Kelly Jamieson - Crazy Ever After

She shrugged, chewing on more spinach. It was like eating the leaves of an elm tree, for Godfrey’s sake. “Okay.”

She couldn’t wait to get back to the office and start trying to get through to Javier. She knew phone service in Matagalpa wasn’t the most reliable, but she should be able to reach him. Maybe she’d be able to do something Travis hadn’t.

* * *

Travis’s head pounded in a thick, heavy rhythm later that afternoon. He put a hand to his temples and leaned his elbows on the desk in the office he was using, the space he often used when he came up from Los Angeles.

As much as he wanted to do it, running the company without Parker wasn’t going to be easy. There were problems—the company had been growing so fast, and for so long, the downturn in the economy had come as a rude shock. Parker had wanted to continue the expansion, whereas Travis wanted to scale back and take a look at how they were organized. Parker had thought that, because they were a high-end coffee importer and roaster, they were immune to economic downturns. People who could afford high-end coffee drinks weren’t as impacted as lower income earners. But the expansion had increased their customer base and brought in many customers who were lower income earners. With the slump in the economy, those people were, in fact, eliminating pricy coffee drinks from their budgets. Parker had made a few bad decisions lately.

Tough competition from newer companies was eating into their market share. Even fast food places were serving cappuccinos now, for Chrissake.

He lifted his head and slid his hand to the back of his neck, massaging the tight muscles.

Now Parker was gone, there was no one to argue with, and dammit, Travis missed that already. He liked the give and take, the way they built off each other’s ideas. Sure, now Travis could just revise their expansion plans however he wanted, but it didn’t feel right. It felt like he needed to fight for what he wanted, or else it might be...wrong. If he didn’t have to make the arguments to convince Parker using rationale and a good business case, how would he know he was doing the right thing?

He needed to have confidence in his own abilities. He did have confidence in his own abilities. But running a big corporation like Cedar Mill Coffee was a daunting responsibility for anyone. As partners, they’d supported each other and balanced each other. He sighed. He needed to make some tough decisions. Possible staff cuts. He hated to do that.

He had to remember that he wasn’t alone in this. The entire executive management team would be involved in major decisions, as they had in the past. He’d be sure to involve them even more now that Parker was gone.

Confident he was in managing his own division, he knew the problems extended beyond retail. Travis was still concerned about Parker’s mysterious plans in Matagalpa. His gut clenched when he thought about what Parker might have been doing there. The last time he’d been worried about Parker’s activities there, the DEA had been involved, for Chrissake. There was no goddamn way he could let Samara continue down that path.

Thoughts of Samara sent his mind off in totally different directions. God she was infuriating. Annoying. Frustrating. And sexy as fuck.

He closed his eyes, his dick hardening. Hell, not here. He shifted in his leather office chair. He couldn’t help but admire her determination and loyalty to the company, even though he had to shake his head at her stubbornness. She was a complicated woman, no doubt about that.

Thankfully he’d arranged the meeting with the executive team for tomorrow, so he could shut down her crazy idea that she was going to take over Parker’s role in the company. They had enough problems.

Parker’s oversight of the import division relied in large part on his relationships with growers and the co-ops in Central and South America. He’d built those up over the years. They trusted Parker. It was going to be damn tough for someone else to step in there. Samara certainly wasn’t capable of doing it.

They’d also had some grading problems with some of the growers recently. They’d been trying to expand production into marginal land that wasn’t really suitable for growing high quality coffee. As a company that had built its reputation on excellence, and because they roasted their beans and sold them whole through retail outlets, this was a serious issue. If they were just roasting the beans to grind and sell, or to brew, it wouldn’t be quite so critical. But many of the producers knew little about grading and didn’t even drink the coffee they produced —how would they know the quality they were growing?

A cupping lab. Teaching them how to grade their own coffee. Incentives for superior quality coffee. His conversation with Samara flooded back into his head. Godammit!

He glanced at his watch. Nearly six. He’d told Dayna he’d be there for dinner tonight. He grabbed his suit jacket off the back of the chair where he’d draped it after coming back from lunch.

He shut down the computer, stuffed some files into his briefcase and headed out the door. Then he stopped. Had Samara left already?

He poked his head into Parker’s office. He couldn’t help a wry smile at how she’d dived into things. She still sat there, the phone to her ear, frowning. She glanced up and saw him, and her frown deepened.

Nice that he got such a friendly reaction from her. She looked at him as if he was carrying an axe, for fuck sake. He took a deep breath, mouthed the words, “I’m going home. Need a ride?”

She shook her head then slammed the phone down.

“Temper, temper,” he murmured, stepping into the office. “Who was that?”

“I’ve been trying all afternoon to reach Javier. Isn’t there anyone else in Matagalpa we could call?”

“Christ, Samara, would you just give up on that?”

He immediately knew he’d said the wrong thing because he practically saw the hair on her head stand on end from her ire. He should have known better. If he just let her run with this into a brick wall, she’d eventually give up, and he wouldn’t be the bad guy.

“It might be important,” she said. “I have a feeling about it. I just don’t understand why Dad doesn’t have any documentation about it. He couldn’t have kept all that in his head. If he did, he was crazy. What if...” She stopped and pressed her lips together.

What if something happened to him. That old “hit by a bus” axiom. He and Parker had talked about documenting their work so the other would always know what each was doing, just in case one of them got hit by a bus one day. He shook his head, sadness rolling over him.

“Go home, Samara. Try again tomorrow.”

She nodded.

“Need a ride?”

“No. I have my car.”

“I’ll see you at home then.”

Their eyes met. It seemed weird that in an hour they’d be sitting down to dinner together. Tension snapped between them every time they got within ten feet of each other, no matter how much they tried to ignore it. He was definitely going to have to find a place of his own, especially if he was going to be moving back to Portland. He’d get on that tomorrow. Staying in the same house as Samara was just too dangerous. He was weak when it came to resisting her apparently, given what had transpired the other night and knowing she slept only two doors down from his own room. Seeing her every morning and every night was just too damn tempting.

She had to talk to her mother before Travis did. They were meeting tomorrow about the plan for managing the company, and her mother was a shareholder. If it came to a vote, Samara had to have her mother on her side.

Samara sat on the edge of her bed. She’d changed into a pair of old jeans and a T-shirt after work and was ready to go down for dinner. She wiggled her bare toes in the soft plush of the pink and taupe rug on the floor.

Who was she kidding? She’d barely spoken to her mother in seven years. Why on earth would she take her side on anything?

She was her mother, that’s why. Weren’t mothers supposed to support their children? The guilt heavy inside her, Samara glumly regarded her tangerine-polished toenails. How could she expect her mother to support her on this?

Samara hated what her mother had done, but realization was gradually creeping over her that perhaps she—Samara—hadn’t handled it all that well. Running away and barely speaking to her mother for years had been...well, passive aggressive. Childish. Destructive.

She sighed, fell back onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Shit. This was a fine time to acknowledge that she’d screwed up when it came to the relationship between her and her mother. Because now, if she tried to put things right, it would only look like she was sucking up because she wanted something.

She did want something.

Travis had been right, damn him. She’d known she needed to repair her relationship with her mother even before she’d learned about the shares.

The firm rap on her door startled her. She sat up. “Yes?”

“Dinner.” Travis’s deep voice came from the other side of the door. She should have known that assertive knock was not her mother’s.

“Coming.” She rose and crossed the room. She paused with one hand on the doorknob and took a breath. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do, or how she was going to handle this. Her stomach had tightened into knots, and the last thing she wanted to do was eat.

She yanked open the door and jerked to a stop when she saw Travis standing there in the hall.

“Oh.”

He lifted a brow. “You okay?”