Disbelief clouded my vision and scrambled my thoughts. “You were the one who said you didn’t want to say goodbye, Ms. Flinn.” I emphasized her name because she’d told me not to treat her like we were back in Fiji. “I gave you what you wanted. Let’s just be clear about that.”
“What I wanted?” She was practically shouting now, her body wound tight as the knot my earphones got into in my pocket. “None of this was what I wanted, Jaxon. It was never about what I wanted.”
I stiffened from head to toe, my own lids lowering until I was staring out of slits. “Can I just say, for the record, that you were complicit in everything? Consulted in everything. Don’t make it sound like I forced any of it on you, Lindsay. That’s beneath you.”
“Beneath me?” Wildness crept into her eyes as she jerked upright. “You know what was beneath me four fucking nights ago, Jaxon? You. Do you know what was there when I woke up? No one. Nothing. Not even a single fucking rose petal.”
“I took care of it before I left.” Admittedly, there were better things I could have said.
She let out an incredulous laugh. “That was so kind of you. I’m sure the staff thanked you immensely for your dedication to helping them when you had to have picked up each petal by hand and they could’ve vacuumed it all up after we left.”
“It felt important to do it by myself.” I stalked up to her, my eyes never leaving hers as I planted my face right in front of her. “I did it for you, Lindsay. Do you hear me? I stayed up, I cleaned up, and it was all for you.”
“None of it was for me.” She shoved me away from her and dropped into her chair, flicking a finger at the one with my hat on it. “Do you want to have this meeting? Or are you going to sign my forms, agreeing to mutual separation of employment, and get the fuck out of my life?”
I grinned but even I knew it didn’t reach my eyes. “I’m not signing shit, baby. I made it easy for you to get rid of me once, and look where that’s gotten me. Apparently, it was the wrong thing to have done then, and it sure as hell is the wrong thing for me to do now, so I suppose you’re stuck with me.”
“Stuck with you?” she hissed out between clenched teeth. “No. I’m not stuck with you. I’m done with you.”
“What happened to our meeting?” I challenged her, not willing to walk away again until she asked me to in so many words. “I thought this was about my termination, not my actions taken in my personal capacity on my time off.”
“Your time off? You didn’t have any time off, Jaxon. If you think I’m going to do fucking shit for you to try to save your job, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“I suppose that’s fair.” I picked up my hat and leveled a stare at her. “But this is far from over, Lindsay.”
“Get out,” she ordered between shallow, panting breaths, her eyes still shooting daggers at me. The dark blue depths I’d admired so many times were black. “Get the fuck out of my office and don’t bother saying goodbye. You had your chance to do that, and you missed it.”
Chapter 31
LINDSAY
Jaxon’s golden gaze locked on mine, and a muscle ticked in his jaw. I could practically hear the thoughts screaming in his head, but he didn’t voice them. He thought I was overreacting. Perhaps that I was being unfair.
Maybe I was.
If any other person had walked through my doors, I wouldn’t have been treating them like this. I definitely wouldn’t be throwing them out of my office before we’d even gotten to the purpose of the actual meeting.
Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t any other person. He was the guy who had walked out on me just days ago. The guy who had been instrumental in showing me new heights—and I wasn’t just talking about parasailing—and then left me lower than I’d ever been.
I couldn’t treat him like I would anyone else. Not right now. Maybe not ever.
The proper thing to do would’ve been to kick his case to a colleague and let them deal with him. If I was capable of rational thought while being pinned by those eyes, I’d have handed over his file and been done with it.