Crazy Ever After

Chapter Ten

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?”

“Yes.” She brushed past him and stalked down the stairs. Why did just seeing him make her feel all edgy and nervous? “Of course I’m all right.”

“Good.” He followed her down the stairs, and she was acutely aware of his body right behind her, his eyes on her.

They walked into the dining room. Mom sat at the table, and Samara’s steps slowed at the sight of her mother, shoulders slumped, head in her hands, eyes closed. At the sound of their footsteps, Mom’s head snapped up. She straightened and composed her features into a smile. “Hello,” she said. “How was your day, sweetheart?”

Samara couldn’t speak. Her throat clogged up, and she sent a helpless glance at Travis. The corners of his mouth dipped; he too must have seen her mother.

“Samara wrote the newsletter for staff today,” he said, voice just a bit rough. He held out a chair for Samara, and she sank into it and reached for her napkin. Travis took the seat beside her.

She blinked as she stared down at her plate. Get a grip, for Godfrey’s’s sake. She was tougher than this. What was she getting all choked up about?

Her mother had looked completely grief-stricken. That’s what.

Samara swallowed past the ping pong ball lodged in her throat and reached for a platter of roast beef.

“That’s wonderful,” Mom said. “Thank you, Samara, for doing that.”

Still not sure if she could speak, Samara just nodded as she served herself more food she didn’t want. She felt Travis’s gaze on her.

Finally her throat relaxed. “I also did some research about what Dad was doing in Matagalpa,” she said. “Did you know anything about that, Mom?”

A frown creased her mom’s brow, and she slid a quick glance at Travis. “Well. He did mention something about some kind of amazing coffee bean.”

“Oh.” A thrill ran through her. An amazing coffee bean. “They do grow excellent quality beans there. That could be big.”

“I gather you didn’t get hold of Javier,” Travis put in. He took the bowl of potatoes from her.

“No.” She turned her head to meet his eyes. “I’m telling you, the only way we’re going to find out what he was doing is to go down there.”

“Why is it so important?” Mom asked, looked from Samara to Travis.

“It’s not,” Travis said.

“It could be,” Samara said. “Dad wouldn’t have been down there if it wasn’t important.”

“Oh.” Mom played with her food. “Well, I don’t think...maybe the farmer— what’s his name? Javier? Maybe he will contact you if he still wants to do business.”

“That sounds reasonable,” Travis said, shooting a glare at Samara.

“You’re not going to Matagalpa,” Mom said hesitantly.

Samara sucked in a long breath, every muscle tensing, her face heating. She was an adult and made her own decisions. Even her mother could no longer tell her what to do, never mind Travis. Enough!

She shoved back her chair and stood, tossing down her napkin. “I’m not very hungry,” she said through clenched teeth. “Excuse me.”

The tension in the room followed her like a black cloud as she stalked out of the dining room.

She stood in the hall, brushed her long bangs out of her eyes, and pushed her fingers into her hair. Shit. She was supposed to be talking to her mother rationally about business plans, convincing her mother she was the one who should take over for her father, and what had she done? She’d let everyone push her buttons again and let her temper get the best of her.

She gazed up at the ceiling. She knew what she had to do, but dammit, her pride glued her feet to the floor. Heat flared inside her, and her tense stomach contracted painfully. She swallowed hard.

All the crap that had happened― her father’s death, the tension between her and her mother, the sparking sexual attraction between her and Travis, on top of this battle for the company―was making her all emotional. It was totally unlike her. She was focused and determined and professional. Messy feelings had no place in her life. Not for the last seven years, anyway.

It all chipped away at her, making little cracks and holes in her carefully built walls.

Sucking in a deep breath, she turned and walked back into the dining room. Travis and her mother were having a muted conversation, and both pairs of eyes fixed on her as she stepped in the arched door.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a low voice. “I...I don’t have much appetite, but I’ll sit here with you while you eat.”

Her mother’s wide eyes softened, but she merely nodded. Afraid to look at Travis, Samara kept her eyes carefully forward as she took her seat.

“I wasn’t trying to tell you what to do, Sam,” her mother said gently. “It was more of a question. Are you really thinking of going to Matagalpa?”

Samara shrugged and sipped her water. “Thinking about it. I don’t know for sure. We’ll see what I can figure out here, and then I’ll decide.”

Dayna nodded. “Travis says you’re meeting tomorrow with the rest of the management team to talk about how you’ll move forward.”

“Yes. That’s right.”

It appeared her mother wanted to say more, but she pressed her lips together and nodded as she used her knife and fork to cut a small piece of meat.

Samara wanted to say more too. She wanted to ask her mother if she would support her if it came to that, but...she couldn’t do it.

For some reason, guilt and conscience kept her silent. She couldn’t ask the question, and she knew there was more than one reason why. She did not want to pretend to her mother that everything was okay between them. And she was beginning to realize that, even though her mother had made a mistake all those years ago, she deserved to know why Samara had severed their relationship. Samara wasn’t sure she was ready to sit down and have that conversation with her mother, but for the first time since she’d arrived home, she knew they were going to have it. Some time.

Most of all, she didn’t ask the question because she was afraid of what her mother’s answer would be.

After dinner Travis grabbed his briefcase and retreated to his bedroom. He pulled the arm chair closer to the bed so he could prop his feet on the bed, opened his notebook computer, and pushed in the USB drive he’d brought home from the office.

But all the documents he’d brought home to review couldn’t hold his attention. His mind kept drifting off to Samara. When she’d walked back into the dining room, the apology obviously being pulled deeply and painfully from within her, he’d wanted to get up and hug her.

The evening had been unsettling, first seeing Dayna all crumpled up with sadness then putting on a smile for them, then Samara getting all emotional about it. She’d tried to hide it, but he could read her like the screen on his laptop. Maybe, just maybe, she was seeing her mother not as some terrible villainess—why, he still had no fucking clue—but as a woman who’d just lost her husband, the man she depended on. The man she loved.

Then to come back and apologize for losing her temper… Wow. Maybe she had grown up.

He blinked. He was staring into space, smiling at nothing. He tried again to focus on the spreadsheet he’d pulled up onto the screen.

Tomorrow, at the meeting, he had every intention of making sure the others agreed with him. There was always a chance that one of them thought they could take over. Hank Proshen, VP of Quality Control, could probably do it. But he didn’t have the...the...what was it? The special love of coffee that went so deep, was so intense... Passion. That’s what it was. That’s what he and Parker had shared—a passion for coffee, for the business, that couldn’t be taught.

Samara had it.

Shit.

The more he fought her, the more she dug her heels in. The more he tried to point out her lack of experience and her youth, the harder she argued. She’d always been like that.

With a sigh, he powered down the computer. He wasn’t getting anything done. Samara was giving him brainspin.

What he should be doing was going out with old friends, friends he hadn’t seen much over the last seven years since he’d been living in L.A. Maybe even look up an old girlfriend or two.

Bah. He knew that wasn’t going to happen. Even seven years ago, there hadn’t been a woman who could hold his interest like Samara. Thinking about seventeen-year-old Samara made his gut clench. That familiar guilt ate at his insides. But...she wasn’t seventeen anymore.

He picked up his cell phone and his car keys and headed out.

Samara was ready for a battle. After spending the evening studying everything she could, she’d hardly slept all night as her mind played over different scenarios. Maybe the others would be totally behind her. Or maybe they’d laugh in her face and tell her to go back to San Francisco.

It was up to her to show them she was mature, capable and knowledgeable. So she dressed in the black suit she’d brought as a potential funeral outfit and pulled her hair back into a neat, low ponytail.

When she arrived at Cedar Mill headquarters, she first called Jennifer in San Francisco to go over some things, then logged into her own email, took care of some business issues, delegated some others. Then she dove into more reading, trying to get up to speed on as many issues as she could so she’d be prepared for that meeting. When her neck started to ache and her attention wavered, she picked up the phone and made a couple more phone calls to Matagalpa, but again, she had no luck reaching Javier.

Reviewing her father’s email inbox again, she decided she could follow up with Duane Scanlon, the CEO of Alpha Air, about the meeting they’d had just before Parker had left for Matagalpa. Here at least she had a file to refer to, with a detailed proposal done up in writing for a partnership between Cedar Mill and Alpha Air for the airline to serve only Cedar Mill coffees on all its flights.

She picked up the phone and called Duane Scanlon. When she got through to him and introduced herself, she explained the reason for her call.

“Well, that’s very nice of you to follow up,” Duane said. “But I just got a voice mail from Travis Murray.”

“Oh.” Samara scowled. “I’m so sorry. He didn’t tell me he was going to call you.”

“Who’s running the show there now?” he asked, although his tone was mild. “You two need to get your act together.”

Shit. She’d made them look like idiots. She closed her eyes briefly.

“Yes, we’re meeting on that this afternoon,” she replied. She rubbed between her eyes.

“Do I need to return his call?”

“No. I’ll let Travis know we spoke. I...we just wanted follow up on the meeting you had with my father.”

They discussed the deal, but Scanlon’s tone of voice made a feeling of dread rise inside her, and sure enough, he said, “But with Parker out of the picture, the deal may not be as attractive to us.”

She froze, the telephone glued to her ear. “Oh. Why is that?”

“Parker and I have known each other a lot of years. When he came to us with this idea, I was somewhat reluctant. It’s no secret that Cedar Mill is overextended these days and looking for new business. So I wasn’t sure if I wanted to jump into an arrangement with a struggling company.”

“Struggling company!” Samara couldn’t hold back her startled exclamation. “Cedar Mill is not struggling!”

“That’s not what I hear. In any case, it was Parker who persuaded me to consider the deal, but with him gone, I’m even more skeptical of Cedar Mill’s ability to recover from this downturn. I’m not saying it’s out of the question forever. I’m willing to have another look at the offer down the road. But right now doesn’t seem like a good time.”

She hung up from the call in a daze, her ears buzzing, mind whirling. What the hell was that about? She sat at the desk and stared into space for a few moments while she tried to collect her scattered thoughts.

Struggling? Why would they think that? Recover? Recover from what?

She surged to her feet, filled with determination, and strode out of the office. “Paulette, where’s Travis?” she barked.

Paulette jerked her head around. “Oh. Samara. I didn’t even know you were in there.”

“I got here early. I need to talk to Travis. Right now.”

Paulette blinked. “He’s in his office. Next door.”

Samara spun on a stiletto heel and walked out, into the hall and into Travis’s office. The door sat open so she didn’t knock, but she let the door fly behind her with a resounding bang.

Travis’s head snapped up from his computer. “Samara. What the hell?”

She stalked across the room and flattened her palms on his desk, leaning forward. “I just talked to Duane Scanlon.”

“Oh.” He frowned. “Why?”

“I was following up on his meeting with my father a couple of weeks ago.”

“I just called him this morning.” He frowned. “I left him a voice mail, but I hadn’t heard back yet.”

“Well, I got through to him. And I’m pissed off at what I heard.”

His dark gold eyebrows jerked together. “What did he say?”

“Basically they’re backing away from the deal. Because Cedar Mill is struggling. And without Dad here, they’re not sure we can recover.” She pushed her face closer to his. “Recover from what, Travis?”

Her green-hazel eyes flashed, and her cheeks flushed pink. Bent over his desk like that, he could see down the opening of her blouse where her breasts curved sweetly together. Travis dragged his eyes away from her cleavage and back to her face, stormy and gorgeous.

“We’re not struggling,” he replied.

“Then what’s he talking about?”

Travis sighed. This was why he didn’t want Samara there snooping through things she didn’t need to know. “Have a seat.” He waved a hand at a chair.

Samara straightened, staring at him, then took a seat. She crossed her legs, and once again, he was distracted by her bare calves, elegant and sexy as they brushed together. She gripped the armrest of the chair with one hand.

What was he supposed to tell her? She was a regional manager from San Francisco, but she also owned forty percent of the company now, and she had a right to know.

Shit.

“What’s going on?” she demanded.

“Let me put together some financial information for you to review,” he said slowly.

“Okay, I can do that, but I want to know now.”

“In a nutshell, Cedar Mill has been expanding too quickly over the last number of years. Back about ten years ago, when I started here, Parker was very ambitious and wanted to grow the company quickly.”

“He did.”

“Yes. But he thought it could continue indefinitely. Recently, as I’m sure you’re aware, the economy has not been good.”

“Well, duh.” Her eyes fastened on him.

“Parker thought we were immune from downturns in the economy. But our fundamental business changed also, leaving us vulnerable. We’ve lost market share, and our sales have declined.”

Her eyes widened, and her lips parted. “How bad is it?”

“It’s not a disaster.” Travis picked up a pen and turned it over in his fingers. “I believe we can turn things around. We may have to make some tough decisions.”

“Like what?”

“Closing stores. Laying off staff. Cutting back on new products. Reducing our plans to open new stores.”

She rolled her lips inward and stared at him. “Shit.”

Travis nodded glumly.

“Why did I not know this?” Her eyes snapped again.

“You didn’t need to know it,” he replied evenly. “You’re a regional manager.”

“But this...this is my business.”

“It is now. That’s why I’m telling you. Now you have a right to know.”

“Damn right I do! Jesus, Travis. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this.”

“I’m telling you.” He reached deep for patience.

“But you weren’t going to! You were going to let me go into that meeting this afternoon not even knowing the problems we’re facing. How the hell would I convince them I’m the one to lead us out of this mess when I didn’t even know about it?”

“Samara.” He sighed. “That’s been my point all along. How can you lead us out of it when you didn’t even know about it?”

“That is not fair!” She jumped to her feet. “I can get up to speed on what I need to know! Yes, I need some time, but it’s not fair to say I can’t do it without even giving me that chance.”

“These are not going to be easy decisions,” Travis said slowly. “And...since we’re being open here, there are other problems as well.”

She went still then sank back down onto the edge of her chair. “What other problems?”

He told her about the grading problems with some of the growers. “Oh, god.” She chewed on her bottom lip, looking away from him across the office. Then she straightened her shoulders and looked him in the eye. “I can help with this, Travis. I know I can.”

Admiration warmed him inside. She was strong. Not afraid of anything. The vulnerability he’d seen last night was in no way a sign of weakness. He couldn’t prevent the faint smile that curved his lips.

“That’s what we’ll talk about this afternoon.”

“I don’t want to have that meeting this afternoon.”

“What?” He stared at her. “You’re the one who wanted it, Samara.”

She shook her head, her mouth flat. “I don’t feel prepared enough. I want some time to look at the financials, get up to speed on the problems.”

Travis shook his head. Would he ever understand her? “No,” he said. “I want the meeting.”

She made a frustrated sound. “Of course you do. You’re just going to make me look like an idiot so you can take over. That was your plan all along, wasn’t it?”

His body slumped with disappointment as he sat back in his chair. She really didn’t think much of him. Certainly didn’t trust him. The depressing realization of that weighed on his shoulders, seeping down into his bones.

“That is not my plan,” he said heavily. God, he was tired. And it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet. “Okay, fine. We’ll put the meeting off for a week to give you time to get up to speed. I’ll start on getting some things together for you.” She did have a right to know, dammit. He’d let her draw her own conclusions from the documentation he gave her about how they’d gotten into this little mess.

“Fine.” She stood and tugged her skirt down. “I’ll be in my office.”

He watched her walk out of the office, spine straight, head high, her cute little butt twitching under the snug skirt.

He sighed again and leaned his head back against the chair. Damn you, Parker!

Now that Samara had some idea of what was going on, there’d be no stopping her. The struggle between her right to know, as Parker’s heir and a forty percent shareholder in the company, and Travis’s desire to protect her and shelter her, battled inside him, leaving his gut knotted and his energy drained. He couldn’t go on like this.

The truth was, as she’d pointed out so many times, she wasn’t a child. She was a grown woman, educated, with good knowledge of the coffee business, more than any other regional manager, certainly. As much as he wanted to see her as a young girl, as much as he wanted to protect her and look after her, he had to acknowledge her abilities. Yeah, he could tell himself Parker would want him to look after her, but Parker had wanted him to have nothing to do with Samara. And even though he was trying to preserve Samara’s high regard for her father, he couldn’t lie to her.

He needed to figure out a new strategy.