all that different from Ashmore Coolidge. As critical as their senior staff were, if someone defected the company recovered very quickly and all sign of that person sank without a trace. A fact all the staff were graphically reminded of from time to time to keep them in line.
‘So the bees work themselves to death, supporting the royal family?’
‘Supporting their family. They’re all of royal descent.’ She clicked the frame back into position. ‘Isn’t that what we all do, ultimately? Even humans?’
‘Not everyone. I support myself.’
She turned and faced him and he felt as pinned as if she could see him. ‘Are you rich?’
She wasn’t asking to be snoopy, so he couldn’t be offended. ‘I’m comfortable.’
‘Do you keep all the money you make for Ashmore Coolidge?’
No. But she knew that, so he didn’t bother answering.
‘Your firm gets the bulk of the money you generate for them and that goes to...who? The partners?’
In simple terms. ‘They work hard, too.’
‘But they already get a salary, right? So they get their own reward for their work, and also most of yours?’
‘We have shareholders, too.’
Why the hell was he so defensive around her? And about this. Ashmore Coolidge’s corporate structure was the same as every other glass and chrome tower in the city.
‘A bunch of strangers who’ve done none of the work?’ She held up a hand and dozens of bees skittled over it. ‘You’re working yourself into the ground supporting other people’s families, Mr Garvey. How is that smarter than what these guys do?’
He stared at the busy colony in the hive. Utterly lost for words at the simple truth of her observation.
‘Everything they do, they do for the betterment of their own family.’ Her murmurs soothed the insects below her fingers. ‘And their lives may be short, but they’re comfortable. And simply focussed. Every bee has a job, and as long as they fulfil their potential then the hive thrives.’ She stopped and turned to him. ‘They’re realisers—just like you.’
Off in the distance Wilbur lurched from side to side on his back in the long grass, enjoying the king of all butt-scratches. Utterly without dignity, but completely happy. As simple as the world she’d just described.
Elliott frowned. He got a lot of validation from being in Ashmore Coolidge’s top five. Success in their business was measured in dollars, yet he’d never stopped to consider exactly how that money flowed. Always away from him, even if he got to keep a pretty generous part of it. Which was just a clue as to how much more went to their shareholders. Nameless, faceless rich people.
‘I send money to my mother—’
The moment the words were out he wanted to drag them back in, bound and gagged. Could he be any more ridiculous? Laney Morgan wasn’t interested in his dysfunctional family.
He was barely interested in it.
A woman with a Waltons family lifestyle would never understand what it had been like growing up with no money, no prospects and no one to tell him it was perfectly okay to crave more. Leaving him feeling ashamed when he did.
But a smile broke across her face, radiant and golden, and a fist clenched somewhere deep in his chest.
‘That’s a good start. We’ll make a bee of you yet.’
He fell to silence and watched Laney beetle-busting. Fast, methodical. Deadly. Inexplicably, he found it utterly arresting.
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured eventually.
‘For what?’
‘For generating that silence. I didn’t mean to be dismissive of your work.’
Think fast, Garvey. It’s what you’re paid for. ‘I was thinking about a world in which people only acted for family benefit and whether it could work in real terms.’ Better than admitting he was transfixed by her.
‘You think not?’
‘I question whether that kind of limited focus is sustainable. Outside of an apiary.’
She gave the bees one last puff of smoke and then refitted the lid with her fingers. ‘Limited?’
‘You’ve grown Morgan’s significantly over the past ten years. Why?’
‘To make better use of the winter months. To exploit more of the by-products that were going to waste. To discover more.’
‘Yet you’re not interested in continuing that growth?’
Time he stopped being hypnotised by this woman and her extraordinary talents and got back in the game, here.
Her sigh said she was aware of it too. ‘We don’t need to. We’re doing really well as is.’
‘You’re doing really well for a family of four and a smallish staff.’ Or so the Morgan’s file said. Then again, that same file had totally neglected to mention Laney’s blindness.
‘That’s all we are.’
‘So your growth is limited by your ambition. And your ambition—’ or perhaps lack of it ‘—is determined by your needs.’
Those long fingers that had done such a fine job of soothing the bees fisted down by her sides. ‘Morgan’s would never have come to your attention if we lacked ambition, Mr Garvey.’
Elliott. But he wasn’t going to ask her again. He wasn’t much on begging.
‘Yet it is limited. You’ve expanded as much as you want to.’
‘You say that like it’s a bad thing. This is our business—surely how hard or otherwise we pursue it is also up to us?’
‘But you have so much more potential.’
‘Why would we fight for a market share we don’t need or want? Surely that’s the very definition of sustainable? Not just taking for taking’s sake.’
He stared. She was as alien to him as her bees. ‘It’s not taking, Laney, it’s earning.’
‘I earn the good sleep I have every night. I earn the pleasure my job brings to me and to the people we work with. I earn the feeling of the sun on my face and the little surge of endorphins that hearing Happy Bees gives me. I am already quite rewarded enough for my work.’
‘But you could have so much more.’
Her shoulders rose and fell a few times in silence. ‘You mean I could be so much more?’
It was the frostiest she’d been with him since walking into the living room earlier. ‘Look, you are extraordinary. What you’ve achieved in the past decade despite your—’
She lifted one eyebrow.
Crap.
‘Disability? It’s okay to say it.’
Which meant it absolutely wasn’t.
‘Despite the added complexities of your vision loss,’ he amended carefully. ‘I can only imagine what you’d be capable of on the world stage with Ashmore Coolidge’s resources behind you.’
‘I have no interest in being on stage, Mr Garvey. I like my life exactly as it is.’
‘That’s because you have no experience outside of it.’
‘So I lack ambition and now I’m also naïve? Is this how you generally win clients over to your point of view?’
‘Okay. I’m getting off track. What I’m asking for is an open mind. Let me discover all the aspects of your business and pitch you some of the ideas I