“People are laughing at me, Sanna. They all know I proposed to you. How do you think this looks?”
He grabbed her upper arm for emphasis, squeezing it tighter than necessary. Isaac flew to his feet, knocking the table, sloshing water onto the already spilled butter. Sanna held her free hand up to hold Isaac back, then used it to remove Thad’s hand from her. She resisted the urge to bend his fingers backward. To think she had once dated this fool.
“I don’t care how it looks. After this, I almost hope people laugh at you. I have always considered you a good friend and a good neighbor. There was even a soft spot in my heart for you as my first boyfriend, but I clearly never knew you. You’re spiteful and mean when you don’t get your way. Don’t ever talk to me again.”
She pulled a bill from her pocket and set it on the table deliberately.
“And your mom’s casseroles are disgusting.”
With that, she strode toward the exit. Given the amount of chair shuffling she heard, she knew Bass and Isaac were right behind her. That last comment was beneath her, but it had felt good.
Mr. Smoot stood near the exit, getting ready to cook for the next round of diners. As she passed him, he caught her eye and whispered, “Good call.”
Outside the door, Sanna paused to let Bass and Isaac catch up to her. Without breaking stride, Isaac gently took her hand, and they walked to the car side by side.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Eva unrolled the new plans across her hotel room bed, the tube they’d arrived in rolling across the floor. She picked it up and set it on the bed, which took up most of the small room. Even though she had lived in this room for the last few months, it still looked pristine. She kept her clothes and suitcase put away, her computer was precisely in the center of the desk, even her toiletries were kept in a neat case she tucked in one of the corners. Everything in its proper place.
Using the pillows, she anchored the paper so she could free her hands and study the new drawings. She’d asked the WWW planners to design a new layout incorporating her ideas, something she’d never done before. Normally, her father made all those calls, but she wasn’t sure he’d approve the changes, so she went around him. She knew that if she had asked his permission, his response would be to send her Patrick. And this was going to get the deal done.
She breathed a sigh of relief. The plans were perfect.
According to Thad Rundstrom’s intel, the Looms were the key to getting Sanna to agree to sell—and she was the lynchpin. If Eva could win her over, the dad would be a piece of cake. These new renderings left many of the older trees intact, building the property’s condos around them. She’d even decided to call them Loom Homes. The hotel proper and water park would be on the Rundstrom property, where they had no annoying qualms about razing their orchard.
Her phone buzzed. Patrick.
“Yes,” she said.
“I know what you did.”
Eva kicked off her heels and walked to the counter where she had placed the ice bucket. She pulled a bottle of Grey Goose from the icy minifridge she kept on its lowest setting and poured two inches into a clean tumbler, then added two cubes.
“Am I supposed to guess what you’re referring to, or are you going to tell me?”
This should be good. Her brother was always digging, so let’s hear what he found. She knocked back half the liquid in one gulp, searing down her throat. She’d stopped caring what Patrick thought three years ago when he’d gone behind her back on a deal they were both rushing to finalize and pointed out a silly error she had made in the contract to both the seller and her father, humiliating her. Rather than let her fix it, her father had yanked her from the project entirely. She had never been sloppy again. Let him waste his time reading her contracts—he wouldn’t find any mistakes.
“You changed the plans for the Door County deal without Dad’s permission.”
Shit. That wasn’t a mistake—it was something she was doing intentionally. She brushed her hands across the drawings. She was proud of this strategy. She’d listened to the concerns of the seller and altered the plan to persuade—not threaten, her dad’s and Patrick’s favorite business tactic.
“Dad instructed me to get the deal done, no matter what was necessary. I’m just following orders.”
She swirled her glass, the shrinking ice cubes clinking together. She’d been doing this job, and doing it well, for five years—when would they stop looking over her shoulder?
“You know he would never accept changes like this. I saw the new rendering. You’ll be lucky if he ever lets you head up another deal.”
“Did you call for a reason, or just to be a dick?”
“I wanted you to know, so when you screw this up—which you will—and I have to come fix it for you—which Dad will make me do—you’ll owe me for not telling Dad about your little idea.”
This is what she hated most. Instead of working together, they always fought to outwit each other. Why couldn’t they be brother and sister rather than corporate rivals?
“I owe you nothing. I remember when you forgot to get permits for new construction in Indiana. If I hadn’t caught it and fixed it by sweet-talking the right people, you still would be staring at an empty field. And I didn’t ask you for any favors for keeping my mouth shut—because I’m your sister and I had your back.”
She could hear ice cubes clinking over the phone. What did it say about their fractured family that they both needed booze to get through a phone call with each other? She finished off her glass.
“Since you don’t have a witty comeback, I’m going. I have a deal to close. Bye, Patrick.”
She tossed the phone onto the bed and returned to her drawings. When Patrick wasn’t a complete asshole, he could be a brilliant businessman. She wished she could ask him for advice on how to best approach the Lunds with these changes—her heart hurt that she couldn’t. It had been exciting to problem-solve with the designer. Sure, she’d hit a roadblock with Sanna’s affection for the Looms, but with a bit of creativity, she had found a possible solution. And even if it didn’t work, at least this would be her own failure, not her brother’s or her father’s.
She picked up the phone to call Anders with the new proposal.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Bass searched the trees for wormy apples, ones that couldn’t be used in ciders, let alone be pretty enough for the apple stand. He liked that Sanna trusted him enough now to decide which ones had to go. She worked on the other side of the same apple tree, thinning the branches that he couldn’t reach. He knew she was double-checking his work, but he hadn’t missed one yet.