Crazy Ever After

Chapter Nine

Later that day, Travis strolled back into the office. “How about lunch?”

Samara looked at her own watch then up at Travis with wide eyes. “Lunch?”

“Yeah. You know. That meal you eat in the middle of the day.”

“You want to have lunch with me.” What was going on?

A smile tugged his lips. “No. I’m just trying to get you out of here so you can’t get into any trouble.”

She laughed. Even though she suspected it was true.

“Never mind,” he said, turning away. “Bad idea.”

“No, wait. That sounds good. Lunch.”

He stopped, turned, and tipped his head. “Okay. Come on.”

They left the office tower and walked out onto the street, shaded from the sun by leafy green trees lining the brick-paved sidewalk. “There’s a nice place on the next block,” Travis said. “You can tell me what you learned about why Parker was in Matagalpa.”

“Oh, so that’s why you wanted to have lunch,” she said, matching his pace. “Now I get it.”

He grinned. “You’re on to me.”

“I still can’t believe it’s real,” she said slowly. “That he’s gone, and he’s not coming back.”

“I know. Me too.” They shared a glance of understanding, then she pushed away the wave of sadness and straightened her shoulders.

In the busy restaurant, the hostess seated them at a window table with a view of the street, the traffic, and the people passing by. Watching all the interesting individuals who worked in the neighborhood was always entertaining.

A fern hung in a brass container in the window beside them, the sun illuminating its lacy leaves. Samara traced a finger over the white table cloth and straightened the heavy silver fork in front of her. “This place is nice.”

“They have a great steak sandwich,” Travis said.

Samara studied the menu and decided on a spinach salad. Travis ordered the steak sandwich.

“Okay,” he said after the waitress had taken their orders. “Tell me what you’ve found.”

She tipped her head to one side. “Are you sure you don’t know what going on there?”

“Samara. I already told you I don’t know anything.”

“Fine.” She sank her teeth into her lower lip. “It looks like Dad was working with the Palizada co-op in Matagalpa. It looks like he wanted to put a new pricing structure in place.”

“Yes. He mentioned that.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I thought you said you didn’t know anything.”

Travis’s gaze slid away. “When I asked him what he was working on in Matagalpa, he brushed me off, but he did say it had to do with the co-op. That was it. I had no idea he was going to take off and go there.”

She gave a short nod. “I’m not sure why he wanted to do that, but from what I gather, he thought there were issues because some farmers were growing better-quality beans than others, yet they were all being paid the same.”

Travis nodded, picked up a spoon, and turned it between his fingers. “He always believed we should pay a premium price for the best quality coffee.”

“Which makes sense.”

“I suppose. But the co-ops exist for a reason.”

She remembered when the Palizada co-op had been started a few years before. Farmers had been concerned that local middlemen were taking more than their share for their services. It was difficult for individual farmers to have the resources they needed to export their beans. The beans increased fifty percent in value if they were processed, but they didn’t have the ability to do that on their own. The co-op helped them get credit, which they couldn’t do on their own, and they didn’t have to wait to harvest their crop to get payment.

“There are a lot of advantages,” Travis continued. “Why would Parker mess with that? It’s been working so well.”

She leaned back to allow the server to pour coffee into the cup in front of her.

She raised her eyes to Travis.

The corners of his mouth lifted. “Yes, it’s Cedar Mill. It’s Costa Rica La Magnolia.”

She smiled, well familiar with the excellent coffee. They both drank it sin-black and strong. She picked up her cup, and closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply. The aromatics were such a big part of coffee taste, and this one was lovely, dark and rich. She took a sip, testing the temperature then slurped delicately. She met Travis’s amused eyes.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“There are flavor receptors all through our mouths,” she told him. “To get the full experience, all the nuances, you need to expose even the back of your mouth to it.”

“That’s usually at a cupping, not in a restaurant.”

She shrugged. “I don’t care.”

He slurped his own coffee, and she smiled.

“Excellent.”

“Crystal clear brightness,” she said.

He lifted a brow. “Nice balance of acidity and sweetness.”

“Clean, smooth finish,” she added, lifting her chin. Dammit, he did not know more about coffee than she did.

“Crisp fruity cocoa, hazelnut, and citrus notes,” he challenged.

Dammit again. He was right. She scowled, lifted the cup to her mouth, and inhaled the rich, dark scent of it. God, she loved coffee.

“Anyway,” she said, “it seems Dad had some different ideas about the Palizada.”

“Well, I do know he was really excited about the quality of the beans they were growing there near Santa Anjelita. All the beans from that area are superior. Very fine varietals.” Then he frowned. “But I’d be concerned we were getting into a situation where we’d be paying too much for the beans—more than they’re worth.”

Samara studied Travis. “Direct trade relationships usually mean the roaster guarantees to pay more than the going fair trade price for coffees, as long as they meet the agreed-upon standard.”

He regarded her with a strange expression. “Yeah. That’s true.” Then he looked down at the table. “Sometimes Parker got ideas in his head and just took off with them.”

“He had great ideas. I know he anticipated reluctance on the part of some of the farmers to change things,” Samara continued. “I read that in the file. There was mention of plans to build a cupping lab and teach them to judge their own coffees, so they’d be able to judge the quality themselves. If their coffee scored even higher than the standard they could earn even more. It was an incentive for them to improve quality. It takes a lot more work to grow superior quality coffee beans than just average ones, and yet they often only get paid a few cents a pound more.”

Once again, Travis stared at her for a long moment. Heat slid through her body at the intensity of his gaze. “He must have been really impressed with the quality of the beans there to propose something like that.”

She couldn’t help her smile. “Exaaaactly.”

“Look, I don’t mean to doubt Parker.” Travis sighed. “We knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and that’s why we worked so well together. But sometimes he needed a reality check.”

“So that’s why you’re saying this project is dead.”

“We don’t have the money to spend on building cupping labs in Central America.”

“Unless it’s a good investment.”

“We don’t know that. We don’t have enough information. I don’t see how we can move forward with it.”

“Well, there may be only one way to find out.”

He lifted a brow. At that moment, the waitress arrived with their lunches, setting Travis’s steaming plate in front of him and a plate loaded with greens in front of Samara.

When she’d left, Travis spoke. “Okay, how?”

“By going to Matagalpa.”

He choked on his first bite of steak.

“Need a Heimlich?” she inquired, stabbing a piece of spinach with her fork.

“No.” He coughed and set down his knife and fork. “You can’t possibly be thinking of going to Matagalpa.”

“Why not?”

He shook his head, opened his mouth, then closed it again. She eyed Travis’s steak sandwich. Medium rare, just how she liked it, glistening and juicy. The char-broiled smell of it wafted across the table to tease her nostrils. And French fries. Golden, crispy French fries. She looked down at her plate of raw spinach.

“Apparently Dad was going to talk to the farmers about the new pricing structure at the fiesta he attended.”

“Yes. He’d just left the fiesta when he got in the accident.”

She pressed her lips together for a moment as another wave of sadness swept over her. “So if he’d already presented his plan to the farmers, they can tell us what it was.”

Travis grinned. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. You would take their word for it?”

She frowned. “Why not? They’re not exactly sophisticated, conniving businessmen. They’re nice people. This Javier will tell us. If I can ever get hold of him.”

He lifted one eyebrow. “You’ve tried?”

She looked down at her meal. “I called a few times. But there was no answer at the number I have.”

“I have a bad feeling about why you can’t reach him.”

“If I went there, I could find him and talk to him.”

“That’s insane. You’re not going to Matagalpa.”

She carefully set down her fork and swallowed down the anger rising inside her. “Do I have to say it again? You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

He chewed on his lunch then reached for his water goblet, but said nothing. Because he knew she was right. With a lingering gaze at Travis’s plate, she stabbed at a leaf. She lifted her eyes to Travis and caught him smiling.

“Want some fries?”

She chewed her spinach. “No thanks.”

“How’s the salad?”

“Delicious. Nice dressing. Honey Dijon vinaigrette.”

Travis nodded, looking like he was trying not to laugh. “You’ve developed a taste for veggies over the years? I remember your mother begging you to eat something green.”

She pressed her lips together. “I was a teenager. Burgers and fries and Cokes were all I wanted. Now I know how to eat healthy.”

“Ah.” He nodded and cut into the tender juicy meat.

Samara dragged her eyes off his plate and focused on her salad. It really was delicious.

“So,” she said, “I think he went to Matagalpa to sell the farmers on the new idea. If he made promises to the farmers there, we may already be committed to doing something.”

Travis’s brows snapped together above his nose. He shook his head. “Leave it, Samara.”

“We can’t just leave it! What if those farmers are expecting something from us now?”

Travis’s face colored, and his jaw tightened. As he was gritting his teeth. He stabbed his fork into the sandwich and sawed at it with his knife. “Fine,” he ground out. “You keep trying to call Javier. See if you have any luck getting through to him. I doubt he’s sitting there waiting for us to come flying down there and build a cupping lab.”

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.