Cole, who’d been over near the kitchen, smacked his palm into the breakfast bar, rattling the whole kitchen, startling her. He had a scowl on his face, his forehead creased with anger.

“You seem mad,” she said dumbly, trying to understand what she’d missed.

“Pissed at myself,” he said, straightening to his full height, his expression thunderous, alarmingly so.

“What? Why?” She racked her brain for what she’d missed between his Words turn and now.

“Dammit,” he said with so much remorse her eyes widened. “I let you down.”

Her mouth fell open and she tried to catch up to what he was thinking. “You… What?” He was not trying to take the blame for the contest, was he?

“The most important two weeks of your life and I. Let. You. Down.”

“Oh, my God, no you didn’t, Cole.”

He let out a laugh that held no amusement and a whole lot of self-recrimination. “Let’s see…I flaked on helping you research and write the proposal itself—and while I don’t for a minute think you needed my input, you could’ve used the manpower. I know you spent hours and hours after work on it. On top of that, I left you with the task of hiring a new foreman in the midst of it—something that might’ve affected the results—”

“It didn’t,” she said emphatically. “You saw the recording of the presentations. You said yourself I handled those objections well and turned it around to a way to show my strengths.”

“And in case that wasn’t enough, I also screwed you over on the day-to-day by splitting my time with my new job. Not even splitting,” he said with a shake of his head. “I’ve spent the majority of my time since giving you notice trying to get up to speed with my family’s business, which left you with twice as much to do on the bank project and everything else.”

Sierra forced herself to her feet, walked the short distance to him. “Cole. Stop it. It’s not about you. It’s not that I presented a subpar proposal. It’s not about anything except what I presented wasn’t what they wanted. It’s okay—”

“It’s not okay,” he said through a clenched jaw, and something snapped in her.

“Dammit, Cole. You’re making it worse,” she said, her voice raised.

“It’s what I do,” he muttered with so much self-loathing she wanted to shake him. The urge startled her and she turned around, paced over to the chair where the cat was sprawled, nearly unbothered, save for one ear that was twitching in discontent.

“It’s not what you do. Not normally.” Why couldn’t he see that?