“You’re not going to Matagalpa,” Mom said hesitantly.
Samara sucked in a long breath, every muscle tensing, her face heating. She was an adult and made her own decisions. Even her mother could no longer tell her what to do, never mind Travis. Enough!
She shoved back her chair and stood, tossing down her napkin. “I’m not very hungry,” she said through clenched teeth. “Excuse me.”
The tension in the room followed her like a black cloud as she stalked out of the dining room.
She stood in the hall, brushed her long bangs out of her eyes, and pushed her fingers into her hair. Shit. She was supposed to be talking to her mother rationally about business plans, convincing her mother she was the one who should take over for her father, and what had she done? She’d let everyone push her buttons again and let her temper get the best of her.
She gazed up at the ceiling. She knew what she had to do, but dammit, her pride glued her feet to the floor. Heat flared inside her, and her tense stomach contracted painfully. She swallowed hard.
All the crap that had happened― her father’s death, the tension between her and her mother, the sparking sexual attraction between her and Travis, on top of this battle for the company―was making her all emotional. It was totally unlike her. She was focused and determined and professional. Messy feelings had no place in her life. Not for the last seven years, anyway.
It all chipped away at her, making little cracks and holes in her carefully built walls.
Sucking in a deep breath, she turned and walked back into the dining room. Travis and her mother were having a muted conversation, and both pairs of eyes fixed on her as she stepped in the arched door.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a low voice. “I...I don’t have much appetite, but I’ll sit here with you while you eat.”
Her mother’s wide eyes softened, but she merely nodded. Afraid to look at Travis, Samara kept her eyes carefully forward as she took her seat.
“I wasn’t trying to tell you what to do, Sam,” her mother said gently. “It was more of a question. Are you really thinking of going to Matagalpa?”
Samara shrugged and sipped her water. “Thinking about it. I don’t know for sure. We’ll see what I can figure out here, and then I’ll decide.”
Dayna nodded. “Travis says you’re meeting tomorrow with the rest of the management team to talk about how you’ll move forward.”
“Yes. That’s right.”
It appeared her mother wanted to say more, but she pressed her lips together and nodded as she used her knife and fork to cut a small piece of meat.
Samara wanted to say more too. She wanted to ask her mother if she would support her if it came to that, but...she couldn’t do it.
For some reason, guilt and conscience kept her silent. She couldn’t ask the question, and she knew there was more than one reason why. She did not want to pretend to her mother that everything was okay between them. And she was beginning to realize that, even though her mother had made a mistake all those years ago, she deserved to know why Samara had severed their relationship. Samara wasn’t sure she was ready to sit down and have that conversation with her mother, but for the first time since she’d arrived home, she knew they were going to have it. Some time.
Most of all, she didn’t ask the question because she was afraid of what her mother’s answer would be.
After dinner Travis grabbed his briefcase and retreated to his bedroom. He pulled the arm chair closer to the bed so he could prop his feet on the bed, opened his notebook computer, and pushed in the USB drive he’d brought home from the office.
But all the documents he’d brought home to review couldn’t hold his attention. His mind kept drifting off to Samara. When she’d walked back into the dining room, the apology obviously being pulled deeply and painfully from within her, he’d wanted to get up and hug her.
The evening had been unsettling, first seeing Dayna all crumpled up with sadness then putting on a smile for them, then Samara getting all emotional about it. She’d tried to hide it, but he could read her like the screen on his laptop. Maybe, just maybe, she was seeing her mother not as some terrible villainess—why, he still had no fucking clue—but as a woman who’d just lost her husband, the man she depended on. The man she loved.
Then to come back and apologize for losing her temper… Wow. Maybe she had grown up.
He blinked. He was staring into space, smiling at nothing. He tried again to focus on the spreadsheet he’d pulled up onto the screen.
Tomorrow, at the meeting, he had every intention of making sure the others agreed with him. There was always a chance that one of them thought they could take over. Hank Proshen, VP of Quality Control, could probably do it. But he didn’t have the...the...what was it? The special love of coffee that went so deep, was so intense... Passion. That’s what it was. That’s what he and Parker had shared—a passion for coffee, for the business, that couldn’t be taught.
Samara had it.
Shit.
The more he fought her, the more she dug her heels in. The more he tried to point out her lack of experience and her youth, the harder she argued. She’d always been like that.
With a sigh, he powered down the computer. He wasn’t getting anything done. Samara was giving him brainspin.
What he should be doing was going out with old friends, friends he hadn’t seen much over the last seven years since he’d been living in L.A. Maybe even look up an old girlfriend or two.
Bah. He knew that wasn’t going to happen. Even seven years ago, there hadn’t been a woman who could hold his interest like Samara. Thinking about seventeen-year-old Samara made his gut clench. That familiar guilt ate at his insides. But...she wasn’t seventeen anymore.
He picked up his cell phone and his car keys and headed out.
Samara was ready for a battle. After spending the evening studying everything she could, she’d hardly slept all night as her mind played over different scenarios. Maybe the others would be totally behind her. Or maybe they’d laugh in her face and tell her to go back to San Francisco.
It was up to her to show them she was mature, capable and knowledgeable. So she dressed in the black suit she’d brought as a potential funeral outfit and pulled her hair back into a neat, low ponytail.
When she arrived at Cedar Mill headquarters, she first called Jennifer in San Francisco to go over some things, then logged into her own email, took care of some business issues, delegated some others. Then she dove into more reading, trying to get up to speed on as many issues as she could so she’d be prepared for that meeting. When her neck started to ache and her attention wavered, she picked up the phone and made a couple more phone calls to Matagalpa, but again, she had no luck reaching Javier.
Reviewing her father’s email inbox again, she decided she could follow up with Duane Scanlon, the CEO of Alpha Air, about the meeting they’d had just before Parker had left for Matagalpa. Here at least she had a file to refer to, with a detailed proposal done up in writing for a partnership between Cedar Mill and Alpha Air for the airline to serve only Cedar Mill coffees on all its flights.
She picked up the phone and called Duane Scanlon. When she got through to him and introduced herself, she explained the reason for her call.
“Well, that’s very nice of you to follow up,” Duane said. “But I just got a voice mail from Travis Murray.”
“Oh.” Samara scowled. “I’m so sorry. He didn’t tell me he was going to call you.”
“Who’s running the show there now?” he asked, although his tone was mild. “You two need to get your act together.”
Shit. She’d made them look like idiots. She closed her eyes briefly.