“Look, I’m sorry, but this isn’t what we were looking for.” Andreas White sat opposite me, tapping on his laptop screen and shaking his head. “Do you understand where I’m coming from?”

I felt my neck burning with embarrassment as I turned my attention to the website he had pulled up in front of me—the one I had designed for him over the last few weeks. I had been pretty happy with it when I turned it in, but I had spent most of that month completely distracted from the tasks I was supposed to be taking care of. I shouldn’t have been surprised he was coming to me with complaints. I should have expected this.

“I’m sorry to hear you’re not happy with this.” I reached out for his laptop and started clicking through the website, and sure enough, I swiftly noticed a few things wrong with it—a dead link, a graphic that jerked and didn’t play properly. This was nowhere near my usual standards, and I was instantly irritated with myself for letting this project get away from me.

“We’ve already had a few complaints from clients.” Andreas shook his head. “And we’re going to redesign the website again from scratch. I’m not happy with it, and I know the rest of the team feels the same way.”

Part of me wanted to get mad that he was here chewing me out, but that wasn’t going to help anything. I needed to stand up and take responsibility for what I’d done, not run away from the problem and hope it fixed itself.

“Of course, I’ll do the website redesign for free,” I promised him. “I’m more than happy to offer a discount on any future projects you want me to work on—”

“I’m afraid we don’t have time for you to do that.” Andreas shook his head. “We’re already looking at hiring a firm who can get this done quickly and efficiently.”

“I understand.” I nodded, even though I wanted to slam my fist against my desk in annoyance. I knew he was doing what was right for his company. I had obviously and evidently fucked this one up, and I could have done better if I had given it my full attention.

“I’ll refund your money for the original website design,” I promised him, hoping I would be able to mitigate the damage to my reputation if I could make it so he hadn’t lost anything but time. He eyed me across the table and shook his head.

“You came so highly recommended from several of my colleagues.” He sighed. “I expected a better quality of work from you, Holden.”

“I can only apologize,” I repeated myself, wondering how long I was going to have to sit here and listen to this guy be disappointed in me because it was already getting pretty old.

Mercifully, he had nothing else to say to me. He got to his feet, shook my hand, and left me in that office all by myself once more. I slumped back into the seat as soon as he was gone, feeling like an idiot, wanting to yell curses at the sky, but it wasn’t going to help anything.

How long had I been running this business? A decade almost? And this was the first time I had been fired from a project. It fucking sucked. The worst part of it was, I could have done better if I had made more of an effort. I had half-assed that design, and I was losing a hefty amount as a result. I couldn’t get the time back I had poured into that project, and I had to give him his money back for a job poorly done. I couldn’t believe I’d let a client like him slip through my fingers. He worked for a big ass company, and there could have been ongoing work there if I had managed not to completely fuck it up on the first try.

I leaned back in my seat and stared at the ceiling. I knew I was going to have a hard time focusing on the projects I was taking on unless I put something between me and this meeting. I grabbed my phone, texted Raymond, and asked if he felt like meeting for a coffee. He replied in the affirmative, and a few minutes later, I was walking to the café down the street from my office, the cold air a decent reflection of my mood at the moment

When I arrived, Raymond was already there, and he waved me over, having already ordered my usual.

“Hey, what’s up?” he greeted me. “Something go down at work?”

“Yeah, actually,” I sighed and shook my head. “I got fired from a project.”

“Oh.” He furrowed his brow. “Did you fall out with the client, or…?”

“No, he didn’t like the work I put in for him, and I have to admit, I don’t blame him,” I confessed. “It wasn’t up to standard. He wasn’t willing to wait for me to do a redesign, so I offered his money back. He’s going to another firm to get it done, someone who can get it in quicker.”

“Has that ever happened to you before?”

I shook my head.

“Nope, but I looked at the website, and I think he’s right,” I admitted. “When I turned it in, I felt good about it, but I must not have been paying attention. There were rookie mistakes all over that thing, the kind of shit I was doing when I first got started. I don’t know where the hell my head was at.”

“I think I have an idea,” Raymond remarked, as I took a sip of my coffee. “Autumn.”

“Yeah, but we only started up this thing last week.”

“Sure, but anyone who’s been paying attention can see the two of you had something going on a long time before that,” he reminded me. “I don’t want to sound like an ass, but maybe you’ve been distracted with everything that’s going on with her?”

“I suppose you could be right,” I admitted. The thought of it irritated me. I had just gotten something romantic off the ground, and it was already starting to affect my performance at work? What was I supposed to do, choose between having a decent job or a decent love life?

“What are you going to do?” Raymond asked. “Going to keep things up with her, even if it gets in the way of work?”

“I don’t want to call things off,” I told him firmly, and that was the truth. The thought of breaking things off with Autumn when we’d only recently gotten them going, made my stomach twist up painfully inside me. I had only recently accepted that there was something going on between us, and there was no way I was going to cut that off when it made me feel so damn good.

“So you’re going to have to change the way you run the business then.” Raymond leaned back in his seat and spoke as though this should have been obvious.

“Like how?” I asked him. He shrugged.

“I mean, I know you’ve been totally closed off to it in the past, but maybe you could think about hiring some more people to help you out around there,” he suggested. I shook my head.

“No, that’s too much stress,” I replied. “It would change everything. Besides, I don’t know if I’d trust somebody else to take on this work for—”

“With all due respect,” Raymond said. “If the work isn’t getting done up to standard because you’re distracted, maybe it’s worth hiring someone who can throw themselves full-bore into it?”

“I don’t know.” I shook my head again. The thought of it didn’t suit what I’d been trying to go for when I started up the business.

“All right, what’s keeping you away from that idea?” he asked. “Is there something about it that doesn’t suit the business?”

“No, it’s not that,” I conceded. “I just… never wanted to run this company where I had dominion over other people or anything.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Raymond nodded. “But things are changing for you. When you first started the company, it was only you and Hunter to take care of, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So things are different.” He shrugged. “Now you have Autumn in the picture as well. And even if it’s not her, you said you wanted someone else in your life in that way. You’re going to have to accept that you can’t juggle all those things at once.”

I eyed him from across the table for a moment, annoyed at how much sense he was making at that moment. I had started the business, even if I never would have come out and admitted this to anyone, because I’d wanted to prove a point to Hunter’s mother. I’d wanted to show her and anyone else who might have doubted me over the years that I was perfectly capable of building a life for myself and my son that anyone would have killed for. But now that I had done that, and the business was still operating, and my world was changing faster than I could keep up with it, maybe I did need to think about hiring someone new.

“You could come back to the company,” I suggested. “Just for a while, until things settle down again. Could be fun, the two of us working together—”

“Yeah, I’m not going to abandon Olivia with a baby while I go out to work again,” Raymond told me firmly. “The reason I dropped out of that place was so I had a life of my own, right? I’m sorry, but I’m not interested in coming back to work.”

“Of course. Sorry.” I held my hands up.

“Not all of us can do the baby thing and the business thing at once,” he remarked good-naturedly. “But maybe you can do the employee thing for a change?”

“All right, you’ve got a point,” I said, capitulating. “I have no idea how I should go about hiring someone new, though. Any ideas?”

“I’ll keep my ear to the ground and see if we can’t figure something out.” Raymond nodded. “You’ve got a reputation in this town. I’m sure plenty of people would be happy to work for you.”

“Jesus.” I rubbed my hand over my face. “The thought of dealing with someone else at that place is fucking exhausting.”

“You raised a kid by yourself while you started that place up, remember?” he reminded me. “So I’m pretty sure you can manage to bring in someone else who can make everything easier.”

“I guess so,” I admitted. “But if this goes horribly wrong, I’m holding you accountable.”

“Good luck with that.” Raymond raised his mug to me playfully and downed what was left. I leaned back in my seat and considered what I’d agreed to. It was going to change everything about the way I ran my business—but then, a whole lot had been changing in my life in general these last few weeks, and most of it had been for the better. Maybe I needed to let go of my control freak mentality and accept change when it came my way. Maybe it was for the best.