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“The reason I wanted to meet you today,” I explained to her. “One of them, anyway, was to talk to you about franchising the store.”
Frankie’s eyes narrowed and I continued before she could shut me down.
“Hear me out, please,” I said, keeping her gaze on me. “It doesn’t have to be an immediate thing. It doesn’t even have to happen in the next year. But itissomething I want to consider.”
“Franchising was never a part of my parents’ dream,” she argued, her tongue sharp and dripping venom. “I already told you I’m not interested in seeing the store turn into a faceless corporate giant.”
“I’m not trying to turn it into that at all. I just want to reach a wider customer base. By franchising the business we can go national, maybe even international.”
“And what happens to the flagship?” she demanded, sitting upright in her seat. She perched her elbows on the table and laced her fingers in front of her.
Blocking me off.
“What do you think is going to happen?” I asked, keeping my voice smooth. “What are you so afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” she snapped, and the lie was plain as day. “I just don’t want my parents’ hard work to disappear under the face of a global company. Is there something wrong with that?”
“No, actually,” I admitted. I let my mouth tug up into a half-smirk. “In fact, I have to say it’s very… admirable that you care so much.”
“They opened that store for me,” she huffed. “It’s my job to keep it going.”
“What about other kids?” I pressed, leaning forward to challenge. “Kids who live out of state or across the country, without a local Ivey’s to cater to their dietary needs?”
“Don’t try to guilt me into submitting,” she hissed. “If that’s what you were after, you could have opened your own chain of food-allergy-friendly stores!”
“True,” I agreed easily. “I could have bought an entire shopping mall and turned it into a haven for people like you.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because I didn’t want to.”
“That’s not a real answer,” she accused, her cheeks aflame. “You can build whatever you want, whenever and wherever you want. You said so yourself! So why are you trying to dismantle myfamily’sstore?”
“I understand that you haven’t had much time to acclimate to the way I do business,” I began but she scoffed, cutting me off.
“Don’t youdaretry to condescend to me,” she warned. “I might not have your business savvy, but I have a store that’s very precious to me, built by the people I love most. Business doesn’t trump everything.”
I wanted to retort, to fight back and argue that business trumped everything.
But I could only stare at her, at the delicate flare of her nostrils, her white knuckle grip on the edge of the table. Her heart-shaped mouth tightened defiantly, turning into a frown.
But she’d never been sexier.
I sat in utter disbelief, in awe of the woman in front of me, fighting tooth and nail to save her family business from the villain.
From me.
“If you’ve got nothing else to say,” she said curtly, tossing her napkin onto the table in a heap as she stood. “I’m leaving.”
She walked away and all the words I wanted to hurl after her turned to smoke and air.
I called Vinny that night.
We didn’t talk.
Chapter seventeen
Letting Loose
