Page 73 of Heartbreaker

Sitting back, I fold my arms over my chest and look at her. “Spit it out.”

“What?”

Rocking forward on my chair I lean my elbows on the desk. “Come on, Lindy you have an opinion about everything, so don’t play coy with me now.”

She snorts and laughs an unamused laugh. “Fine you want to know, I’ll tell you. You fucked up, you fucked up hiring him and you fucked up walking away from that pretty little unicorn girl.”

“Ashley. Her name is Ashley.”

She waves a hand at me as if doesn’t matter what she is called. “Whatever, you messed up and now you’re going to fix it, aren’t you Jackson?” She eyes me with a hard glint and I wonder if she ever thought of applying for the military, she would have been a ball buster.

“I am going to fix it, yes,” I sigh.

“But, I hear a but,” she says as she sits down opposite getting comfortable for this conversation.

“But I need to change my life first, this isn’t fair to her,” I say raising my hands in the air to indicate the office and the business I have built.

“No shit, Sherlock. This business is amazing, and I don’t care what anyone else says it comes from a good place and it saves a lot of girls from having their self-esteem destroyed and you do that, Jackson, you.” She points a gnarly finger at me.

“You just have to figure out the direction that allows you to still do that but keep your girl happy. Get your thinking cap on and I’ll sort the coffee before your appointment arrives.” She stands and heads for the door.

I think about what she has said, she accepted I fucked up as did my mother, they seem to think it is fixable, that I can rescue this situation. I stare at the screen hardly noticing the coffee Lindy leaves me.

At bang on eleven, she calls through on my phone to tell me my eleven o’clock is here.

“Send him in,” I say as I stand and go to meet him at the door, swinging it open I stop dead in my tracks not expecting to see him.