“I’m extremely impressed with what you’ve built,” he said, “and I’m positive that with the right investor behind you, your business could grow very quickly.”
She shook her head. “I’m not interested in working with any investors.”
He’d rarely met anyone who wasn’t interested in selling more and making more money. “Why not?”
Her expression clouded over. “It’s a long story, but suffice it to say that my mother’s best friend from when they were growing up in Ireland—a woman I think of as my second mom—had a terrible experience with investors. They promised her the world, then turned around and dropped her cold, but only after convincing her to part with her savings first. Mom and I are sure the stress from it all was instrumental in her breast cancer diagnosis.”
His heart was in his throat. Everything Lola was saying hit so close to home. Too close. He hated knowing how many entrepreneurs signed bad deals and ended up losing everything they’d worked so hard to create. “Is she all right?”
Thankfully, Lola nodded. “It was a long road of surgery, chemo, and radiation, and we all pitched in to help, but it was another huge setback on top of her business faltering. The most amazing part of the story, though, is how she’s always insisted that it’s a waste of time to wish she could go back into the past and change things, and that it’s far better to accept things as they are and move forward from where she is now.”
It was a concept that Duncan had spent five years trying to wrap his head around, with limited success. He would give anything to go back in time and change things. To clearly see everything he hadn’t wanted to believe could be true. Simply trying to make good decisions from here on out didn’t seem like enough.
“I’m sorry to hear about everything your friend went through. That’s exactly the kind of business practice I most abhor.”
She smiled. “Well, I’m glad to hear that there are some good venture capitalists out there. Speaking of which, what exactly is it that you invest in?”
“Anyone whose ideas have promise, ranging from pioneering work with renewable resources in fashion, to environmentally friendly farming and food production techniques, to building new and better prosthetics for children.”
“You must sleep really well at night.”
He wished he did. “I like the people I work with.” He had completely changed his focus after starting his own fund. While profits mattered, helping good people mattered more. “And I like knowing I’m supporting businesses that will in turn support others.”
“Plus, you have cartography.” Before he could remind her that it was just a hobby, she asked, “Do you have any photos of maps you’ve drawn? I’d love to see them if you do.”
He pulled out his phone and showed her a picture. “A friend of mine from college was born and raised in Paris. I knew how much she missed it, so I made this map for her.”
“Duncan…” Lola looked up from his phone. “This is so much more than just a map.” She studied it, using her fingers on the screen to enlarge the sections she wanted to see more clearly. “You’ve not only drawn the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, the Bois de Boulogne—but this border decoration is also incredible.”
No one’s praise had ever felt so good, or meant so much to him. “I took inspiration for the border from eighteenth-century French maps.”
Her eyes suddenly went wide. “I assumed you’d drawn this map on paper. But is it actually on vellum?”
He nodded. “It wasn’t easy to get the inks to stick.”
“I’ve never been patient enough to work with vellum,” she told him. And then, “Just as I thought during class, you don’t need me to teach you anything. This map is a work of art. I recently read an article about how the market for old maps is booming. You could make a living doing this.”
Though he wanted to bask in the glow of her confidence in his artistic abilities, he simply smiled and reminded her, “It’s just a hobby. I’m not an artist.”
“You are,” she insisted, her eyes lit with passion. Passion he had already become addicted to, though they hadn’t so much as touched. “In addition to selling originals at galleries and taking commissions from individual buyers, you could draw maps of your favorite places and sell signed prints from your website.”
He held up his hands. “Whoa…still just a venture capitalist here.”
“No,” she said with a firm shake of her head, “you’re so much more than that. While I think you are doing amazing things for the companies you’re supporting with your investment firm, you have real talent. Talent I would hate to see wasted.” She leaned forward over the table, so close that he could see a flush of excitement on her cheekbones. “You can’t honestly tell me you haven’t thought about trying to squeeze in more time for your art, can you?”
He surprised himself by saying, “Secretly, I have.” There was no one else he would admit this to. But Lola made him want to open up in a way he hadn’t opened up to anyone in years. Certainly not since his trust had been betrayed by the one person he’d trusted above all others. “That’s why I’m glad I had the opportunity to learn from you today. And I have recently hired someone at a high level to help me run the company, although her role is to work alongside me, rather than replace me.”
“But if she ended up doing a really great job with your clients,” Lola said, “wouldn’t that mean you could give your other dreams some room to breathe?”
Yearning filled him. Yearning that he’d squashed down and done his level best to ignore for decades. Because while spending time drawing maps was something he had longed for since he was a child, for the first thirty years of his life, he’d done whatever he could to make his family proud. And then for the last five years, he’d been hell-bent on trying to right his family’s wrongs. It wasn’t until today, when Gail had sent him to Bar Harbor to learn drawing skills from a brilliant and beautiful woman, that he’d been able to give in to his own dreams for a short while.
He was on the verge of rejecting Lola’s suggestion when it hit him. Maybe they could make a trade? “How about I agree to mull over your suggestion…if you agree to mull over mine about opening yourself to the potential upsides of working with an investor? An honest one, rather than a crook, whom I would personally vet for you.”
She huffed out a laugh. “I should have seen that coming.” She thought about it before replying. “Normally, I would never agree to think about taking on an investor, but since I really do think you should be spending more time on cartography, I’ll make an exception. Let’s shake on it.”
She held out her hand. And when he clasped it in his, there was no other way to describe the sensation than as pure electricity.
Both of them stopped. Held on.
It could have been awkward, or maybe even funny.
Instead, it felt like everything.
For a few moments, they simply kept holding on, staring into each other’s eyes. Moments that meant so damned much, more than anything in Duncan’s life ever had before.
“Do you—”