by Karis Walsh
Jessica ate another triangle of baklava. “I knew I should have come over to see you after Audrey left. I didn’t want to bother you if you wanted your privacy, but I should have listened to my instincts and visited anyway.”
Drew came back with a dark bottle and three small wineglasses on a tray. “But now you’re back among us,” he added to the conversation, “and we’re not letting you go again. I don’t think you’ve tried this yet. It’s our port, made from our cabernet sauvignon grapes. Lightly sweet, with hints of chocolate and fig that should go beautifully with the baklava.”
Jessica laughed and patted his knee. “He’s been describing wine to tourists all day, and he can’t turn off the commentary.”
Kassidy grinned. She took a bite of her pastry and followed it with a sip of the port. It wasn’t as heavy as she had expected, and the depth of flavor stood up well to the dessert. “Yum. You always get it right, don’t you?”
Before Jessica could return to the subject of Kassidy’s lonely winter, she jumped in and told them the story of the Wilsons and their unexpected visit. The subject change was successful, and soon Drew and Jessica were sharing some of their more humorous moments with customers in the shop.
“What did that woman want today, Drew? Oh, that’s right. She wanted to know if we had a wine that didn’t taste so winey. Drew gave her a glass of water and said it was made from a new, clear grape we were experimenting with.”
Drew laughed. “I usually try to be more tactful than that, but she had been annoying from the start. I think Alexandra paid her to come here and criticize everything.”
Kassidy shook her head. “At least I only have to deal with it when they break past my barrier. I can’t imagine dealing with the public every day like this.”
“It can be a real pleasure to talk about wine all day, but you always need to be on. Even if our closed sign is out and the door is locked, they expect you to open up and serve them if they spot you through the window.” Drew waved at their seating area. “That’s why we have to sit out of sight if we want to relax at the end of the day.”
Kassidy sank into the conversation, laughing along with their stories and sipping the excellent port. She might have hidden away all winter, isolated with a broken heart, but at least she was learning from her mistakes. She wasn’t heartbroken because Paige had gone back to Portland, but if she was being honest with herself, she had to admit she missed her. It was only residual loneliness after sharing a weekend with someone, anyone. Nothing to do with Paige herself, of course.
At least tonight Kassidy had recognized her need for companionship and, instead of hiding at home, had sought out the company of her friends whose conversation kept her from thinking about Paige at all. Or at least a little less than she had when she was alone.
Chapter Nine
Paige spent the first two days of her time back in Portland calming employees at Kenneth Drake’s firm. She had suggested he take six months to implement every facet of her proposal, and of course he had interpreted her words as a command to completely overhaul his company in one week. Apparently, everyone had left on Friday in a daze after receiving a stack of memos with terse explanations of altered job descriptions and amended corporate policies. Naturally, then, they had entered the building in an uproar on Monday morning.
Paige had hoped for a slow transition back to city life, especially since she and Dante had been delayed by a list of short hikes she had found in a guidebook and hadn’t gotten back to her apartment until well after dark. She had taken the long way back to Portland, heading south to Salem, and then east to Silver Falls State Park. She and Dante had hiked until dusk through dense, mossy woods. They had finally gotten back to the car, damp from brushing through bracken ferns and thick grass, exhausted but happy.
She had planned on a day of recovery before stopping by Kenneth’s to check on his progress, but her morning of sleeping in wasn’t to be. By late afternoon on Monday, she even welcomed Kenneth’s nasty coffee because it helped her get through an endless stream of meetings without yawning too often. By Tuesday, she was immune to its effects and desperate for something even stronger.
Along with the large group meetings with vice presidents and other executives, Paige worked her way through a list of every person on staff and made sure she spoke with each one individually. After two days of reassurances and detailed explanations, she felt drained but was confident that the employees’ concerns were addressed. She wasn’t sure they would all stay through the transition, but they were at least aware of the new direction the company was taking and would hopefully give Paige’s plan a chance. She could only do so much with her advice, no matter how accurate and effective it was. Once she had presented a proposal, she also needed the entire company to be on board to make it work in real life. And she needed a boss who carefully helped his employees through the process.
At least she had two of the pieces in place—her solid proposal and now the acceptance of the company’s people. The boss was still the wild card, and she hoped he would take advantage of his second chance and be more sensitive with his staff.
She spent most of Monday and Tuesday nights, when she wasn’t at the office, drawing up a fresh timeline for Kenneth, this time with precisely detailed dates for each step in the process of restructuring the company. She had apparently been too vague for him before, and now she specified exact days and times for each move he had to make. Changes of this magnitude required finesse, and Kenneth had about as much of it as a shovel to the side of the head.
She brought him the revised proposal on Wednesday and was shown directly into his conference room. She hadn’t dealt with him much during the week since her top priority had been the shaken employees. She expected him to look as haggard as she felt, but he bounded into the room with a big smile. It had to be prolonged exposure to the coffee.
“Morning, Paige. Nothing like shaking up the status quo to revitalize a company, is there? It’s invigorating.”
Paige couldn’t come up with a polite way to answer him, so she stayed silent and concentrated her effort on not gaping at him in disbelief. If she hadn’t delved into the financial statements for the full history of the company, she would never have believed he could have run a successful business for as long as he had. Fortunately for him, he had somehow surrounded himself with an amazing team, and they were the reason he still had a business to salvage when Paige had come on the scene and identified the trends he had missed in the past few years, the lack of company support for training, and the key duties that had slipped through the cracks and weren’t being fulfilled by qualified people.
“Here’s the new proposal,” she said when she felt able to speak without telling him he was crazy. She slid the folder over to him when he sat down on the opposite side of the table. “I have copies for every department head and I’ll go over the details with each of them today.”
She wasn’t making the mistake of giving him sole ownership of the project again, even though it was his company. It was her proposal and her reputation on the line if the company self-destructed during the transition phase. She had recognized how valuable his management team was, and she should have shared the proposal with all of them from the start instead of trusting Kenneth to take care of the transition on his own. She had misread his confidence as competence. She had, at least, learned a valuable lesson from this.
“Good, good,” he said, putting the folder aside and leaning his forearms on the table. “Bit of a rough start, but we’ll get everyone on the same page. So, did you meet Kassidy this weekend? I was thinking you could find a place for her in the new structure. Manager of something or other.”
Paige closed her eyes and tried counting to ten. Then backward. She sighed. Nothing less than counting to one hundred would do the trick, and she didn’t have enough time for that when he was waiting for her to speak.
“Yes, I met her. She’s a lovely woman and she manages a beautiful farm where she grows lavender. You should visit he
r sometime. I think you’ll be impressed.”
“Lavender? She can’t possibly make a living selling flowers.”
Where was that shovel? Paige wanted to do some head bashing of her own.
Thanks to Kenneth’s heavy-handed business tactics, Paige hadn’t done nearly as much research into the Kassidy project as she had anticipated doing this week, but as soon as she was finished handling the crisis here, she would make up for it. She had seen enough of Kassidy’s accounts—once she had stopped laughing at those cute redacted lines—to realize this farm had the potential to make Kassidy reasonably wealthy. Paige hadn’t realized how much money there was in the lavender business, but she was developing more respect for the artisan enterprises that some corporate people like Kenneth dismissed so condescendingly.
“I’ve been doing some research, and it’s a viable enterprise. She’s already doing quite well, and I believe I can help her make it even more successful.”
“I’ll consider you successful if you get her to cut her losses and come work for me. She’s smart enough to go far, and she shouldn’t throw away her potential on some country farm.”
Paige told herself to ignore his comments, but her tired mind and body shifted into autopilot and took control of the situation. She stood up abruptly. “And you shouldn’t throw away your chance to really know your daughter. She’s wonderful and bright and hard-working. You’re right that she’s smart. Smart enough to follow her dream and sensible enough to make it a reality. Maybe someday you’ll take the time to get to know her for who she is, instead of trying to make her into someone she isn’t.”
She picked up the pile of folders and shoved them in her briefcase. “Instead of worrying about her business, you should concentrate on your own,” she added, backing toward the door. “Fourteen of your employees sent out applications over the weekend because you rushed these changes, and most if not all of them are likely to get serious offers from other companies. You have the potential to lose some really good people if you don’t convince them to stay and give the restructuring a chance. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting with your CFO.”
Paige left the room and managed to make it down the hall and into the bathroom before her briefcase dropped out of her shaking hand. Where had that come from? She had always been able to count on herself to behave as predictably and neutrally as her black-and-white outfits when she was on a job. Even in her personal life, she never reacted like this even when she had the right to.
She leaned her hands on a sink and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her cheeks had a little more color than usual, but otherwise she looked like her familiar, composed self. Her hair was tidy, her shirt was snowy white, her hazel eyes returned her glare with a measured, steady gaze. There was turmoil inside, but no one would ever have known if she hadn’t given it a voice. Why hadn’t she been able to control her words as easily as she usually did?
She turned away from the mirror and crossed her arms protectively over her chest. Yes, Kenneth was an ass about his daughter’s business, but it wasn’t any of Paige’s concern. And although she’d only known Kassidy for a short time, she was damned sure Kassidy wouldn’t want Paige fighting any battles for her with her dad. The outburst had been purely selfish, because she felt she had to get the words out before they clawed their way through her chest. The words wouldn’t change who Kenneth was or how he had raised Kassidy. They were useless, empty.
But, damn, had they felt good to say.
Paige uncrossed her arms and held her hands in front of her, waiting until they stopped trembling while she formulated an action plan for herself. First, she had to march back to the conference room and apologize for being unprofessional, even though she had been right. She’d get through the rest of her exhausting meetings—unless Kenneth had her tracked down by security and thrown out, of course—and then she’d go home. Send him one of those bottles of wine from her bed-and-breakfast as a peace offering. Knowing she was keeping the better wine she had bought from Drew and Jessica for herself would help her feel like a little less of a sellout. Then she’d get back to work on Kassidy’s research. Get through her obligations to father and daughter, and then get the hell out of their lives before they made her lose more of herself to them.
She wanted to open the bathroom door just a crack and peer out, looking for armed security officers before she crept into the hallway, but she forced herself not to hesitate and to walk out with purpose. She went back to the conference room and entered without knocking. Kenneth was sitting in the same position, staring at the wall with a startled expression on his face. He looked like a petulant child who was on the verge of a tantrum, and Paige cursed her inappropriate desire to laugh at his dumbfounded expression. He was a man who lived alone and had owned his own company for more than thirty years. He probably hadn’t been yelled at by another person for decades.
She could almost hear him ticking, about to explode, and she hurried to get through the little impromptu speech she had come up with on the short walk from the bathroom.
“My outburst was inappropriate and rude. I apologize. But I won’t advise Kassidy to sell her farm because I believe it has tremendous potential.” Paige frowned and edited her own speech as she was giving it. “No. She has tremendous potential. So if you just want someone to encourage her to give up, then we can cancel my contract and I’ll refund your money.”
Paige had no intention of giving up on Kassidy, even if he took her offer and fired her from the job. She would do it for free as penance for shouting at a client.
Kenneth continued to watch her silently. She wasn’t sure what else to say, so she gestured toward the door.
“Well. I’ll just go then, I guess. To the meeting.”
“Wait,” he said. She paused and turned back, unsure what to expect.
“However you do it, just take care of her.”
Paige nodded and left the room. She was tempted to go hide in the bathroom again, but she only allowed herself a few seconds to sag against the wall with her insides in a roiling mix of relief, discomfort, and residual anger. She pushed away after only a brief rest and headed to the accounting department. She still wasn’t one hundred percent sure Kenneth wouldn’t break out of his daze and decide to kick her off the premises. He couldn’t fire her from the job at his firm since she’d already delivered her contracted proposal, but he could have her escorted out of the building in a way that would be embarrassing for her and possibly satisfying for him. No one stopped her in the hallway, though, and no one interrupted any of her afternoon meetings to tell her she had to go. She waited for it to happen, and her vigilance, combined with a couple of sleepless nights, left her completely worn-out by the time she got home.
* * *
Home, where she found Evie sitting on her couch, watching television like they had never parted ways. Paige stood in the doorway holding Dante’s leash, since she had just picked him up from his doggy daycare, until he tugged hard enough to remind her to unhook him and let him into the apartment. Her muddled mind tried to figure out what was happening. Had she misread Evie’s signals, and they hadn’t actually broken up? How awkward.
Evie muted the TV and came over to Paige, prying her briefcase out of her fingers and setting it on the ground.
“You look tired, babe. I take it McMinnville didn’t agree with you?”
Paige lost herself in the memory of lounging on Kassidy’s patio, surrounded by stillness, honeybees, and the intoxicating scent of lavender. And Kassidy coming out of her house with pages of accounts, joking with Paige about double-agent lavender plants.
“McMinnville was nice,” she said vaguely, wanting to keep the fullness of it to herself. Kassidy didn’t belong in the middle of this confusing scene she and Evie were playing out.
“Well, I’ll bet you’re glad to be back.” Evie took her hand and led her toward the couch. “Sit and relax. I saw some bottles of wine on the counter. Why don’t I pour us a glass?”
Paige all
owed herself to be tugged halfway across the room before she mustered the strength to resist. “What happened to Seattle?” she asked.
Evie kept hold of her hand but didn’t look at her. “Seattle didn’t pan out.”
Ah. Seattle was about a woman, not just a trip. And Paige hadn’t fabricated the breakup in her mind. Even though it had been subtle—and now was apparently being revoked on Evie’s side—it had been real.
“Who was she?” Paige pulled her hand free and unpinned her hair, rubbing her hands over her scalp and tousling her curls until they drifted across her cheeks.
Evie lowered her gaze, keeping it focused somewhere near the corner of the room. “We met at the design conference I went to in September. It was just the one night together, but we’ve been emailing since then.” She turned around and put her hands on Paige’s upper arms, looking at her with those wide, beautiful eyes that had always made Paige’s insides turn to acquiescing mush.
“It was a mistake, Paige. A stupid, stupid mistake. You and I had never said we’d be exclusive, but I still should have told you before this. What do I need to do to make you forgive me? Please, Paige, will you forgive me?” She stepped closer with each sentence until her body was pressed against Paige’s. Her full breasts, her strong thighs. Hands roaming up and down Paige’s back, soothing muscles that were weary from stress and sitting all day. How easy to give in, to melt against Evie and let her erase the day’s concerns, wipe away the tiredness and confusion Paige was feeling, with sex.
Paige stepped away and realized it was even easier to move away from Evie than to move closer. Questions nudged at her mind about this mystery woman, but Paige didn’t care enough to make an effort to get the details. They wouldn’t make a difference, anyway, because nothing Evie could say would make Paige forgive her and want her back. And, surprisingly, she realized that nothing Evie could tell her about her affair in Seattle had the power to hurt Paige, even though it might have only a week ago. She’d had enough of messed-up relationships today, with Kassidy’s dysfunctional one with Kenneth, plus Paige’s own melodrama with him in his conference room. She couldn’t handle any more games or conflict right now. Today was not the day for subtle wordplay and vague definitions.