“And your dad?”
“Wouldn’t have seen the need to get to know her. She wasn’t useful to him.”
His comment nudges the seemingly random pieces and they start to shift into place. My pasta loses its flavor and I take a sip of my water to try and wash it down. How the hell am I going to skirt around this one? I’ve seen firsthand the kind of hurt his father has the capacity for doling out. Still, not mentioning it feels like its own brand of cruel.
“What is it?”
“It’s just a hunch. But is there any way her value to your dad might have changed after you left? He seemed kind of bitter, and his blatant ask of me for any weakness doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence that he wouldn’t try his hand at anything. It just feels weird, is all. Her showing up there, the casual mention of trouble with contracts.”
Noah sits back against his chair, his face still frosty. “I suppose it’s possible, but I’m not sure . . ..” His voice trails off, as if he’s just remembered something. “Fucking hell.”
“What?”
He holds his hand up to signal the waiter that we’re finished, but then, as if he can’t wait any longer, stands and pulls his wallet out. He drops a hundred dollar bill on the table and helps me out of my chair.
“At lunch. Megan kept asking about the contracts, like she was trying to ensure everything was fine. It was weird, but after I mentioned Brad’s stay in rehab has at certain times delayed hisend of things, she stopped asking. I figured she just got bored of shop talk.”
We step out into the spring afternoon, but the sun isn’t touching the chill running under my skin. Megan didn’t get bored, she figured out the information she needed. Question is, how does that information impact us now?
Back at Noah’s apartment, he makes a few phone calls to try and track all of the contracts and the various moving pieces. Everything with Scented Acres is fine and with a quick call to Spencer, we confirm that all of our inhouse work is on schedule and under budget.
I’m sitting on his black leather couch, feeling useless as he paces on the balcony. He’s on the phone with the other Flourish owner, Matt.
His apartment is exactly what I would have picked for him—clean lines and modern decor. I’m tempted to go check his sock drawer, to confirm my suspicion that he’s as tidy and organized as I think he is, but think better of it. Now is not the time.
Instead, I curl my feet underneath me and wait. It doesn’t take long. His voice grows agitated outside before he takes a deep breath, and ends the call. When he walks back in and sinks onto the couch, his shoulders are already slumped in defeat.
“God dammit,” he curses, running his hand over his face. “We’re fucked.”
“What happened?”
“The storefront we had set aside for Flourish was bought out from underneath us. The fucking landlord sold it off to a developer who’s already started converting it into apartments. I’ll give you one guess as to who sits on the board of the development company.”
He doesn’t have to confirm it. Carlisle Graves.
“Why would he do this?”
“Because he hates not owning every single person in his life.”
“I don’t understand how he could have done this. You had lunch with Megan yesterday. This is fast, even for people like your dad.”
“I’d bet good money he already had it in the works. Megan was just a fun little surprise for us after we ran out on lunch. There’s no way he would have trusted her to actually glean any information anyhow.”
“Oh.”
“Fuck,” Noah says, his head resting on the back of the couch, his face to the ceiling. “This is a disaster. The entire launch hinged on having that storefront.”
I shake my head, shifting into problem solving mode. “We’ll do a soft online launch. Get the interest and buy us some time to find a new storefront.”
“Except the contracts I signed with Tom included verbiage for the retail space. He’s expecting to see products with his farm’s name and logo on shelves in about six weeks. If we don’t have a store, we don’t have Scented Acres.”
My stomach sinks again. Everything we’ve done over the last five days, flying out to Pala, all the sweet talking, complicating our working relationship; all of it was in the name of securing this brand deal. Without it, this was a giant waste of time and money. Noah won’t be able to take Flourish to the next level, and I won’t have the experience I need to open Nan’s again.
Fighting the voice that is whispering ‘I told you so’ in the face of my getting carried away with Noah, I sit up, taking a deep breath in through my nose.
“No. I refuse to believe this is that far gone. Tom will understand. And if he doesn’t, then we’ll find a new space. You can’t tell me that was the only storefront available in all of Portland. We’ll figure this out.”
“It was the best space, Lottie. I searched for months—working with local real estate people to find the perfectplacement. We needed the foot traffic that location offered, and the surrounding tenants hit every one of our target demographics. It was fucking perfect.”
