My work that started it. The company wasn’t meant to be a business opportunity for the whole family, just an outlet for my art. Now I can afford to buy my brother out.” He leaned closer, warming to the topic. “I’m done compromising my vision for his.”
In the river, a fish jumped and splashed in the slow-moving water.
“Salazar Media isn’t just you and Devon anymore. There are whole offices full of employees whose livelihoods would be hurt if you scaled back.” She wondered if he’d thought this through.
“You think I should let Devon buy me out of Salazar Media and start over on my own?”
That’s what he’d taken away from her comment? She’d never met anyone who thought like him before.
“Of course not. You’ve earned a strong reputation and the respect of industry professionals. You wouldn’t want to walk away from that.”
“Which isn’t a problem for someone who doesn’t care what other people think, remember?” He leaned back against the door, studying her from farther away. “Maybe you’ve got too much in common with my brother to understand that. You’re a people pleaser, too.”
She stiffened.
“It’s not a matter of pleasing others.” She wasn’t sure why they were talking about her. She wasn’t the one threatening to break up the family business. “But I do care how my choices affect others.”
“An artist can’t afford to care about that. I have to be impervious to criticism in order to keep creating art.” His knee bumped hers as he shifted, reminding her of that keen awareness she had for him. “I have to passionately believe in my choices in spite of what anyone else says.”
“That makes sense.” She crossed her ankles, giving him more room. Only to be polite, of course, and not because she was worried about the way his touches affected her. “But you don’t need to become so completely self-absorbed that you discount the preferences of others.”
“But creating work that I’m proud of requires me to be relentlessly honest with myself.” His dark eyes seemed to laser in on hers. Challenging her. “If the court of public opinion fell away, and there was no one else in the world to approve or disapprove of what I’m doing, would I still make that same choice?”
His gaze seemed to probe the depths of her soul as he spoke. As though his words, somehow, applied to her.
The people pleaser.
“If you’re suggesting that Devon and I both make our decisions based on larger factors than personal desire, I couldn’t agree more. Your brother tries to do what’s best for Salazar Media.” She felt defensive. Of herself. Of Devon.
“What about you, Lily?”
“I don’t own a stake in the company,” she reminded him.
“I realize that,” he said, more gently. “Consider it a hypothetical question to help put yourself in my shoes.” He stared out at the Bitterroot River again, perhaps sensing that the conversation was getting under her skin. “If you weren’t worried about other people’s opinions, would you still make the same choices?”
No.
The answer was immediate. Definitive. Surprising her with its force.
She had made so many decisions based on people’s expectations of her that it would be difficult to point to those few that she’d made purely for herself. Though her job was one of them.
Still, she would never be able to discount what her grandparents wanted. They’d raised her, taking her in when her mother had quit caring about her. And she would always owe them for that.
But she couldn’t deny that she may have given them too strong of a voice in her future—in everything from her job and her education to, yes, her pick of fiancé. That didn’t make it a mistake, did it? They wanted what was best for her.
In the quiet aftermath of Marcus’s question, she didn’t like the new lens he’d given her to view her own decisions. Because what she saw through his eyes was not the woman she wanted to be.
The autumn breeze off the water suddenly brought a deeper chill, and Lily was grateful when Marcus turned the vehicle back toward the ranch.
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