“How could you?!?” Selena seethed into the phone. She could feel her teeth grinding together and knew that meant she would have a killer migraine later. Despite being aware that she would pay for it this evening, she couldn’t stop the waves of tension from pulsing through her jaw.

“It was for your own good,” Grant Wiltshire, Selena’s mentor and father figure assured her. “You’ve been working too hard, and this deal would have added to your already sky-rocketing stress and workload.”

She pictured the older, stately gentleman with his snow-white hair and alert blue eyes leaning back in his desk chair as he tried to calm her. The vision of him only served to fuel her anger. “Why is that for you to decide?” She countered. “I’ve spent months on this deal and now, thanks to you, that time was wasted. Donovan Enterprises swooped in and stole the deal right out from under me. Again.”

Selena pressed her fingers to her forehead, where the impending migraine was already beginning to throb behind her eyebrows. She pulled up her instant messaging window and fired off a message to Todd to bring her headache medicine and water.

Todd flitted into the room with her pills and a bottle of chilled water, as if he had been standing right outside her office waiting for her request. She nodded in acknowledgement, swallowed the medication, and watched Todd disappear as quickly and unobtrusively as he had entered.

“That mall deal is going to take a lot of hands-on monitoring and more time and effort than you have. It would have been like taking on another full-time job, since I know you wouldn’t trust anyone else to run it,” Grant said rationally.

“I wanted that deal,” she told him flatly, impossibly hurt that he would go behind her back and sell his key property with the prime location to her arch nemeses––the Donovan brothers. That sale had effectively won them the entire agreement.

Grant sighed before responding. “You wanted to beat Trey, and now Trevor Donovan. You didn’t really care about the deal. You just wanted to win it over them.”

“Your mansplaining is draining me. Besides, so what if I did?” she asked him, sounding rather like a petulant child. “Why should they get to win? I’ve worked hard to get where I am too, and I deserve to enjoy it.”

“But are you?” Grant asked her point-blank. When silence greeted him on the other end of the line, he clarified, “Are you enjoying your hard-earned power and money? Because as far as I can see, all you do is chase after the next deal and more money. When do you get to enjoy it? When you’re old, like me?”

Selena could feel angry and hurt tears forming in her lower lids. She hated showing weakness by crying, and she stubbornly refused to do it again. Blinking back her blasted emotions, she answered Grant. “I am enjoying my life,” she defended her choices. “I like to work hard and be the best. I love winning, and that’s what I’m doing… when you don’t poke your nose in and ruin deals for me.” That last bit sounded snarky, but she couldn’t resist jabbing at him one more time for shutting her out of the massive mall deal that she had been chasing for months.

Grant went on as if she hadn’t said anything. “You don’t want to waste your life chasing an unattainable dream, Hon.”

She smiled at the endearment. He hadn’t called her that in years. Grant had been a good friend of her father’s and the only one willing to take her in after her parents’ tragic car accident. He had been a stoic, demanding guardian, but he had taught her the importance of hard work and doing whatever it takes to succeed.

She had learned her lessons well and turned her Ivy League degree and elite contacts into a real estate investment firm to be reckoned with. Her keen business sense and knack for knowing when to push for a better deal or walk away had allowed her business conglomerate to grow exponentially over the past few years. She was powerful and wealthy beyond her wildest dreams, but somehow it still wasn’t enough.

“You think I’m wasting my life?” she asked her mentor quietly, still seeking his hard-to-earn approval, despite her success.

“Don’t you?” he asked her bluntly.

Selena stared at the wall across from her desk. She blinked several times as she worked to process what Grant had said. “No, I’m not wasting my life,” she finally snapped at him. “Who taught me to go after what I wanted at all costs and to never give up and to always win?” The words spewed out of her. She had spent her life trying to live up to this man’s expectations, yet no matter what she accomplished, he somehow managed to make her still feel inferior.

“Maybe I was too hard on you,” he finally admitted before adding, “When will it ever be enough?”

“You tell me,” Selena barked into the phone before slamming it down into its cradle.

Running a hand through her long, dark hair, she paced back and forth, fuming. “He’s the one with the problem,” she said aloud to the empty room. “He’s the one who is never satisfied. It’s never enough for him, not me.”

As she whirled on her heel to walk back towards her office door, she saw the man standing awkwardly just inside the threshold. “What?” she snipped, wondering if he had heard her ranting to herself.

“Your assistant said I should come on in,” he justified his entry into her domain. “I’m here to give you a much-needed massage.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. She didn’t appreciate the insinuation behind his word choice. “So, you think you know what I need?” She knew she was taking out her anger at Grant on the masseur, but she needed to vent.

“I can come back later,” he offered, his eyes locked onto hers.

She liked that he didn’t look away from her. Most people averted their gazes when she was in a snit. It seemed to be a side effect of having so much power and money.

“No, now will do,” she told him, knowing that she needed to calm down in order to keep this brewing migraine from screeching her activity level to a halt. If she let it progress into a full-blown headache, her productivity would be shot because she would be hiding in a dark room for hours––possibly days.

“Yes, Ma’am.” He answered politely, and she thought she saw a glimmer of a smile in his eyes as he went to set up his table.