“You can have the weekend off for fuck sakes.”
She laughed manically. “That’s what it takes for you to see the value in giving me time off? I have to implode for you to see my worth and that I deserve time to myself?”
“I—”
“Don’t.” She held up a hand. “Maybe I’ll come in on Monday morning. Maybe not. I need to clear my head. But rest assured, I will not be bringing in your to-do list of coffee orders, dry-cleaning, or any of that other nonsense on that email.”
“If you do decide to come in on Monday, leave your attitude at home.”
“My attitude? Have you looked in a mirror recently? The whole office walks on eggshells around you because you’re a ticking time bomb. You fire people instead of giving them opportunities to improve. You bark orders instead of delegate with respect. You’re a tyrant, Jake Cassidy.”
She had some nerve coming for me and my character like that. She didn’t know me.
“You just resent hard work,” I bit back.
Gabriella smiled like I’d just said the most amusing thing she’d ever heard. “No, I resent bullies.”
Lewis finally reached a safe place to pull over and came to a stop at the curb. “Here you are, Ms. St. Clair.”
“Thank you, Lewis.” Her tone was much kinder when she spoke to our driver. She got out of the car and leaned over, glaring hotly at me. “I think you of all people would stand to benefit from taking a bit of time off, sir,” she said, acid dripping from her tongue. “Work will always be there, but time won’t, and before you know it, you’re going to be an old man on his deathbed wishing he’d lived his life, not spent it counting all his nickels and dimes and thinking about the next way to turn a profit.”
With that, she stormed off with her nose in the air and her bag slung over her shoulder. I watched her walk all the way around the block until she disappeared out of sight before I realized my mouth was hanging open. I closed it promptly, shifted in my seat, and tried to make sense of what just happened.
Nobody had spoken to me like that in a long time.
I couldn’t tell if I hated it or kind of liked it. Hell, I had to respect her for it.
Lewis looked over his shoulder at me. “Well, that was… colorful.”
“Just drive.”
His moustache twitched. “She does raise a good point, sir. You spend an awful lot of time working. I should know. I’m always on call waiting to drive you around.”
“Is that your not so subtle way of asking for more time off too, Lewis?”
He smiled. “I wouldn’t complain. The wife is always on my case to take her away for a weekend. It’s been a while.”
“Fine. Take the weekend off as well. Join the growing list of people who don’t want to work for a living anymore.”
Lewis chuckled and shook his head. “You always see things in extremes, sir.” He checked his mirrors before pulling away from the curb and joining traffic. “It is perfectly reasonable for a woman like Gabi to want time to spend with her loved ones. Work is not the be all and end all of everyone’s lives. Haven’t you heard the expression? Work to live, don’t live to work?”
“It’s rubbish.”
My driver eyed me in his rearview mirror. “I suppose work makes for a good distraction. When my sister’s husband died, she threw herself so fully into her design business that she fell off the face of the earth for three years. When she finally came back to her normal life, she was burnt out and had forgotten about all the other things worth living for.”
“Lewis, you’re my driver, not my therapist.”
“I drive because I like to get to know people. And you, Mr. Cassidy, are a very challenging person to get to know.”
I like it that way.
Lewis kept his mouth shut for the rest of the drive and didn’t pester me with any more wise anecdotes about his sister. I tried to respond to some emails on my phone, but my thoughts continuously wandered back to Gabriella and the look in her eyes when she’d given me that tongue lashing. She’d meant every word.
My ex-wife had said some of the same things to me before.
You work too much.
You’re never home.