I tear my phone out of my back pocket and send Journey a quick message.
Me:How did Ace find out you were selling your share of the business?
It takes Journey the longest minute ever to type a response.
Journey:I was on the phone when he showed up. Mom let him in, and he must have heard me talking in the family room.
Me:Who were you talking to on the phone?
Journey:The attorney handling Dad’s will.
Me:Ace is planning to buy the shares out from you, or so he says. I don’t know how it all works.
Journey:What the hell are you talking about? Where are you, and where is Ace?
Me:At the shop. Ace and Brett are having a ‘meeting’ about this in the back room.
The message Journey is replying to takes longer than my heart can stand. I’m sweating and panicking while I watch the back door, waiting for it to explode or something.
Journey:Shit. I’m on my way. I’ll be there as quickly as I can. The roads are horrible. The attorney mentioned something about a potential auction for my shares if Bill wasn’t interested, and I repeated the statement. That must be what he heard. Mel, we need to talk about this. There’s more to this situation than you know.
An auction? There’s no way.
After a long few minutes, the back door opens, but not with a thrashing motion like I imagined. Brett and Ace are both laughing amid their conversation, which appears far too friendly for my comfort. "No worries at all," Brett tells him. "Thanks for the information."
What information? "What did you do?" I ask Ace as he walks by.
"Come on, Melly, everyone deserves the truth, don’t they?" Ace says, forcing a phony smile across his cosmetically enhanced veneers.
"What truth? No words out of your mouth has ever been the truth," I say, loud enough for Brett to hear.
"And you’re so innocent, aren’t you?" Ace rebuts.
There is no way Journey will get here in time to help this situation, and I feel blindsided by Brett’s silence and the winning look on Ace’s face.
"I don’t know what the hell you are trying to accomplish, but there is no chance in this universe you will have anything to do with my family business, and if it isn’t clear enough to you, I have no problem making it clearer."
Ace places his hands on my trembling shoulders. "Take a deep breath. This isn’t as bad as it sounds, okay?"
Brett presses his sleeves up to his forearms and walks toward Ace and me. "This isn’t the time to be discussing business," Brett tells him. "We’ll finish this conversation at a later time."
"There is no conversation to continue," I say. "I don’t know what your meeting was about, but Ace will have nothing to do with this shop, ever."
"I understand where you’re coming from, Melody," Brett says. I don’t like the way he says my name—it was cold. I also don’t like being in the dark from whatever they said in the back room, or how calm the two men are.
"Get out of my store now," I affirm. "I don’t want to see you again. Ever. You better get this through your head this time."
Brett takes my elbow and pulls me back a few steps. "Okay, okay," Brett says, trying to calm me down.
"We can’t control everything, Mel, not always, babe," Ace says, dropping his hands into his back pockets before heading for the front door.
I’m at a loss for words when the door-chime reverberates from the rattle. "What is that supposed to mean?” I ask Brett.
"Something we need to discuss," he says, his face rigid and lacking emotion.
22
I’m furiously pacing,trying my best to catch my breath while Brett remains calm as I freak out. "How could you even entertain a discussion with him?" I ask Brett, realizing he most likely didn’t know who he was before I introduced him as Ace.
