Page 184 of The Reason I Married Him
“Want to talk about your problem?” he asks.
“Not really,” I say.
“Why?”
Because it’s embarrassing that I can’t figure it out.
Because I don’t want you to think I’m a failure and can’t handle this farm.
Because my sister left me to grow this business, and I can’t seem to do that.
“Just tired of thinking about it,” I answer.
“Hmm, doesn’t seem like it.” His thumb rubs along my thigh in a soothing motion that simultaneously relaxes me and turns me on. “Seems like you don’t want to talk about it because you don’t want to tell me something.”
“What could I possibly want to hide from you?” I ask.
“Your pride,” he says as he stops at a stop sign and looks over at me.
How?
How does this man already understand me so easily when we haven’t known each other that long? Am I really that transparent?
“Tell me I’m wrong,” he says, growing serious.
I look away, unable to sit here under his stare.
“I know I’m not wrong,” he says, continuing to drive. “There’s nothing wrong with being a prideful person, Aubree. But what makes you an even better person is being able to set aside that pride and ask for help. Especially when you’re having a hard time making sense of something.”
“Are you saying I’m too prideful to ask for help?”
He nods. “I am.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“Okay, prove it,” he says.
“Fine,” I say, not letting him win this. Even though telling him seems like he’s winning . . . Ugh, I’m too irritated and exhausted to battle. “I can’t make sense of our numbers. Our output of potatoes, extract, and vodka is great, but the income is lower than what I’m calculating. I can’t quite make sense of it all, and I don’t understand why. I feel like I’m failing Cassidy, and if I don’t figure it out soon, it could be an issue.”
He continues to rub my thigh. “Okay, well, do you want me to look at it? I probably won’t know the answer, but I don’t mind. We can even talk it out. Tell me what you see . . .”
I look out the window, my mind so tired, but my heart telling me I want to do this myself. And that’s exactly the problem because if this was Cassidy, she wouldn’t do it herself. She never did it herself. She was always asking for help, never too prideful to seek out the right person to aid her in whatever she needed.
So why am I so against this?
Maybe because my father told me I would never amount to anything. That I was a waste of space and I have this inner need to prove him wrong.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Wyatt asks as we pull into town. “It seems like it’s running a mile a minute just from the way your lips are pursed.”
He pulls into a parking spot that . . . oh my God. It says it’s reserved for Wyatt Preston. I can’t even right now.
Hayes Farrow, one of the leading singer-songwriters in the country, doesn’t even have his own parking spot, but my fake soon-to-be husband does. The charm this man possesses is out of this world.
He puts the SUV in park and turns toward me.
“What’s going on, Aubree?”
I let out a heavy sigh as I stare down at my lap. “I just feel like I need to do this myself,” I answer truthfully.
