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“COME ON, WALLACE!” Tessa shouted over the loud male voices that surrounded her. “Jamie did not say your stout was garbage! Calm down!”
“He implied it!” Wallace yelled back. “You think I don’t know what I heard?”
Jamie threw up his hands. “All I said was that I thought the end note was a little bitter. Pull back on the chocolate, man.”
“Fuck you!”
Eric just stood there with his arms crossed. Silence fell over the kitchen, though it was marred by the loud sound of Wallace’s furious breathing. Once that slowed, Eric raised his chin. “Are you done?” he asked calmly.
Wallace just grunted, but Tessa could tell the storm had passed.
“Jamie’s right,” Eric said. “And you know he’s right. So try again. It’s a winter brew—you’ve got plenty of time to play with it.”
Wallace grunted again, but he didn’t disagree.
Jamie, seemingly unaffected by the argument, gave Wallace’s arm a friendly slap. “Try that other chocolate you were talking about, man. The one from Mexico. That was the one you wanted, anyway.”
Wallace shrugged, so Jamie slapped him again. “If anyone can do it, you can. You’re a fucking wizard, man.”
“Okay,” Wallace finally agreed. “All right. I’ll try again.”
Tessa wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Good Lord,” she said as she left them to their weird bonding. She might understand men, but that didn’t mean she had to like them all the time. Sometimes they were just giant, obnoxious children wrestling around until someone cried uncle.
Actually, that was kind of how she felt it was going with Roland Kendall, too. But she’d cry uncle a million times over if it would get him to budge. She closed her office door and waited for the call. The last time Tessa had called, the receptionist had sighed and said that Mr. Kendall would call back around five. It was 4:59 p.m.
When the phone rang, she snatched it up.
“Tessa! Good to hear your voice. It’s Graham Kendall.”
Graham Kendall? She pulled the phone from her ear and glared at it. He started talking again.
“…surprised you didn’t show more interest in the offer—”
“I’m sorry,” she snapped. “I really can’t make that kind of financial decision so quickly.”
“What if I could give you a few more days?”
“Sure. Whatever. I just can’t talk right now, okay?”
“I’ll call you on Monday!”
“I thought you were going to send those numbers on the catering over to me.”
“I’ll get them to you as soon as I can. Let’s get this golf tournament ironed out first. That’s our top priority.”
Tessa hung up with a huff. The phone rang two seconds later. “Hello?”
“Ms. Donovan,” a much rougher voice said.
Her heart stopped with an excruciating lurch. Roland Kendall. This was it. She could feel the destruction of her family barreling at her like a freight train. “Mr. Kendall,” she whispered. Horrified at the weakness of her own voice, she tried again. “Welcome home. I hope your trip went well.”
“It was fine.”
“I hope you—”
“Look, Ms. Donovan, I’ll put you out of your misery. I was leaning toward a Denver brewery last month, and I’ve decided to go with them.”
“No,” she whispered. Her hand fell to her desk, the knuckles clunking hard against the wood, but Tessa didn’t feel it. All she could feel was the hand the phone was in, and the way the edges cut into her fingers where she squeezed it. “I understood that Monica was going to argue in our favor….”
