Lacey had her fairy tale ending now, but Lacey had always had a plan. Lacey had always had confidence in her skills. I never had either of those things. I just pretended to, and spent half my time hoping no one would look behind my mask of confidence and discover that I was an imposter, and the other half hoping that someone would finally care enough to tear that mask away and see and accept me for the scared, confused, messed-up person I was.
No wonder Lacey had her dream and her man. No wonder I was still so far away from both, sitting on a boat with a man I couldn’t have, who was probably about to cut the strings to the one thing I cared about more than anything else in the world.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Asher asked.
I shook myself out of my mental funk and quirked an eyebrow sideways at him, pasting on a nonchalant smile. “Still sure you want to make this investment?”
Asher chuckled. “I probably deserved that.”
I snorted in a way that absolutely no one could ever have called ladylike. “No ‘probably’ about it.”
We sat in silence awhile longer, and after a few minutes I glanced over at him, studying his face as he took in the scenery. His expression was strangely unguarded and open, making me suddenly realize how tensely he had been holding himself before. He was relaxed now, his eyes tracking along the coastline, then dipping down to the water to follow the roll of the waves.
His eyes flicked towards me, and my breath caught in my throat for a second, but he didn’t seem at all irritated to have caught me staring at him. He simply leaned further back in the deck chair, still relaxed, still trusting. He said nothing, only watched me.
I felt oddly breathless, as if he had handed me an incredibly fragile vase to hold, trusting me not to break it.
“Where are we going?” I asked, realizing as the words left my mouth that for some reason, I was whispering.
He shrugged languidly. “Nowhere. Just circling around the bay. Taking in the sights the way you only can with a yacht of this caliber.”
“But…why?” I didn’t want to push him, didn’t want to shatter this moment. But I did want to understand it. “What’s the point?” And then I did what I always do when threatened with the possible spotting of genuine human emotion in myself or others: I tried to be funny. “Is this to show me that if I follow your advice, I’ll be filthy rich enough to buy one of these babies?”
Something frighteningly like disappointment fluttered across Asher’s face for a second, and he gave a little sigh before offering a smile that, while perfectly pleasant, seemed somehow more closed off than before.
“No, this is to explain about business.” He gestured at the yacht. “This yacht cost more than a hundred thousand dollars. It was painstakingly crafted by an old family shipbuilding company that has adapted to modern technologies—but the heart of their business is still the care and time they take with each individual piece of material, whether that be traditional wood and steel, or carbon fiber. Each piece they create is a work of art.”
“But that’s the kind of stuff I want to do,” I began to say excitedly, hope blooming in my chest. He did understand after all.
Asher raised a hand to forestall me. “Because they take so much time with each component, and because each material must be of the highest quality, their production is severely limited. In a good year? They manage to sell a dozen.”
I multiplied twelve by a hundred thousand dollars in my head and tried not to faint overboard into the wind-chopped water.
“Your heart’s in the right place,” Asher said gently, covering my hand with his. His fingers were gentle as they caressed the skin there, warming it from the sea breeze’s chill. “Wanting to make each item of lingerie a piece of art for each woman to treasure? That’s a noble goal. But you can’t leap straight there from obscurity. You have to take it step by step.”
I swallowed, looking up at the bridge’s lights as we passed beneath it. His words rang true, for all that I didn’t want them to.
Asher continued, his voice painfully gentle and kind. “You’re selling lingerie to real women. The models and celebrities, they’re a nice touch, but they can’t form the bulk of your target demographic, not right away. Before that, you need to concentrate on the ordinary people who want to buy into the fantasy of being like models and celebrities, who want just a little taste of that life.”
Asher’s thumb stroked soothingly in figure eights around my knuckles, and I wished I were here with him under other circumstances, wished I were hearing him say something else, wished the things he was saying didn’t make so much sense to me.