Derrick pulled into his parents’ driveway seconds after Carter and Evelyn. Frankie and Gerry—dressed in their superhero pajamas—jumped out of the minivan, while his sister unstrapped a sleeping Hillary out of her car seat.
“Here,” Derrick whispered, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Let me.”
Evelyn glanced up at him and took a step back. “What’s going on? Did something happen with the deal?”
He shook his head, reaching in to gather Hillary in his arms. She moaned and snuggled up against his chest, wrapping her little fingers around his shirt. “Deal’s fine, but I screwed up. I’ll explain inside.”
Once Brett and Alisha arrived, and the kids were laid down to sleep in the other room, everyone congregated around a pot of coffee and a plate of cookies, watching as Derrick paced the length of the dining room table.
Alisha huffed. “Jeez, Derrick. It’s nine thirty on a Monday night. What’s the emergency?”
He took a deep breath and met the eye of every family member sitting at the table. “I need to know if you wanted the partnership with Chamberlin Hotels? Did you want us to grow into a medium-sized corporation with international reaching capabilities or not?”
His mom glanced at his dad, biting her lip.
Dad cleared his throat. “You’ve put together a solid business pursuit, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
Brett and Alisha shrugged, half-heartedly agreeing with their father. Evelyn said nothing while Carter stared with fascination at his hands.
“Yeah, it’s solid, but that doesn’t answer my question. Did you want the partnership?”
His dad leaned back in his chair, narrowing his eyes. “No, not really.”
Derrick sighed and sat down. “Why didn’t you tell me six months ago?”
“I did…you didn’t listen. If you remember, I said I was fine with the company the size it is now, and I’ll retire when I’m ready. Honestly, I don’t appreciate you pushing me out of my company. My father’s company.”
Derrick’s jaw dropped. “I’m not. That’s not what this was about. A partnership with Henry Chamberlin takes some financial risk off of the family. You can take time off, vacation, whatever you want.”
“I can do any of that now,” his dad said.
“Okay, well, then everyone else could too. Tom and Dave and any of the twenty employees that have been with you since the beginning. If showcasing our designs in Chamberlin Hotels is successful, everyone will benefit.”
“The simple fact is, son, I enjoy working. I love the things we create, and my team and I plan to do what we want despite a partnership with Henry Chamberlin.”
Brett let out a big sigh and dropped his chin to his chest.
Carter shifted forward in his seat. “It’s like I was saying on Thursday…”
Derrick clenched his teeth. “What you said on Thursday makes no sense. I’m not itching to get out of here. Hell, I’m trying to improve this place by boosting the economy and building a marketplace that the population currently has to drive up north to enjoy. What’s wrong with that?”
His mother smiled. “Nothing, sweetie. Fifth and Fifth downtown, the business park, the plans with the city and the university are wonderful pursuits you seem to enjoy spending your time on…”
Brett interjected. “I’m enjoying them too. I mean, I appreciate you teaching me the business stuff you learned at your fancy schools and years in the big cities. I’m proud to be a part of BDG and what we’ve done downtown, even if it is over the top for Spring City.”
“Over the top?” Derrick’s brow furrowed.
“Twenty stories in downtown Spring City? The next tallest building is fourteen stories, and that’s a hotel.” Carter pointed out.
“Fine, it stands out. What about GCH?” Derrick glanced between his family members.
“Why does the family business have to change? Why does it have to get bigger or more complex? And furthermore, why do we have to let some outsider into our world?” Alisha jumped out of her chair, resuming the pacing Derrick had been doing. “It takes away the entire purpose of family owned.”
He sighed and leaned back in his chair again. “If you all felt this way, why didn’t you say something earlier? Why’d you sign?”
His mom rubbed his arm with tears in her eyes. “Because you were happy, and when you first came to us with the idea, we figured it was kind of crazy and would take years to pull together.”
Alisha snorted. “Of course, you pulled it together in less than six months. Show-off.”
He rolled his eyes. “You shouldn’t have signed if it wasn’t what you wanted.”
“You’re kind of a bulldozer, Derrick,” Evelyn spoke up. “You get an idea in your head and run with it, damn what everyone else thinks. The last time we got into a big fight, you skipped two Christmases at home and broke Mom’s heart. Dad didn’t want to risk another blow-up. None of us did.”
Derrick couldn’t believe it. He thought they were over all that. He’d certainly learned his hardheaded lesson all those years ago. “Do you really think I’d leave town if I didn’t get my way? I have more than enough to keep me busy without presiding over Grayson’s Custom Hardwood. I thought I was presenting the family with a good thing, the next step.”
“We know, son, which is why we didn’t argue. I have full faith that any business pursuit you put together will be successful, but not every opportunity has to be chased, and we are bigger now than I ever dreamed. I’m comfortable with what we’ve grown into, I don’t need more.” His dad said.
“None of us do. With what you’ve already done, we’ll be comfortable for a long time. You’ve already set up the kid’s college funds, and I’m making dividends doing no work. I can’t ask for anything more.” Evelyn intertwined her fingers with Carter.
Brett scoffed. “I can always use more money, but I’d rather earn it working BDG. Plus, it would be nice to spend less time at the factory, so I can focus on downtown.”
Alisha shrugged. “I don’t know what I want to do, but I can say it hasn’t been the same over the last few years. I mean, all the new people are nice enough, but they aren’t family. It’ll only get worse the bigger we get.”
Derrick thought back over the last six months, trying to see what he’d clearly missed. Sure, no one had been as excited about the deal as he had been, but he figured that was because they didn’t believe his financial predictions. But it was more than that. Carter believed he’d been itching to leave for a while, just because he’d thrown himself into revamping the economics of Spring City. But Derrick didn’t see it that way at all. Hell, up until an hour ago, he’d hoped he was on the road to really settling down, but that wasn’t happening anymore.
“I can cancel the deal, right now. It’s not too late.”
Alisha wrinkled her forehead. “Why would you do that?”
“Because none of you want it.” Derrick glanced at the ground. “And, uh, because we might have been competing with Elliad Corp for Chamberlin’s attention.”
Carter groaned and put his face in his hands. “Crap. Jessica must be heartbroken.”
A lump caught in Derrick’s throat, making his voice crack. “She’s upset, and yes, she knows we’re related.”
“Dammit.”
“Something tells me we need to swap out the coffee with something harder.” Brett got up and walked to the small bar off the dining room. “Derrick?”
“Whiskey.”
“Anyone else?”
Taking a deep drink, Derrick explained what had happened with Jessica, admitting how he’d screwed up from the beginning, but skipping the hotter details. He told his family about coming clean over the weekend, and even his botched call to Chamberlin that he’d made just in case. Of course, the more he talked about the last few hours, the madder he got.
“She just shut down. I’ve seen nothing like it. Nothing I said made a dent, because she didn’t hear a word I said. How do you shut out someone you supposedly love?”
Evelyn snorted. “Uh, hello? Two Christmases ago.”
Derrick scrubbed his face and then tossed the last of his drink back. “I hear you.”
Jessica was mad, and she was hurt, and maybe once she had some time to think about what they could have together, she would reach out to him. If she did, Derrick would welcome her back with open arms, just as his family had him, but he wouldn’t chase her—not anymore—because if their relationship had a chance in hell of making it, she had to realize that shutting each other out of their hearts wasn’t an option.
“I’ll email Chamberlin tonight and let him know the deal is off. And we should discuss my resignation from the board.”
His dad sat up. “No, son. This is a family business. As the board, we need to weigh in, speak up, and make decisions together. You have the business experience and reputation we need at the helm of this company. You should stay on, but maybe we don’t need as much wheeling and dealing in the future, which will free up your time.”
Checking the time, Derrick had thirty minutes before Tom and Bo showed up from the shop with the delivery truck. He’d taken the rest of the week off and finished Jessica’s desk, scheduling with Carter to meet him and the guys at Elliad after hours to get her office cleared out and the new desk in place.
He hadn’t heard from Jessica all week and doubted they would ever speak again, but he’d be damned if she didn’t get the desk he’d poured his heart into crafting for her. If anything, he took satisfaction in the idea he was getting in the last word, whether or not she wanted to listen.
The new desk had to be brought up in six sections, and it took the four of them over an hour to put together. Now that Tom and Bo had left, Derrick was rearranging her office, catering to the Feng Shui she had asked for the day they’d met.
Carter leaned against the doorframe, his arms crossed over his chest. “One of the hardest things I ever did was ask Evelyn out.”
Derrick put the large padded chair down and glanced over his shoulder. “What?”
“I knew. The day I asked Evelyn out, I knew how you’d react. I knew I was sacrificing our friendship for the love of my life. And there were no guarantees Evelyn would fall in love with me, but deep down I knew she was the one and nothing would’ve stopped me from going after her. Not even my love for you and our friendship.”
Sitting down in the chair, Derrick rubbed his hands over his head. “Yeah, well, it worked out for you.”
“Isn’t always easy.”
“What are you talking about? You and Evelyn are perfect together.”
Carter shrugged. “No… I mean yeah, we are. Doesn’t mean we don’t work our asses off to make our relationship good. Sometimes she’s putting in the effort, sometimes it’s me. Point is we are always working. It takes a lot of understanding, lots of patience, and when that doesn’t work we drive out to the middle of nowhere and yell until we get out whatever shit is bothering us.”
“I would love to take Jessica out in the middle of nowhere and yell at her, but that would be a waste of time considering nothing I say will make a difference.”
“You don’t know that. It’s been almost a week—”
“She shut me out, not the other way around.”
Frowning, Carter kicked at the doorframe. “Evelyn broke up with me once. She didn’t talk to me for two weeks.”
“When the hell did that happen?”
“The summer between our junior and senior years. Remember that brawl you and I had on your parents’ lawn? The last time my nose was broken?”
Derrick winced. “She broke up with you because of that fight?”
“No. That’s the fight I picked with you after she broke up with me.”
“I’d always wondered what started that damn fight. Why’d she break up?”
“She said she didn’t want to cause any more fights between us. I showed her, because we both ended up in the E.R.” Carter chuckled.
Derrick grinned. “Yeah, bruised ribs three weeks before football season started. Not our smartest moment.”
“You know your sister. Once she’d made up her mind, we were done. But I couldn’t let it end that way because I knew in my heart she was the one, and I’d have done anything to prove I was the one and only for her too. I didn’t let her shut me out, and if you believe Jessica is the one for you, you won’t let her shut you out either.”
Derrick put his head in his hands. “I don’t know, man.”
Carter pushed off the doorframe. “Two proud, stubborn people are going to have to work even harder to make a relationship work. If you want her in your life, suck up your pride and make her listen.”
Jessica’s phone rang as soon as she parked her car. She checked the number. “I’m walking into the building now.”
Torie whispered, “Good, because Mr. Ramis is here, and Carter left you a note, and you will not believe what happened to your office.”
“What?”
“Just hurry.” Torie hung up on her, clearly exasperated by whatever was going on.
Maybe her office had been ransacked, her computers destroyed, all her recent failures wiped from history? Or maybe Bryan was here to fire her, after all? Although the latter would put a cramp on their Labor Day dinner plans. Whatever the mess waiting for her in her office, she had a tough time getting worked up about it.
She’d been numb for the last week and couldn’t seem to get emotional about anything except Derrick. She cried over him every night. It was exhausting. Hence her hour late arrival in to work.
She stopped in the bathroom to take a quick look at her face.
Puffy, dark-circled eyes. Check.
Red, raw nose. Check.
Lifeless, dull hair. Double check.
She peeled her lips back. Well, at least her teeth were clean.
This was ridiculous. She had to pull her shit together. She couldn’t do the Leads and Leadership Conference looking like this and have people take her seriously. Digging in her purse and grabbing a band, she quickly pulled her hair back into a messy ponytail. She pinched her cheeks and squirted eye drops into her eyes to clear the red away.
Yeah, she still looked like shit, but at least now she looked like put-together shit.
“Screw it.”
Torie greeted her outside her closed office door with a cold latte and an envelope. “Note is from Carter, and if I were you, I’d read it afterward. Mr. Ramis is inside.”
“Why’s the door closed?”
She rolled her eyes. “You’ll see.”
Jessica opened her door to find her entire office rearranged, and her boss sitting at her desk. Only, it wasn’t her desk.
“This is beautiful. Who made it for you?”
Shutting the door behind her, Jessica couldn’t stop the tears from falling.
Bryan jumped out of her chair, throwing an arm around her shoulder. Not exactly professional, but they didn’t have a typical employer-employee relationship. “Jess, what’s wrong?”
“Oh God, I screwed up.”
“Is this about Chamberlin again? I told you not to worry about that. It’s a missed opportunity. A big one, but we’ll find another.”
“No. Yes. I don’t know anymore.”
She put her stuff on the floor, unwilling to risk scratching the beautiful, multi-wood top gleaming under the sunlight streaming in from outside. Running her fingers lightly over the surface, she saw all the care Derrick had put into assembling this desk and imagined his large, warm hands caressing the wood, fixing any imperfections.
The configuration was perfect. Her monitors were mounted on a swing arm, and the docking station was tucked into a hidden compartment, minimizing loose cables.
He’d thought of everything.
“Jessica?”
She wiped her eyes. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting the desk today. He must’ve delivered it this weekend.”
“Who?” Bryan sat at the table and motioned for her to join him.
“There is something I need to tell you.” She had been waiting for rumors about her relationship with the competition to be whispered around the hallways for the last week. If Mike had told anyone, it hadn’t come back to her yet. Two weeks ago, and she would have bet money he’d have used this as an opportunity to get her demoted, if not fired. Now, she just didn’t know. He’d barely made eye contact with her over the last week, keeping busy doing a majority of her work while she walked around like a zombie.
She had to pull her shit together, or else she’d have to quit, because it wasn’t fair to let someone else carry the workload she was responsible for executing.
Bryan leaned back, giving her his assessing professor gaze that had made her nervous as a freshman. “You blew me and Camille off this weekend, and something tells me we should have forced dinner.”
“The investment opportunity Mr. Chamberlin went with instead of an audio-visual upgrade to his hotels was a partnership with Grayson’s Custom Hardwood. Derrick Grayson, their president, made the desk you’re admiring.” She bit her lip, feeling like a fool for what she was about to admit.
He nodded, smoothing his hand over the top. “Well, if this is the type of work the president can do, I bet his craftsmen are amazing. Perhaps a partnership was in Hank’s best interest.”
Bryan knew Henry Chamberlin from their alma mater days at CSU, and still called him Hank versus Henry as the man introduced himself today.
“There’s more. Derrick Grayson is also the man I’ve been dating for the last month. I was away with him over the Fourth of July weekend while our proposal with Chamberlin Hotels was falling apart.”
Her mentor’s brow furrowed. “Okay. That’s an odd coincidence.”
“What if it wasn’t a coincidence? What if Derrick asked me out because he knew we were working a proposal for the same investment dollars as his company was going after?”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I don’t know. I guess it could be possible.” She didn’t know what to believe, because none of it made sense.
“Did you talk about the proposal with Derrick?”
She glanced around the room, trying to remember how much she had told him. “I mentioned my workload, which included the proposal.”
“But did he ask questions about our proposal?”
“Not that I remember. To be honest, he helped remodel our conference room for the presentation. He and a crew worked around the clock to get us ready.”
His brow raised. “And the conference room didn’t fall apart during our meeting? Doesn’t sound like someone trying to sabotage a business deal to me.”
“I know, but he kept so much from me before that weekend. I thought he was a furniture maker, a one-man shop, not the most eligible bachelor in Spring City.” Mike’s words still stung, and now images of supermodels throwing themselves at Derrick filled her restless dreams.
“The most what?”
Jessica shook her head. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I should have been more careful, asked more questions, and never let him into my world.”
His lips twisted. “The two business deals aren’t remotely alike, aside from Hank being at the center of both. What Chamberlin Hotels gets from a partnership versus what they get from upgrading their properties’ business centers are two different strategies. And the partnership would have had to be in coordination for a lot longer than we’ve had the audio-visual statement of work in hand. Hank’s not stupid. He has a plan. We just have to figure out what it is.”
“Do you think any part of this is salvageable?”
He smiled. “Of course, it is. If not Chamberlin Hotels, we’ll find another chain looking to upgrade their business centers. Mike’s doing the research now.”
“He is?” Now Jessica felt like even a bigger fool. Bryan hadn’t come to discuss this with her, highlighting was an utter fuck-up she’d become. “I had no idea. I really screwed this up.”
“I don’t consider this a loss just yet. Trust me, Hank was impressed with what we presented him, which means this is a matter of immediate needs. He has competing opportunities and has prioritized one over the other. Once he learns we are shopping our designs around to his competitors, he’ll have to rethink his priorities.” He smirked, a competitive gleam in his eye.
She shook her head, the first smile she’d felt in a week spreading across her lips. “Anything that makes his squirm makes me happy. The man is a jerk.”
He snorted. “He’s an acquired taste. Camille can’t stand him, but she recognizes his business acumen. The man’s been successful despite his personality quirks.”
“I should have been involved in all of this. Hell, I should have been leading it. I’ve really let the team down.”
He leaned back again, placing his assessing gaze on her again. “You’ve been distracted. The most distracted I’ve ever known you to be, which makes me wonder if you fell in love with this Derrick fellow, and have been beating yourself up for no reason.”
She looked away. “No offense, but I really don’t want to discuss this with you here and now.”
“No, I suppose not. The office isn’t really the place to discuss romantic interludes.”
She blushed, her eyes flickering to the plush chair in the corner. “Did you come here to fire me?”
“Why would I fire you? We’ve hit a snag in a new pursuit, that’s all. Our current customer base is happy and continues to conduct business with us as normal. We have lost no one, the employees are happy, and frankly, you’ve only been in this position for three months. This is one bump. Trust me, there will be plenty more in the future.”
Jessica sighed a breath of relief. “Okay, well if you aren’t here to fire me, then what can I do for you?”
“I came to deliver your badge and ticket to the conference. Wednesday at ten a.m. you need to be at the Marriott ballroom.”
“Thanks.” She took the envelope from him.
“I also wanted to check on you, because Camille is worried. You’ve ditched us for dinner a few weeks in a row.”
She smiled, patting his hand. “I’ll be fine. I just need to get my head on straight. I might take a few days off after the conference, but I promise to come back as your reliable go-to person next week.”
“Great.” Bryan stood up and checked his watch. “You okay?”
She stood up too. “Yeah. I’ll see you on Wednesday.”
She walked him to the door, took one look at Torie’s expectant face, shook her head, and closed the door. Everything needed to be cleared off her calendar. No calls, no meetings, minimal emails. She’d do the presentation on Wednesday, but otherwise she just couldn’t handle life this week. Last week, she’d barely been present. She’d give herself this week to get her shit together, and then next week it was back to business.
Life had to get back to pre-Derrick Grayson momentum.
Standing at her new, beautiful desk, she docked her computer and waited for her calendar to come up.
Then she ripped open the envelop Torie had handed her to read the short note.
We came in this weekend, I hope that was okay. Your filing cabinet is locked and down in the storage area, so when you’re ready to move your files, let me know. If you have any problems with the desk, I’ll arrange to get it fixed. Or you could just call him directly. I hope this doesn’t affect our working relationship.
Carter
Gliding her hands over the perfect finish, Jessica wasn’t sure how she’d ever enjoy this desk without thinking of Derrick, but it was so beautiful, so perfect, she had to try.