you come here often?”

“Yes,” Leo said. Then he hesitated and shook his head. “No. Maybe I used to, but nowadays, I rarely see anything outside of my office and my condo.”

“Why’s that?” asked Olivia.

“I…” Leo sighed. “Well, I’ve always been a workaholic. Ever since I was a young adult. Even when I came to places like this, it was usually with clients, not for fun.”

“Why is work so important to you?” Olivia asked. “I understand prioritizing your career — I’ve tried to do that, too — but it seems like it’s more than that.”

Leo didn’t usually talk about… well, anything personal like this, but he felt so comfortable with Olivia. He sighed. “My parents always instilled in my brother and me the idea that we needed to make money. To leave a legacy. To be a success. They bragged about us to their friends from the time we could walk. When I was very young, I loved it. But as I got older, I started to worry that I wouldn’t live up to their expectations. What if I didn’t get good grades? What if I didn’t go to a great college? What if I started a company and it didn’t work out? So, I worked hard. Really hard. I studied, I put in the hours, I thought through everything that could go wrong and tried to fix it before it did.”

“I see.” Olivia bit her lip. “That can’t have been easy. Are your parents proud of you now? You’re clearly successful.”

“I think they are. But the unintended consequence of all that pressure is that I’m not very close with them anymore, so we don’t talk a lot.”

“What about your brother?” Olivia asked. “Are you close with him?”

Leo looked at her. It was hard to believe that Olivia didn’t know about Kyle — it seemed news of his brother’s death had reached everyone in his circle. Now that Kyle was gone, the people he knew looked at him with pity. He didn’t want Olivia to look at him with pity.

But he didn’t want to lie to her, either. He felt comfortable with her in a way he’d never felt comfortable with anyone but his brother, and he knew that honesty was important if he wanted to maintain that comfort.

“Kyle passed away a few months ago.”

Olivia’s expression changed — but it wasn’t pity he saw on her lovely features. It was understanding. Empathy.

“I’m so sorry,” she said kindly. She reached across the table and took his hand in hers. Her thumb smoothed across the ridge of his knuckles, as gentle as a whisper, before she threaded her fingers between his and squeezed. He squeezed her hand back.

Usually, when people said they were sorry, Leo struggled to know what to say back. It’s okay would have felt terribly callous, not to mention untrue. Thank you didn’t sound right either. It’s been hard would have been true, but Leo wasn’t comfortable admitting that to anyone.

With Olivia, though, he knew he didn’t need to reply. He just nodded.

“That’s actually why I was in Vegas,” he explained. “Kyle’s funeral was several months ago, but I’d had his ashes since then. I wanted to scatter them somewhere meaningful, and it was so hard to find the right place. Kyle and I spent a lot of time together, but most of it was in boardrooms or in our office or working, in one way or another. And part of it was that I just wanted to delay the inevitable. It felt like scattering his ashes would mean I was finally saying goodbye. For real. If that makes sense.”