Chapter Seventeen
Emily
I could only wait for an update from Rhett, so I decided to take his advice. On the way back to Houston I called Dad to ask him if he’d meet with me. I told him we could do lunch at my place. I needed to get out of the clothes I’d borrowed, plus I thought it would be easier to have the conversation we needed to have in private. I was out of the office for the day, anyway, so it wouldn’t cause him too much alarm for me to ask to meet him at my own place.
My friend Natalie was just coming into the building with her dog when I arrived at the apartment complex, and she held open the door for me. “That’s quite the look, Emmy,” she said, her gaze trailing up and down over me.
I laughed. “Well, I’ll give you the full deets later, but suffice it to say that the clothes aren’t mine.”
Natalie grinned. “Having a little fun out in the middle of nowhere, are we?”
“There are some hot guys in the middle of nowhere,” I told her blandly.
Natalie snorted. “Good job there, hon,” she said, as we walked over to the elevator together. “I’d been wondering when you’d get an actual social life.”
“Not all of us have a lovely trust fund set up for us to live on,” I said. “Some of us actually have to mind our careers a bit.”
“So, what are you doing at home in the middle of the day, then?” She gave me a significant look.
“I’m going up to change my clothes before Dad comes by for lunch,” I explained.
She nodded. “I’m assuming you have bad news for Daddy Dearest, then?”
I pressed my lips together. I could trust Natalie with just about anything—after years of being neighbors, seeing the comings and goings of each other’s one-night stands, watching her dog when she was out of town, drinking on each other’s patios—but I knew that her opinion on what I’d planned to do was not going to be the same as mine. She, like Dad, wasn’t going to see the human cost of what Dad’s plan was. For Natalie, raised on a trust fund and never wanting for anything, it would be a simple matter to relocate for money.
“Just keeping him updated on stuff,” I said.
Natalie shook her head. “If you were doing that, you wouldn’t feel the need to change first,” she said. “And you’d meet him somewhere for lunch instead of having him come here. You want privacy.”
I smiled wryly. She knew me just as well as I knew her.
“I want to try and convince him to do something different from what he’s planning,” I admitted. “It’s still going to make him money, but the plan he’s got...I think it’s a mistake.” I wasn’t willing to tell her more than that—but that should, I thought, be enough.
“Then you’re doing it right,” Natalie said, nodding to emphasize her point. She smiled at me. “I’ve got a few beers in the fridge, if you really want to butter him up.”
I laughed. “I’ve got a few,” I said. “I’m going to cook up some tacos and make a thing of queso for him, put him in a good mood before I get into it with him.”
“Just remember that you’re ultimately doing him a favor,” Natalie told me.
The elevator chimed to let us know it had reached our floor, and we got off together as soon as the doors opened, parting ways at my apartment.
“I’ll let you know how it comes out,” I told her.
“I’ll keep a bottle of Moscato for just that occasion,” she countered.
I grinned and unlocked my door, taking a deep breath. I actually felt a little bit better about what I was going to do. Natalie and Rhett were both right. I was doing the right thing, and ultimately keeping my father from making a mistake. I needed to see it in that light—not in the light of plotting against him.
I got to work and managed to get changed out of Rhett’s clothes, and get the tacos and chile con queso ready by the time Dad knocked on my door. I took a deep breath and let him into my apartment, smiling and mentally rehearsing my approach. I wasn’t going to try to convince him that his plan would actually destroy Mustang Ridge. I was going to try and reason with him, if I could.
“Ah, smells amazing in here, baby girl,” Dad said, giving me a kiss on the forehead as he came in.
“I even have a beer for you,” I told him, leading him over to the dining area next to the kitchen.
Dad grinned and accepted a Lone Star from me, cracking it as I opened up my own. I would need to have a drink with him to make this work.
“Are you planning on coming back to the office this afternoon, or are you going to be working remotely still?” he asked.
I shrugged and went into the kitchen itself to gather everything up for lunch.
“I have a few more things I need to do outside of the office, but I may swing by toward the end of the day,” I told him. “Just to check messages and make sure all my hard copy paperwork is done, you know.”
He nodded and sat down at my table. I brought out the tortillas and the beef and set them down on the table, where I’d already put the pico, some grated cheese, some crema, and sliced avocado and lime. I went back into the kitchen to retrieve the queso and the chips, and finally sat down myself.
“How are things going in Mustang Ridge?” he asked.
I raised one hand, tilting it side to side to indicate uncertainty.
“I’m thinking some of our key sellers are going to hold out on us a bit,” I said—I could only hope I was right. “And I’ve been thinking about that revised plan that you told me about yesterday.”
“Hell of a win,” Dad told me, smiling proudly as he fixed himself a taco.
“It definitely looks like it’s a big contract,” I agreed. “And we stand to get a lot out of it. But I feel like with something like that, if word gets out about just how big the project actually is, we might end up spending more money than we originally expected.”
“We can cover it with a fee like that, though,” Dad countered.
Okay, so he’s more fully on-board than you thought. Try and work around the subject. Wiggle the loose tooth. I kept eating for a while, letting Dad chatter on about something that had happened that morning in the office, nodding along with his story.
“You know, I feel like the original plan was a lot more consolidated than this one is,” I said, once he got back around to the subject of Mustang Ridge. “This seems really rushed.”
“Jacob works fast,” Dad said, nodding. “But all the details are solid—the plan is definitely a go, as long as we can get those properties and as long as the town doesn’t back out.”
“This was Jacob’s deal?” That surprised me somehow, though I wasn’t sure why it should. I tried not to look self-conscious, which of course made me actually feel more self-conscious. “Yeah—he came up with it and pitched it to the clients after we’d gotten through our first tour there,” Dad said. “He got clearance from me to pursue it once they said they’d be interested, and worked it up.”
“After our first tour there?” It had been in the works longer than I’d thought, then. Dad shrugged.
“Apparently the fact that they have just that little rink-a-dink town center inspired him,” Dad explained. “So, he got the store on board and showed them how it could be—and I have to admit he wasn’t wrong about it.”
I pressed my lips together and tried to think of a way to stay on topic without betraying how much it bothered me that Jacob had been the one to come up with the plan, that he’d been the one to suggest it—even before getting clearance from Dad. And if Dad fires you, he’s still going to be at the company, being Dad’s protege, I thought bitterly.
“I’m just wondering if you really think it’s what’s best for Mustang Ridge,” I said. “I mean, we’re selling this as something that everyone will win from, you know?”
“Well, the people who sell out to us will have plenty of money to reinvest in the town,” Dad pointed out. “Some of them can move closer to center, some of them will move away to places where they can do something else with their lives—stuff like that.”
I nodded along with him, I wanted him to think I was agreeing—even if I thought he was being willfully oblivious.
“But don’t you think that the company moving in so many businesses at once will put everyone else out of business?” I raised an eyebrow, begging him silently to consider that.
“They can go to work for the businesses that come in, if they want to,” Dad said. “And they can take their skills and business ownership and go somewhere that needs that service for a while—and come back once the town’s come up a bit. I mean, it’s not like Mustang Ridge is going to stay that small forever, if we move this group in on them. People in other little-bitty towns nearby will want to go to the big store, and they’ll bring in more business.”
I could see that my father just wasn’t going to consider the fallout from his plan. To him, progress was always a positive. It didn’t matter who or what might fall to the wayside in the process.
I decided to drop the issue, at least for the moment, before I got into a fight with Dad about his business. I didn’t need to tip my hand yet, and I was pretty sure that if I did, I would end up revealing that I was working with Rhett. I wasn’t ready to do that yet, especially since I didn’t even know if my plans with Rhett would even amount to much of anything at all. I drank my beer, ate my tacos, shared the queso with Dad and let him reminisce about the early days of the business, about bringing me up on his own—more or less—after Mom left him.
When he was gone, I checked my phone to see if there was any news from Rhett. It had been a good four hours since I’d left his place, so I should have heard from him by then. I went through my text messages and finally saw one had, indeed, come from him. I definitely have a good three or four of them agreeing not to sell for a while, he’d sent. I’m going to try and get all of them, so they can’t be pitted against each other, but I might need another day or two. I nodded to myself, smiling. At least one of us had come through.
I messaged him back. Things are more complicated than I thought on this end. I’m going to have to talk to Jacob—apparently it was his big idea to bring in all the companies at once instead of just the one giant.
I sat down on my couch, hiccupping from the beer still fizzing in my stomach. I really didn’t want to have to talk to Jacob about the situation, and I knew that it was going to be difficult to give him a reason for why I wanted him to change directions. But I knew I wasn’t going to get through to my father any time soon, and the only other person who might be able to delay things, or cancel the new plans, would be Jacob.
Dialing his number, I steeled myself against the discomfort and irritation I felt. Jacob would just be getting in from lunch, and hopefully he’d give me a chance to convince him. I didn’t want to meet with him alone, but I didn’t want everyone in the whole office to know about what I was doing, either. If it wasn’t Jacob who ran to my Dad, it would be someone else. Just keep things straight with him. Talk about the town. Make it a personal favor if you have to.
I took a breath and tapped ‘send call’ and waited for him to pick up.
“Hey, beautiful! You’re not about to invite me to join you and Pops for lunch, are you? I just finished,” Jacob said.
I shook my head, cringing at the way he talked to me. “No, Dad’s headed back in already, anyway. I just wanted to circle back with you about this new plan for Mustang Ridge. Dad and I talked about it over lunch.”
“Sure thing, Em,” Jacob said. “Give me a second to get into my office—can’t go letting all the details get out there, you know?”
I rolled my eyes. The whole office would already know about the new plans, if I knew about them and if Evelyn did. There were not that many secrets at Dad’s company, not really.
“Let me know when you’re somewhere quiet,” I said, looking out onto my patio while I waited.
“I’m in,” he said a minute later. “Okay, so what’s up?”
I thought for a second about how to approach the matter.
“So thinking about the big strip mall plans, I’m wondering if it might not be a better overall strategy to go back to the original,” I said. “I mean, that’s a huge investment, and the town doesn’t really have enough people to support an operation like that—at least not that I’ve seen.”
“That’s the beauty of it, though,” Jacob said. “With a big operation like that, they’ll be pulling in people from the neighboring towns.”
It was, I was sure, the same kind of hype that he’d fed to our clients, to convince them to bring in the much larger project complete with business partners.
“But if Mustang Ridge dies out, they’ll be a strip mall in a ghost town,” I countered.
“Not for long. I mean, more people will come into town to work for them, all that,” Jacob said. “Oh no—you’re not going local, are you?”
I resisted the urge to sigh. “No, I’m not,” I said. “I just feel like this is a lot of development that the area doesn’t really justify. And besides, it’s likely to actually kill the town.”
“You really want to go back to the plan we had before? With just the one shop going in?” Jacob had an edge in his voice, and I didn’t know what he was going to make as a condition for helping me, but I knew I wasn’t going to really like it.
“I think it’d be better for all of us,” I said. “I mean, after all, if this falls out over time, it’s going to damage the company’s reputation as developers.”
“As long as you’re not going to tell me you want to cancel it altogether,” Jacob said playfully.
“No, I’m still committed to developing Mustang Ridge,” I insisted. “I just think we need to do it the right way.”
“Well, I could think about going back to our previous plan, even though we’ve already got the contracts worked up and signed,” Jacob said. “We could tell them that there was pressure from the town council, that they were going back—something like that.”
“I think it would work out best,” I said.
“I’m willing to think about it, but I’d need a bit of quid pro quo,” he said.
I pulled the phone away from my mouth so he wouldn’t hear me sigh. “What do you want?”
I wasn’t about to agree to it just for the sake of getting a “win”—I wanted to know what I was going to be trading.
“Dinner. You and me, at the Westwood Golf Club, Friday night.”
I grimaced. I knew I should have expected something like this, but just the thought of Jacob taking me out to some kind of flashy, overpriced dinner at a country club in exchange for lifting a finger to go back to the original plans was repulsive. Especially thinking about Rhett who was waiting to hear from me in Mustang Ridge, and thinking about what we’d done the night before. Even if I wasn’t sure this was anything more than a fling, I couldn’t and wouldn’t bring myself to go on a date with someone else.
“Sorry, I can’t,” I said. “But just...just think about it, okay, Jacob? I shouldn’t have to bribe you to think about something.”
“It’d be a great night,” Jacob said. “You don’t know what you’re missing, Em.”
“I’m not going to go to dinner with you, Jacob. We work together. It would just be wrong.” I sighed. “Anyway, thanks for hearing me out at least. I need to get back to work.”
I stayed on just long enough to be polite and then ended the call.
What were Rhett and I going to do next? I wasn’t able to get any traction with my father, and Jacob clearly wasn’t going to help. I had to hope that things in Mustang Ridge would work out better. And I had to hope that when my father found out about my part in Rhett’s end of things, he wouldn’t disown me.