I Have Lived and I Have Loved - Willow Winters Page 0,360

the conclusions we are able to draw.” Several times Max paused and turned to me, which would have allowed me to step in and say something if only I could have thought of a single thing to say.

Eventually I tuned out and slumped back in my seat.

I’d been given this huge opportunity and I’d totally bombed. What the hell was the matter with me? I’d been well prepared for today. I couldn’t have done more. Did I subconsciously not think I deserved to be here? Had my father’s comments at lunch last week burrowed deeper than I realized? I was trying so hard to prove to my father I was worthy of this job, but I wasn’t sure I really believed it.

I tried to wash away the awful meeting at Goldman Sachs but my bath wasn’t helping. Nor was the Jo Malone bath oil or the so-called soothing music filtering through from my bedroom. I was trying to relax, calm down. Nothing was working. All I could do was replay the disastrous meeting earlier in the day over and over again.

I slid under the water, submerging my entire head in the vain hope it would cleanse away the embarrassment.

I came up for air. Nope, I still wanted to die.

Max must think I’m an idiot.

My breath caught at the sharp knock at the door. Perfect timing. Here he was to tell me so. Well, I didn’t have to answer the door. I ignored him.

“Harper, I know you’re in there. Answer the door.”

I shouldn’t have put that music on. I stood up and wrapped a towel around me.

Max started pounding on the door.

“I’m coming,” I shouted. I threw it open, then immediately turned around and headed back to the bathroom.

“Nice to see you, too,” he mumbled. I dropped my towel and slid back into the bath.

I expected him to follow me, but instead I heard cabinet doors opening in the kitchen. What was he doing?

He appeared, barefoot, his jacket and tie gone, holding two glasses of wine. Right then he might just have been the perfect man.

“You have a nice, tight ass,” I said. He grinned. “And I’m really sorry I fucked up.”

He handed me a glass, which I took gratefully. He’d definitely brought the bottle with him—I didn’t own anything this good. It tasted like it cost a month’s salary.

He sighed, closed the bathroom door, and began unbuttoning his shirt. When he undid the last one, he took a swig of his wine and placed it on the side of the bath and stripped off the rest of his clothes.

“What are you doing?” I asked as he stepped into the bath.

He didn’t respond, just sat down at the opposite end, pulling my legs over his.

“You choked today,” he said, taking a sip of his wine.

“Yeah, thanks, Captain Obvious. If you’re here to make me feel worse, you can leave right now.”

He acted as if he hadn’t heard me, stroking up the leg I had resting on his thigh. “You know Michael Jordan?”

Now he’s going to talk about sports? Great. Just what I needed.

I nodded.

“Greatest basketball player of all time, right? A consummate winner.”

“Er . . . yes.” Where the hell was he going with this?

“Well something he said was the best business advice I’ve ever received. It went like this, ‘I’ve missed more than nine-thousand shots in my career and I’ve lost almost three-hundred games.’” He smoothed his hands up and down my legs “‘Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. ‘I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.’”

He paused and we stared at each other.

“We all fuck up, Harper. We all choke. It’s how we get better.”

I sighed and skimmed the top of the water with my palms. “Yeah, well, I’m not a basketball player,” I muttered.

“Of course you are. We all are. You didn’t come out of the womb ready. How many times did you fall over before you learned to walk? You can’t give up when you fail the first time.” He took my foot, pressing his thumbs into my sole. “The problem is there comes a point in life when you haven’t fucked up in a while. You get good at passing exams, you graduate, you get a job. Everything is great. But it’s a false sense of security because if you’re going to learn and grow, fucking up is inevitable.”

“So if you’re saying my choking was always going to happen, why did