"That's not how we work."
Not because she was difficult—she was, but in ways he admired. The problem was that every match he sent her way, she rejected for reasons that made too much sense . The poet was afraid of silence. The surgeon had never read a book for pleasure. The musician loved her potential more than her reality.
"I'm protecting them," she said. "I know what I want."
"I know."
"Someone who sees me shelving a book wrong and doesn't fix it. Someone who just… watches. And wonders why." Leo resigned from Heartstring Partners the next morning.
She looked at the coffee, then at him. Slowly, she smiled—the real one, the surprised one, the one that had nothing to do with recruitment or strategy or packaging.
"Then I'm not interested."
