From Temptation to Twins(46)
Jules tried to remember their exact words when she’d agreed to the date. But she couldn’t. And she couldn’t hold him to something she didn’t remember for certain.
She centered herself and decided it was best to let things slide. She’d regroup later.
“Fine,” she told them all. “Thank you all very much. Your help is making a big difference.”
Everybody smiled, and Jules forced herself to smile in return. But something terrible was going to happen. She could feel it in her bones.
* * *
“Are you saying you’re ready to pull the pin?” Matt asked Caleb.
It was morning nearly two weeks later, and the two men were on the Whiskey Bay Marina pier where Matt had just finished a precharter inspection of one of his largest yachts, Orca’s Run.
“Bernard has the paperwork ready for me to sign.”
“But?” Matt seemed to spot something on the dock in front of him.
He crouched down and pulled his multitool from the case on his belt.
“Would you do it?” Caleb asked.
He’d lain awake last night mapping the likely outcomes of his rescinding the Crab Shack’s easement. The lawyers, a protracted court case, Jules’s anger, her disappointment, her eventual bankruptcy because she’d spend all her money fighting him.
Why on earth did she have to be so stubborn?
“I’d have done it already.” Matt tightened the bolts on a piece of stainless steel mooring hardware.
“You would?” The answer surprised Caleb.
Matt wasn’t a hard-nosed man. He was normally more compassionate than Caleb. TJ, now, TJ saw the world in dollar signs alone.
“If all I cared about was my business.” Matt rose. “And I know how much you care about the Whiskey Bay Neo location.”
Caleb gazed over the sparkling waves, wondering if he was being a fool. “I can’t bring myself to destroy her.”
“You’ve given her options A, B and C.”
“More than once.”
“She knows the risks.”
“I keep thinking there has to be an option D or an option E. There must be something I haven’t thought of that’ll break the impasse.”
Matt’s mechanic Tasha Lowell approached along the dock. “I’ve signed off on Orca’s Run,” she said to Matt.
“Tip-top shape?” Matt asked her. “It’s for a beachhead client from the Berlin show.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“The guy has contacts all over Europe. He has influence, and can send us dozens of new clients. We need this cruise to go off without a hitch.”
She gazed at the sky, as if praying for strength. “I know that. That captain knows that. Everybody knows that.”
“Is that sass?”
“It’s an update,” she said.
“It sounded like sass.”
“Well, you’re stressing everybody out. Chef Morin was just yelling at the steward, something about Alaskan king crab. Poor kid nearly wet his pants.”
Matt’s gaze went to the office building. “Do I need to—”
“Gads, no,” Tasha said. “Stay out of the way.”
Caleb couldn’t help enjoying the exchange. Tasha might be rough around the edges, but she was also smart and fearless. Caleb liked that.
“I am the boss,” Matt said.
Caleb couldn’t resist. “If you have to point that fact out, something’s not working for you.”
He caught Tasha’s smirk. Her green eyes lit up, and he suddenly realized that under that baseball cap she was quite pretty.
“You’re a girl,” he began, thinking this might be an opportunity to get some advice.
She immediately seemed to take offense. “Excuse me?”
He wasn’t quite sure where he’d gone wrong with the simple statement. “You’re female.”
She widened her stance in her canvas, multipocketed work pants. “Your point?”
Caleb didn’t know what he’d been thinking. Tasha wasn’t going to have any insight into how to handle Jules. The fact that he’d even thought of asking her showed how desperate he’d become.
“Caleb is having woman trouble,” Matt said.
Caleb shot his friend a glare. “You’re not helping.”
Tasha pressed her lips together, as if she was holding back a retort.
“It’s a business deal,” Caleb told Tasha, deciding since he’d come this far, he might as well give it a shot. “I’ve offered a reasonable compromise, but she’s set on mutual annihilation.”
“My best guess? It’s not a good compromise. It favors you. You’re deluding yourself that it doesn’t, but she knows that it does.”
Caleb took offense to the assessment. “It’s the only solution.”