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Miranda hummed along to the on-hold music for half a bar.
“Miranda.” The speakerphone made everyone sound far away, but Mr. DeBoer’s deep baritone came through loud and clear. “I’ve got Patrick here in my office. He was just telling me how he’s reorganizing the workflow in your absence. It seems he was expecting your input on a number of projects.”
She rolled her eyes. More like he was expecting her to do his work for him. “Really? I finished everything in my inbox before I left this morning. All of the files are on the company drive.”
The clacking of Mr. DeBoer’s fingers plinking away at the keyboard echoed across the line. “And so they are.”
“So sorry for any extra headaches.” Miranda clamped down on the urge to sing out naner-naner-boo-boo. She’d busted her hump for too long to give up the high road now. Especially when she needed something extra to make everything work out according to plan. “Mr. DeBoer, I’ve had to reassess the situation here at the brewery. Before I can implement the turnaround I outlined prior to leaving, I need to shore up the existing operations. To do that, I’m going to need financial help.”
“How much do you need?”
Relief loosened the tension pulling her shoulders up to her ears. She opened her mouth to give him the figure.
But before she could answer, Patilla’s voice came onto the phone line. “You know, Mr. DeBoer, the mission you gave the acquisitions department is to spot diamonds in the rough, companies that only need proper management and a little elbow grease to turn a profit.” He accented proper management, as though he was pointing out Miranda was anything but.
“True, but Mr. DeBoer mentioned limited financial support, also,” she added.
Patrick said, “Yes, and one of the best ways to gain that support is to obtain local support for a turnaround project, as everyone here knows. Rather than provide funding to Miranda for her little project, wouldn’t it be a wonderful opportunity for her to show if she has the chops to gain community funding? Of course, considering it’s her hometown, it won’t be that difficult. The Sweet family is so well known there.”
His sickly sweet tone of false support told her he’d done his research and knew just what kind of reputation her family had in Salvation. If her life had been a prison movie, she would have looked down at that moment and seen a shiv sticking out of her aorta. The rat bastard.
“It’s a small town.” Miranda curled her fingers around the phone cord, imagining it was Patilla the Hun’s neck. “There’s only one bank—a small, family-owned one.”
“You can’t put the ‘local’ in ‘local support’ like getting a family bank in your corner.” Snake oil was less greasy than her supervisor’s voice.
“Excellent point.” Mr. DeBoer made a clicking noise with his tongue. “Miranda, you’ve always been a proponent of localized funding. Let’s go with that plan.”
Any hope of succeeding went flat faster than an open beer abandoned in a heat wave. The Martin family owned the bank, and unfortunately, the Martins had been the Hatfields to the Sweet family McCoys since Salvation had been founded more than a hundred years ago. A long time ago, she’d made the mistake of forgetting just how deep those lines were drawn, but it wasn’t a mistake she’d ever make again.
Not that she had to worry about that. No doubt Logan Martin had moved away, just like most of the people in her graduating class had done within minutes of receiving a diploma. Thank God for small favors. If coming back had meant she’d have to see him again… She didn’t want to think about it.
“Another thing, I’ve been reviewing your timeline after Patrick brought up his concerns about you being out of the office for so long.” He paused long enough for Miranda’s heart to bang against her kneecaps. “We’re going to have to adjust the calendar on this. I need you to stop the bleeding on the account books within three months.”
A cold sweat glued her blouse to her spine. Putting Sweet Salvation Brewery back on the financial straight and narrow in six months would have been hard enough. Doing it in half that time was impossible.
“Now, Patrick worried you wouldn’t be able to make that happen, but I’ve got faith in you, Miranda. Are you game?”
She slammed her mouth shut before any words could rush out, even though a quick glance down at the handwritten repair list made every other word but “no” vanish from her vocabulary. This was her chance to get out from underneath Patilla the Hun. To show the town of Salvation that the Sweets were more than just slightly rehabilitated moonshiners and nutty Doomsday preppers. To prove to herself that she’d finally shaken off the stench of being from some backwater town in the middle of nowhere Virginia and had earned her place among the movers and shakers in Harbor City.
Dust and God knew whatever else covered her three-inch heels. She’d already broken two nails moving enough debris out of the way so she could sit down in the office chair. The brewery employees distrusted her at best and were forming a mutiny at worst. She needed a massive infusion of cash and at least three months more time than she had to make miracles happen. Add to that the fact that her immediate supervisor was actively trying to kill any possibility of success.
Pretty blondes in poorly made horror movies had better odds of survival than Miranda.
But this was her chance to prove herself at DeBoer and to the naysayers in Salvation. She sure as hell wasn’t going to let this opportunity go without a fight.
“Miranda?” A sharp buzz of feedback shot across the line when Mr. DeBoer picked up the receiver on his end, taking her off speakerphone. “What do you say? Can you do it?”
She straightened in her chair. “Consider it done.”
Anyone who’d ever tasted Ruby Sue’s prize winning pecan pie at The Kitchen Sink diner would be on Logan Martin’s side on his mission to steal the last piece of it. He’d bet every penny in his trust fund on it.
Whatever the secret ingredient was that she added to the gooey center had crack-level addictive powers. Of course, even knowing what a cantankerous octogenarian Ruby Sue could be, the mystery component wasn’t actually crack?
?probably.
Hud Bowden, Logan’s best friend since birth, sat back against the wood chair, beefy arms crossed and a toothpick sticking out of his mouth. “It can’t be done.”
Taking a pen out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket, Logan smirked. He and Hud had known each other forever. If anyone should know that he only took bets when the odds were stacked in his favor, it should be Hud.
