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Eddie headed back out to his truck, evading the nosy stares of the other diners. Screw the soup. His appetite was gone anyhow.
What Laura had said nagged him. What if there was something fishy about that permit?
A quick phone call to Hunter Fox was supposed to put his mind at ease, but the man’s smooth-talking protests weren’t as easy to swallow as they’d once been. Eddie snapped his phone shut and pulled the permits from the glove compartment. All neat and tidy, just as Fox had said. He shoved them back in and slammed it shut.
Laura was just being her old self. Self-involved, self-absorbed, and snotty.
He needed to stop being distracted by things like smooth legs and teensy-tiny running shorts. What he needed was to start construction once and for all. Get this thing built and finished—the future of his family business relied on it. That was all he could afford to think about.
And if it meant the total ruination of his relationship with Laura, well, he never stood a chance with that kind of woman anyhow.
Ten
Laura startled, hearing the creak of the attic steps. She gave a sharp sniff and scrubbed a quick hand over her face.
“Are you up here again? I can’t find the—” Sorrow’s head popped into view and she paused, taking in the scene. “Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah, fine. ” Laura turned her back on her sister. She’d allowed herself a mini-breakdown in what she thought would’ve been the solitude of the attic. “Got some dust in my eyes. What are you doing?”
“I’m looking for the dustpan. ” Sorrow’s eyes swept the room. “What are you doing?”
“Organizing. ” She gave a sharp sniffle and got back to rifling through an open trunk. “Ditching some of this old stuff. ”
“Don’t throw away too much. I already went through it when the roof caved. ”
“There’s still a ton of junk. ” She shrugged. “It’s bad feng shui. ”
“Okay…” Sorrow said warily. “Don’t tell me the dustpan was bad feng shui, too?”
“I threw it away. ” She began to refold and smooth a stack of old linen napkins.
“You threw away the dustpan?”
“I bought a Swiffer to use instead. I cleared out the pantry; it’s hanging in there on its own hook. ”
Sorrow clomped the rest of the way up the stairs. “What do you mean, you cleared out the pantry?”
She didn’t have the energy to get into it with her little sister. Cleaning was therapeutic, and she’d just as soon continue in peace. “There was stuff in there that didn’t belong,” she said dismissively.
“Like what kind of stuff?”
“Like…duct tape. And envelopes. Stuff that belongs in the garage. Or the office. ” She slammed the trunk lid down. “Look, I’m not up for this right now, okay?”
“Easy, Laura. ” Sorrow put up a quelling hand that, at the moment, felt patronizing.
“Don’t tell me to take it easy. Who do you think will get the blame if we go out of business? Me, that’s who. ” She smooshed the lid all the way closed and clicked the hasps shut.
“We’re not going to go out of business because there’s duct tape in the pantry. ”
Laura felt the emotion clawing at her throat again. Controlling her environment helped her feel in control of her destiny—why was that so hard to understand? “I need to get this place in better order. ”
“Hey,” Sorrow said, “don’t forget I’m here, too. Just because you’re the manager doesn’t mean you’re in this alone. ”
Her sister had obviously sensed her distress, but instead of comforting her, the sympathy only made her feel teary again. “Thanks,” she said tightly. “But I like chores like this. ” And she did. Dealing with practicalities kept the demons at bay.
Sorrow knelt to her eye level. “I want you to be able to focus on business stuff, remember?”
“Do I remember? I was up all night with business stuff. ” She leaned an elbow on the trunk, suddenly heavy with exhaustion. She’d spent hours pulling together a hard-core, bulleted presentation outlining the next steps for confronting the Jessups’ treachery. There was so much to consider: budget, publicity, outreach, growth estimates. She was approaching the management of her family business no less seriously than she had in her job as interim vice president. Though look how that had turned out.
“Just…don’t forget I’m here to help. I can totally deal with stupid stuff like cleaning out the pantry. ”
“You don’t always know where everything goes. ”
She realized how bratty that’d sounded and waited for Sorrow to take the bait, but her sister just sighed, telling her gently, “You can’t control everything. ”
Couldn’t she?
But she didn’t say that. Her sister would never understand. Sweet, loving Sorrow had always been everyone’s favorite. Lately, Dad was always going on about his talented chef daughter, or his brave Marine son. But when it came to Laura, the only praise she ever got was how on top of things she was. On it.
Our Laura’s on it.
And now that the welfare of the entire family business rested on her shoulders, she dared not consider what would happen if, for once, she wasn’t on it.
But she wasn’t about to go there with Sorrow, so instead she told her, “Look, I think I put the dustpan in a charity box in the garage. ” She turned away, scooting in front of the next trunk, effectively ending the conversation.
She heard her sister sigh, pause, then head back down the stairs.
Laura didn’t have a shrink, but at the moment, this kind of therapy would have to be enough. After two more trunks, it was.
Until Helen tracked her down later, shattering her hard-won calm.
Laura had gone into the tavern kitchen to hide out—anyone who knew her knew she didn’t hang in the kitchen if she could help it, but she was craving some of Sorrow’s homemade hummus, so she’d given herself a moment to sit on the counter, crunch on carrots and dip, and scan the seventy e-mail messages visible on her cell.
Sorrow had sensed her state of mind and given her a wide berth for the rest of the afternoon, but Billy had no such clue. “How’s the new phone?” he asked. He was spending his lunch break as usual, stealing some time with her sister as she did her advance dinner prep.
Laura frowned at the thing. “Jury’s still out. ” She’d splurged on a new smart phone, but so far it just showed her all the work she had to do, and yet the tiny screen made it barely possible to do anything about it. “Can you believe…thirty-two new e-mails in just the past three hours?”
“Thirty-two?” Sorrow stowed a platter of chicken breasts in the fridge to marinate. “Who’s sending all the e-mail?”
Laura shrugged. “Reservations. Lodge inquiries. Spam. Plus I’m working on some other stuff. I’m in touch with the California Office of Historic Preservation. ” She caught the look that shot between Billy and her sister and quickly added, “If there’s some error in Eddie’s building plans, any technicality at all, it’ll void the whole permit and they’ll need to start over. ”
She’d learned that trick from Ruby and Pearl when she’d gone down to the Town Hall to investigate the historic registry. She still needed to stop by with some flowers to thank them.
“Start over?” asked Sorrow.
Laura braced for the speech that was to come, about how it wasn’t a big deal, the Jessups wouldn’t do anything illegal, there was no fighting the system. Increasingly she felt like Don Quixote, tilting at windmills.
But then Helen burst into the kitchen, interrupting, which meant for once she was happy to see the woman. “Hey, Helen. ”
“I see you’re all hiding in the kitchen while some of us are out on the floor, hustling our butts off. ” Their waitress thrust the tavern phone at her.
She gave the phone a wary eye, making sure to keep her tone exaggeratedly even. “Is this your way of saying the p
hone is for me?”
“It’s my way of saying I need more help out there. ”
Laura put her ear to the phone. “Hello?” She waited a second, then rolled her eyes. As far as she was concerned, Helen’s days were numbered. She’d even begun to keep a list of the woman’s transgressions, remembering from her office days how the two most important things in any employee termination were to keep calm and to keep documentation. “There’s nobody there. ”
“So sorry,” Helen snapped. “Maybe if I had more help I could’ve run back here sooner. ”
“Hey, I could use more help, too. ” Laura was more committed than anyone and could school the lot of them in what it meant to work hard. “But my hands are tied. Consider yourself lucky you even have a job. ” She was speaking from experience, as someone who’d recently been fired, but the way Helen bristled, she’d clearly taken it as a threat.
Whatever. She glared at the phone instead, putting it back up to her ear. “Who was it?”
“Did the call get transferred to the other line?” Billy asked.
Helen ignored them, looking to Sorrow. “We’ve got more business than ever, and I just can’t handle it. ”
Laura switched to the other line, only half listening to Helen’s griping—she had neither the time nor the patience—but there was silence on the line. “Nope, that’s dead, too. ”
Helen finally tuned in, and, shooting a quick glance Laura’s way, she said, “They must’ve hung up. ”
“Gee, thanks,” she grumbled.
“Well, if I hadn’t had a dozen other things to do at the same time, maybe I’d have found you. ” Helen angrily crossed her arms, and the gesture plumped her already ample chest—did she purposely flaunt her assets at any given opportunity? “But can I say one word to complain? No. I do much of the work yet have none of the say in how things go around here. ”