Page 120 of Love Marks

“It’s not that easy. You know it’s not.”

She rolls her eyes. “It ain’t difficult either. You wanna know difficult? Try walking a day in your mom’s shoes. You don’t see her running scared from her boyfriend. So you got dealt a bad hand, and another, and then another. Sounds to me like you got a winning card in that deck, but you wanna keep playing the fool.”

“See? Poker metaphors? Vegas is changing you,” I try for a joke. I’m hoping to steer the conversation into simpler territory, but Sheila can see my deflection from a mile away.

“Quinn, take it from me. Life is short. Don’t waste it being scared. Call me in a week if you’ve sorted your shit by then.”

Before I can say anything else, her face disappears. She’s hung up on me.

Jeez. I didn’t expect a verbal lashing from Sheila. It’s been a few weeks since we’ve talked and I haven’t been properly scolded by her since she moved away. I didn’t realize I missed it.

She’s right. I am scared, and I don’t know how to get over it. How to loosen the grip of fear that seems to surround me all the time.

Eventually, I find my way home, where I find Joe loading up his truck with one of my mom’s suitcases.

“Hey,” I call to him with a wave. “Need some help?”

He wipes the sweat off his brow and looks at me with a steady gaze. “I’m good. Your mom probably needs help upstairs. She can’t decide what to take with her.”

I manage a smile. “Sounds like her.”

When I get upstairs, my mom is sitting in the living room, surrounded by heaps of clothes and furniture.

“Wow,” I try for a joking tone. “You really hurricaned through here. Plan on leaving anything for me?”

She throws her hands up and gestures to the mess around her. “I don’t know how this happened. I was doing really well, and then suddenly, I found my high school diaries, and started reading them, and then I started crying…”

I drop my bag and cross the living room, wrapping her in my arms. “I’m here now.”

She must hear the sadness in my voice because she hugs me back, her grip tightening around me. “I love you, baby,” she whispers against me.

I want to say it back, but the emotion in my throat threatens to overwhelm me. I swallow it back and nod, pulling back from her. “Come on, let’s get you moved out.”

Chapter 45

Wesley

“Get me a private line. Now.”

I bark the words at my new assistant whose name I don’t know. Beverly left a few days ago with some heartfelt goodbye and a damn bouquet of flowers to “thank me.” Since then, I decided I don’t need to be involved in my assistant’s life anymore. At all.

Business has never been better. I am finally focused on what I should be focused on: expanding the Marks empire. Nothing else matters. The only time I’ve left the office is to sleep and twice, to visit Quinn’s mother. It’s difficult to be reminded of her when I go there, but I’ve managed to entirely compartmentalize it so I almost never have to think about her.

It’s better this way. I’m finally back in control and taking care of the business and my family like I should have been focused on from the beginning.

Since I put my nose to the grindstone, we’re close to acquiring two other real estate companies, one in London and one in Berlin. It’s the first step in expanding our global empire, in bringing the Marks name across the ocean and beyond.

Ben has called me six times. He must be too busy to show up in-person again, because I haven’t seen him. My mother, too, has called at least twice.

The truth is I just don’t want to talk to them. I should just focus on my role in the family: to keep the company going. I don’t want to see the disapproval, or worse, pity in their eyes when I tell them that I let her go.

That I lost her. For good.

My assistant knocks twice and pokes her head through the doorway. “Mr. Marks, George is on line one.”

My hand curls into an involuntary fist. The last thing I want to do right now is talk to that bastard, but the fact that we run this company together means I have to answer his calls.

“Fine. Put him through,” I growl.

---