Perfect Together by Kristen Ashley

“Remy—”

“This is Wyn,” he told her, and her eyes got big. “Tell Dad I’ll call him back, and I will call him back, Lisa. Right after I talk with my wife.”

Her head ticked when he referred to Wyn as his wife, but then she did not delay.

She nodded, turned, and practically jogged out of his office.

For obvious reasons, Lisa lost Wyn when he’d split them up. They hadn’t been tight, but they’d liked each other a lot.

Though, Remy knew, he’d been a much more laidback boss before he’d blown up his marriage. This meant, even before he’d watched Lisa taking a quick hike so he could talk to Wyn, he knew she wanted them to get what they had back.

The door was not closed when he took the call, put the phone to his ear and greeted, “Hey, baby.”

“Hi,” Wyn said softly.

He shut his eyes, swiveled in his chair, felt her word dig down deep in his gut and take root there, and only then did he open his eyes.

And was confronted with the view to the courtyard of his office building, a building he’d designed and built, and it housed only the staff of his firm.

That courtyard had been redesigned this past summer.

This was done by Sabre who was soon to graduate with a degree in landscape architecture.

Sah had shared he wanted to work with his dad, nevertheless, he was already being scouted. The evidence as to why was right in front of Remy.

The desert xeriscape was fucking fantastic. Intentional but chaotic. Providing shade from a few paloverdes, but with streaks of sun that were there no matter what time of day it was. There were riots of color in the spring, and unexpected elevations from creeping ground-cover plants to pots on plinths to hanging ones with trailing greenery.

Sabre had told him he’d been inspired by DeGrazia’s gardens, and Remy could see that, but Sabre still had made it his own.

Remy loved it. He had his boy at his back whenever he was in his office.

And now he had his son’s mother in his ear.

“Hi,” he replied.

“I wasn’t thrilled with how we left things last night,” she said.

Shit.

“And I thought maybe we should make plans to talk sometime soon,” she suggested.

Fucking fabulous.

“You name when and where,” he said immediately. “And I’ll be there.”

He heard how pleased she was in her tone when she told him, “Theo is coming over to hang tonight, and I feel the need to be the overbearing mother who makes her point by showing every fifteen minutes and offering lemonade.”

Remy started chuckling.

What he didn’t do was tell her that was probably a good call.

Then he said, “Right then, my place, six, tomorrow night. I’ll pick up Frasher’s. We’ll eat and talk. Sound good?”

“Frasher’s,” she said quietly.

And yes, he was not fucking around.

She was a midwestern girl. She liked her barbeque.

She liked her cornbread better.

Frasher’s arguably had the best of both in Phoenix.

And Wyn would argue it was the best.

“Work for you, Wyn?” he prompted when she didn’t say anything further.

“Sounds good, Remy. I’ll see you at six tomorrow night. Do you want me to bring anything?”

Just you and a nightgown if you don’t want to sleep in one of my tees since you hate sleeping in the nude.

He didn’t say that since that was where he’d like to take them, and then stay in that place until they both died.

But it was far too soon.

“I’ll have us covered,” he said instead.

“Okay, see you tomorrow evening.”

“See you then, honey. Later.”

“Bye.”

He wanted to talk more, but he had shit to do, including calling his father and finding out what was going on with him, not to mention work.

And Wyn was always busy.

Wyn had always been busy. She was just a busy person.

This, too, was a remnant of how she grew up.

Because it was all she knew.

A dad with two jobs and four kids, a mom with a job and four kids, and a farm to work, there wasn’t a lot of time for any of them to be idle.

When he’d met her, Wyn was about to be promoted to a personal stylist at Bergdorf’s and was already making moves to take that to a different level.

Even so, it was New York, she lived in Manhattan, and she didn’t have a trust fund like he did. So she lived in a two-bedroom apartment with a kitchen the size of a closet and five roommates, and until she was promoted, she had a side job as a part-time waitress.

She never complained, likely because she helped with the farm, the house, and got her first paying job at age thirteen, sweeping up hair and laundering towels at the local beauty salon.

So yeah, Wyn had hustle, and even when she was a stay-at-home mom, that had never died.

But when she was at home, she’d given him the freedom to let work time be work time, and she hardly ever interrupted him at work. When she went back to it, he’d done the same.

And he didn’t change that now by engaging her in a conversation she probably didn’t have time for.

Instead, he let her go, swiveled back to his desk, put his cell down, picked up his desk phone and called his father.

“Enfin,” his father said as a greeting.

(Finally.)