The Blue Iris, page 22
ROWAN
The labor inspector was a mall cop on Red Bull. He ordered Rowan to wait outside, grilling the entire staff, even Tessa, found in the bathroom with tear spots all over her grey T-shirt, the phone cord wrapped around her like butcher twine.
A complaint had been filed alleging unsafe working conditions at the shop. Combined with the outstanding bullshit fines for Trucks, which Rowan would have paid by now if he could have, it was enough to shut him down pending a full investigation.
Rowan wasn’t some arms-length investor raking dividends from behind a desk. He knew firsthand the long hours through weather alerts, the gruelling physical demands. The geo-concentration of privileged, whiny customers. That’s why he paid the highest wages on Morrow, handed out bonuses like cinnamon hearts post-Valentine’s Day. Gave breaks and time off on demand. Ate the overages on their homes. He’d be nothing without his crew, which is exactly why he never pushed them to do any more than they wanted to. They just always seemed to want to.
After the inspector left, Rowan dismissed the group to call his lawyer. But instead of going home, they followed him like worried ducklings into the shop. He made the call on speaker phone; he couldn’t summon the energy to continue the lies, and there was little point anyhow.
Attorney Bobby Benedetto assured them the inspector’s claims were mostly smoke in mirrors. “If no health and safety violations were found onsite, and the staff corroborated you’re following heat stress and overtime protocols, I should be able to get the stop-work order squashed in no time.”
A collective sigh. Indeed, Rowan had been firm about staff taking regular breaks and days off ever since . . . Tessa’s fainting spell in the yard.
The thought seemed to rise to everyone’s mind at once.
Tessa looked up. “You guys think it was me.”
“Stop it, girlie.”
“I wouldn’t blame you. I pass out, and suddenly we’re being interrogated about heat stress?”
“After a spotless record all these years,” Bobby said, “it does seem strange. First bylaw comes after you about the yard, and now the labor department a few weeks later? Word must be out about Sam.”
Darryl’s eyes bore into Rowan. “What’s that about the yard?”
Voice shaking, Rowan brought them up to speed. Trucks was on residential property; without permission from the city, it wasn’t allowed to operate. And without Trucks, he was out of ways to keep the shop afloat.
“So, we need a permit or something?” Charlie asked.
“More than that,” Bobby explained. “We need a zoning variance, converting the property to commercial usage.”
“Which my father got,” Rowan said. “Why wouldn’t he? But the city is insisting he didn’t.”
“I bought us some time on account of the original owners being deceased, but unless we can produce a copy—”
Rowan looked at Darryl, then Charlie, and shook his head. After the reading of his father’s will, his mother had lit a crackling fire in the open brick fireplace of Simon’s study and burned every paper in the file cabinet.
Apprehension rolled through the room like tumbleweed.
“So, we apply for a new one,” Charlie said.
Bobby sighed. “Developers are dying to get their hands on that block, and we all know the pull they have at city council. If you filed now, it would get denied in the hopes you’d be forced to sell.”
Charlie’s cheeks puffed in weary exhale. Rowan nearly threw up. She was his dearest, most loyal friend. This place was her sole constant. Her home. The last piece of Sam any of them had left.
“What if I ignored it?” Rowan asked. “Keep paying fines or something?” He contemplated how far he was willing to go. Would they make him do jail time? If he hacked white-collar prison, customers would definitely stop pushing him around.
“The penalties would be astronomical,” Bobby said. “At best, you shut down the wholesale division, sell off the houses and yard, float the storefront as long as you can. But taxes for small businesses are only going up.”
Clearly, there was no lawyering out of this. Rowan couldn’t see much choice but to sign that offer. Get as much money as possible for the one place in the world that was everything he couldn’t buy.
Summer Rhododendron / Rhododendron Maximum
“Who is against me?”
TESSA
The elevator rocketed to the penthouse, the evening she’d envisioned hours ago sinking further from reach with every floor.
The hurt in Nano’s voice had torn Tessa’s heart like wet tissue. No, Tessa explained, sniffling into the phone, she hadn’t left them to read about her engagement in the paper like everyone else. Yes, it was right there in black and white, but—well, yes, there was a ring—but the paper got the facts wrong! Nothing was official!
The caption listing Tessa as Will’s fiancée could have been an unchecked assumption by the reporter, or a tip from someone at Tiffany’s. A ring like that, a man like Will, would have stood out. Hell, Tessa was ready to blame autocorrect, so long as it didn’t happen on Will’s go-ahead. But hadn’t he callously dropped the word fiancée to Luke just yesterday?
And why was he the only person she hadn’t heard from this morning?
No. He was too mired in figuring out how this mess happened, too busy tagging heads to be rolled. Tessa, at the penthouse early due to the work stoppage, would sit on his leather sectional and wait, thoughts firmly in check, until he walked in with the perfectly logical explanation.
When Tessa stepped off the elevator, candles were flickering. Wine breathed in the crystal decanter, and the scent of filet mignon filled the air. Will stood at the counter, plating food from cartons belonging to the French bistro a few blocks away, the one that didn’t offer takeout. He brightened when he saw her, so much, that for a half-beat, Tessa wondered if he was in court all day and word of the news article hadn’t yet reached him.
He strode over. Kissed her. “You’re just in time.”
Nothing had changed. Yet, his demeanour felt altered from head-to-toe. Robotic, almost. A Will Westlake hologram. Tessa stalked to the windows—not the airy set overlooking the amber-streaked harbour. The other ones. She searched the hard gridlines of the financial district for what to say, how to feel. Nothing made any sense anymore.
His fingers grazed her hip, and Tessa recoiled. The glass of red wine he’d brought her tumbled across the carpet. They stared at the burgundy river creeping along the hand-knotted fibers, neither making any attempt to stop it.
“I don’t even like red wine,” she murmured.
It was true. Will simply began pouring it one day, assuring her it was an acquired taste, but all she’d ever acquired was a headache and the stifled urge to dump it down the drain.
He sidestepped the mess, moving towards her the way he would an injured animal. “You saw the article.”
The words were a lit match in freefall. Tessa’s ears a slick of gasoline. “Of course I saw it! Did you think I wouldn’t see it? The whole fucking COUNTRY saw it! Nano and Pop think we lied to them! I have a thousand messages, everyone I know thinks we’re engaged!”
“We are.” He spoke with infuriating calm, like she was some irate caller on a customer service line. “I’m sorry word got out earlier than you wanted, but don’t you think we’ve kept it secret long enough?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to teleport him to reality. “I never said yes.”
Will tilted his head, patiently standing by while she finished being irrational. “Tess, you let me put the ring on your finger.”
“I’m NOT ready, Will. You knew that.”
He sighed, haughty impatience beginning to swirl. “It’s jewelry! Our plans are still the same, we’re still the same, the only difference from yesterday is optics. Do you really care all that much if—”
“YES! I do! And what is that picture of us kissing even doing in the spread? It’s supposed to be about Peter’s campai—”
Tessa stopped, face freezing mid-wince as she recalled Peter beckoning her across the stage at the gala. Will prodding her along, Eleanor fuming. Was she imagining it now, the way Will angled himself, hiding her empty left hand from view? How that incredible kiss only moments before just happened to be artfully framed by the arched double doorway?
She had no clue how this fit into the campaign, but she’d overheard enough by now to know that Will’s father left nothing to chance. In his business and his politics, there were no coincidences; Peter Westlake was always running a play.
And now, Will was part of the huddle.
Her pulse clipped, hot acid pumping. “Tell me this wasn’t you.”
His voice was pleading. “I know what change does to you. I was trying to make this one easier.”
“Using the media? Do you even understand how fucked up that is? What were you hoping to do, strongarm me into marrying you?”
Will caught her charge, igniting. “I can’t believe I have to! I’ve done everything. Everything! You don’t want kids? Fine. Done. Pop’s medical bills? Poof! They’ll be taken care of. You want their house? BOOM! Wish granted!” He paced the room, eyes narrow. “I emptied my trust fund. I’m working my ass off twenty-four-seven to be the man you want! Give you the perfect life, make you happy!”
Tessa stepped in front of him, forcing him to a stop. “Except it’s always about you, though. You parade me around at your corporate bullshit, plotting what I wear and where I sit. You told the world we’re engaged, without even checking with me! All your life, you’ve gotten exactly what you want, exactly when you wanted it. Don’t you stand there and pretend it’s all for me.”
“Really? You’re insulting me now? You wanted me to run the firm, remember?” His voice barreled off the high ceiling. “WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS IS?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You don’t want to help anymore, fine. Take another eight years to pick a job, go back to school, do whatever the hell you like! I’ll be right here, making sure you have everything you could possibly want.”
“I don’t want any of it! Not if I can’t trust you!”
Will’s voice was ice and flame all at once. “You’re one to talk about trust.”
Tessa fell silent. This bizarre shift she was witnessing was supposed to have been a shuddering, short-lived anomaly, gone forever after the night of the gala.
“I heard about your sleepover. Makes sense now, why you never called on Canada Day.”
“The night you got wasted in Muskoka?”
“I was not wasted in Muskoka!”
“Please. Portia tagged me. I’m invisible in person, but on social media we’re besties, remember?”
At this, the perpetually unflappable Will teetered. “What’s your point?”
Tessa’s gut curled. The clip of Will throwing back shots on the rented yacht, a lubed-up Portia in the foreground with one devilish eyebrow cocked, should have sparked at least a flicker of propriety. But Tessa had scrolled on. Not Will, she thought. Not ever. Looking at him now, she wasn’t so sure. She wasn’t sure about anything. “I could tell in two seconds you were trashed, on some fancy yacht with the same woman who’s been at your dick since Mommy-and-Me, and I’m being grilled about fucking sleepovers?”
Will’s face twisted. “Honestly. Is the filthy language absolutely necessary?”
“It is, actually. Care to explain why I didn’t have a missed call from you?”
“I was honest from the beginning about where I was! Who I was with! I begged you to come, but no, you couldn’t possibly. Then you spend the night at some strange guy’s place and don’t tell me?”
She stared at him. “Oh, my God. You’re jealous.”
Will barked. “If you actually believe I’d be jealous, of an idiot loser like that, we have a much bigger problem.”
“That’s why you told Luke. That’s why you put it in the paper!”
“All I’m saying is, why not just tell me about it afterwards?” Will rolled the next words around in his mouth like vile chewing gum before spitting them at her left chest. “Unless you threw him a thumbs-up.”
Tessa’s eyes popped. “Do you hear yourself? I had heat prostration, which I slept off . . . on the porch. I didn’t tell you because talking to you is like facing a firing squad! Luke isn’t some strange guy. And if you must know, it’s not his house, it’s Rowan’s. Any of us can stay there.”
Will snorted. “For now.”
If he’d ever worn such a smug expression, if his tone had sounded so high-and-mighty before, Tessa, for all her freakish intuition, had failed to notice. She stopped cold. It was three in the afternoon; she wasn’t even supposed to be here. If the Blue Iris hadn’t been shut down due to a complaint the group could easily have pinned on her, she’d be on shift another three hours. So why was Will already plating their food when she stepped off the elevator?
Rowan had mentioned an earlier problem, too. Something about missing permits.
And city council.
Tessa whimpered. Knees buckling, she fell into a squat, as if bullets threatened the windows. As if she might dodge the realization that, like his father, there was no such thing as out-of-bounds for Will Westlake anymore.
“Today. The shop. That was you, too.”
She hugged her knees, rocking as it pelted her; the reach he would have exercised, the layers of premeditation. The inside information she’d fed him about Rowan’s unmanageable debt, and the shop’s vulnerability due to Sam’s death. She looked up at him, face on fire. “Why?”
“You could have been seriously harmed because of their negligence! Someone has to hold these people accountable!”
Tessa shot to her feet, her finger springing. “These people are my friends, and you’re destroying them. Why, Will? For what? Because you had to prep a few cases with your pants on?” She grabbed the bridal magazines from the coffee table, whipping them like frisbees. “Because I didn’t look at these fast enough? What is this? Is this you having a tantrum?”
“It’s business, Tessa. You should probably get used to it.”
She glared at him. “It didn’t work, you know. Rowan’s lawyer will have us back open by tomorrow. You Westlakes aren’t the only sharks in town.”
Will’s eyes curved into a bone-shuddering smirk. “Rowan Miller is a law school dropout and a Bay Street washout, whose days were numbered regardless. It was pure luck the inspector didn’t find more violations today, but that place can’t survive without a permit—and I guarantee you, the city will not be approving one.”
The sun slunk behind a skyscraper, recasting them in shadow. In another version of this day, she was pulling him close, the two of them whole again in the glow of all these candles. Instead, she stared dazedly, memories flashing like fireworks under a new moon.
Will crossing Ainsley’s backyard to clear the busted screen door like a dragon slayer with dimples.
The flip of her diaphragm when he pulled his cashmere jacket around her shoulders, sealing out the autumn chill and the world.
His voice in her hair the first time he entered her, restraint unspooling to ecstasy.
The orange of the Caymanian sunset in his eyes, right before everything changed forever.
Will’s image was stitched deep into every layer of herself. Yet, in looking at his face now, Tessa could find nothing familiar about it. “This isn’t who you are,” she whispered.
Will’s eyes lolled like a watery dynamite fuse, his voice cracking. “That’s what I keep trying to tell you. Lately, when it comes to you? I don’t know who I am.”
Purple Lettuce / Prenanthes Purpurea
Snake deterrent.
TESSA
This was meant to be her day off, a day spent wearing Will’s diamond and his softest baby-blue tee. Instead, Tessa’s throat was sob-stripped, and her brain felt swollen from crying.
They’d fought in venomous upsurges and teary downdrafts all night as the even-handed man Tessa adored dissolved in front of her like a ghost. Patronizing, impervious, impossible to reason with. In the black truth of three in the morning, it was unthinkable that forever had ever seemed possible.
And then, it was time to go back to work. Tessa’s body cried for sleep as she drove, but her mind was still outrunning these last surreal hours. The lines Will had crossed to further the Westlake endgame.
It wasn’t a buying day, but Darryl was making a special trip to the terminal to pick up yesterday’s product delivery, which the inspector had turned away. Tessa, determined to get Rowan out of the mess she’d unknowingly helped Will create by confiding about the shop, intended to tag along. She would speak to Carlo; he was well-connected in the industry, and Iris and Henry had been dear friends. Maybe he could help.
Tessa parked at the Lodge and made her way by the full moon’s light through the beer garden into the storage yard. She wandered up the middle aisle, weeping softly to the sky, fingers trailing through the tufts on either side.
Before leaving the penthouse, she’d pried the truth from Will in grudging scraps. Peter’s biggest campaign sponsor, EnvidaCorp, was a company set on redeveloping the Blue Iris site, and counting on Peter, as the next mayor, to steer the project through council’s red tape. But there was one problem; unrelenting Rowan Miller refused to sell the land.
Tessa grew nauseous as Will admitted he’d been using the inside information she’d shared with him these past weeks. After botching that Hewson trial, Will needed to reassure his father he could handle running things, and scoring the Blue Iris site would be a huge win.
It was Will who had ensured EnvidaCorp’s offer struck all the right chords for Rowan, while working Peter’s connections to level sanctions at the shop until Rowan conceded. Tessa was only working there one summer, Will reasoned, and Rowan would have folded before long, anyway. Will would gain Peter’s confidence and show his father he could separate personal from professional.
Tessa reached the laneway, where the cube truck sat unlocked. She climbed inside to wait for Darryl, staring numbly through the windshield, replaying the previous night’s battle. For one, she’d called Will a Westlake like it was the filthiest insult possible. Rage mounting, he’d picked up the phone, right there at two in the morning, and instructed his banker, who actually picked up, to set a clock on the offer to buy Nano and Pop’s. If the bank draft wasn’t cashed by midnight on Labor Day, it was to be cancelled, and Will’s trust money reinvested in EnvidaCorp holdings.
The labor inspector was a mall cop on Red Bull. He ordered Rowan to wait outside, grilling the entire staff, even Tessa, found in the bathroom with tear spots all over her grey T-shirt, the phone cord wrapped around her like butcher twine.
A complaint had been filed alleging unsafe working conditions at the shop. Combined with the outstanding bullshit fines for Trucks, which Rowan would have paid by now if he could have, it was enough to shut him down pending a full investigation.
Rowan wasn’t some arms-length investor raking dividends from behind a desk. He knew firsthand the long hours through weather alerts, the gruelling physical demands. The geo-concentration of privileged, whiny customers. That’s why he paid the highest wages on Morrow, handed out bonuses like cinnamon hearts post-Valentine’s Day. Gave breaks and time off on demand. Ate the overages on their homes. He’d be nothing without his crew, which is exactly why he never pushed them to do any more than they wanted to. They just always seemed to want to.
After the inspector left, Rowan dismissed the group to call his lawyer. But instead of going home, they followed him like worried ducklings into the shop. He made the call on speaker phone; he couldn’t summon the energy to continue the lies, and there was little point anyhow.
Attorney Bobby Benedetto assured them the inspector’s claims were mostly smoke in mirrors. “If no health and safety violations were found onsite, and the staff corroborated you’re following heat stress and overtime protocols, I should be able to get the stop-work order squashed in no time.”
A collective sigh. Indeed, Rowan had been firm about staff taking regular breaks and days off ever since . . . Tessa’s fainting spell in the yard.
The thought seemed to rise to everyone’s mind at once.
Tessa looked up. “You guys think it was me.”
“Stop it, girlie.”
“I wouldn’t blame you. I pass out, and suddenly we’re being interrogated about heat stress?”
“After a spotless record all these years,” Bobby said, “it does seem strange. First bylaw comes after you about the yard, and now the labor department a few weeks later? Word must be out about Sam.”
Darryl’s eyes bore into Rowan. “What’s that about the yard?”
Voice shaking, Rowan brought them up to speed. Trucks was on residential property; without permission from the city, it wasn’t allowed to operate. And without Trucks, he was out of ways to keep the shop afloat.
“So, we need a permit or something?” Charlie asked.
“More than that,” Bobby explained. “We need a zoning variance, converting the property to commercial usage.”
“Which my father got,” Rowan said. “Why wouldn’t he? But the city is insisting he didn’t.”
“I bought us some time on account of the original owners being deceased, but unless we can produce a copy—”
Rowan looked at Darryl, then Charlie, and shook his head. After the reading of his father’s will, his mother had lit a crackling fire in the open brick fireplace of Simon’s study and burned every paper in the file cabinet.
Apprehension rolled through the room like tumbleweed.
“So, we apply for a new one,” Charlie said.
Bobby sighed. “Developers are dying to get their hands on that block, and we all know the pull they have at city council. If you filed now, it would get denied in the hopes you’d be forced to sell.”
Charlie’s cheeks puffed in weary exhale. Rowan nearly threw up. She was his dearest, most loyal friend. This place was her sole constant. Her home. The last piece of Sam any of them had left.
“What if I ignored it?” Rowan asked. “Keep paying fines or something?” He contemplated how far he was willing to go. Would they make him do jail time? If he hacked white-collar prison, customers would definitely stop pushing him around.
“The penalties would be astronomical,” Bobby said. “At best, you shut down the wholesale division, sell off the houses and yard, float the storefront as long as you can. But taxes for small businesses are only going up.”
Clearly, there was no lawyering out of this. Rowan couldn’t see much choice but to sign that offer. Get as much money as possible for the one place in the world that was everything he couldn’t buy.
Summer Rhododendron / Rhododendron Maximum
“Who is against me?”
TESSA
The elevator rocketed to the penthouse, the evening she’d envisioned hours ago sinking further from reach with every floor.
The hurt in Nano’s voice had torn Tessa’s heart like wet tissue. No, Tessa explained, sniffling into the phone, she hadn’t left them to read about her engagement in the paper like everyone else. Yes, it was right there in black and white, but—well, yes, there was a ring—but the paper got the facts wrong! Nothing was official!
The caption listing Tessa as Will’s fiancée could have been an unchecked assumption by the reporter, or a tip from someone at Tiffany’s. A ring like that, a man like Will, would have stood out. Hell, Tessa was ready to blame autocorrect, so long as it didn’t happen on Will’s go-ahead. But hadn’t he callously dropped the word fiancée to Luke just yesterday?
And why was he the only person she hadn’t heard from this morning?
No. He was too mired in figuring out how this mess happened, too busy tagging heads to be rolled. Tessa, at the penthouse early due to the work stoppage, would sit on his leather sectional and wait, thoughts firmly in check, until he walked in with the perfectly logical explanation.
When Tessa stepped off the elevator, candles were flickering. Wine breathed in the crystal decanter, and the scent of filet mignon filled the air. Will stood at the counter, plating food from cartons belonging to the French bistro a few blocks away, the one that didn’t offer takeout. He brightened when he saw her, so much, that for a half-beat, Tessa wondered if he was in court all day and word of the news article hadn’t yet reached him.
He strode over. Kissed her. “You’re just in time.”
Nothing had changed. Yet, his demeanour felt altered from head-to-toe. Robotic, almost. A Will Westlake hologram. Tessa stalked to the windows—not the airy set overlooking the amber-streaked harbour. The other ones. She searched the hard gridlines of the financial district for what to say, how to feel. Nothing made any sense anymore.
His fingers grazed her hip, and Tessa recoiled. The glass of red wine he’d brought her tumbled across the carpet. They stared at the burgundy river creeping along the hand-knotted fibers, neither making any attempt to stop it.
“I don’t even like red wine,” she murmured.
It was true. Will simply began pouring it one day, assuring her it was an acquired taste, but all she’d ever acquired was a headache and the stifled urge to dump it down the drain.
He sidestepped the mess, moving towards her the way he would an injured animal. “You saw the article.”
The words were a lit match in freefall. Tessa’s ears a slick of gasoline. “Of course I saw it! Did you think I wouldn’t see it? The whole fucking COUNTRY saw it! Nano and Pop think we lied to them! I have a thousand messages, everyone I know thinks we’re engaged!”
“We are.” He spoke with infuriating calm, like she was some irate caller on a customer service line. “I’m sorry word got out earlier than you wanted, but don’t you think we’ve kept it secret long enough?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to teleport him to reality. “I never said yes.”
Will tilted his head, patiently standing by while she finished being irrational. “Tess, you let me put the ring on your finger.”
“I’m NOT ready, Will. You knew that.”
He sighed, haughty impatience beginning to swirl. “It’s jewelry! Our plans are still the same, we’re still the same, the only difference from yesterday is optics. Do you really care all that much if—”
“YES! I do! And what is that picture of us kissing even doing in the spread? It’s supposed to be about Peter’s campai—”
Tessa stopped, face freezing mid-wince as she recalled Peter beckoning her across the stage at the gala. Will prodding her along, Eleanor fuming. Was she imagining it now, the way Will angled himself, hiding her empty left hand from view? How that incredible kiss only moments before just happened to be artfully framed by the arched double doorway?
She had no clue how this fit into the campaign, but she’d overheard enough by now to know that Will’s father left nothing to chance. In his business and his politics, there were no coincidences; Peter Westlake was always running a play.
And now, Will was part of the huddle.
Her pulse clipped, hot acid pumping. “Tell me this wasn’t you.”
His voice was pleading. “I know what change does to you. I was trying to make this one easier.”
“Using the media? Do you even understand how fucked up that is? What were you hoping to do, strongarm me into marrying you?”
Will caught her charge, igniting. “I can’t believe I have to! I’ve done everything. Everything! You don’t want kids? Fine. Done. Pop’s medical bills? Poof! They’ll be taken care of. You want their house? BOOM! Wish granted!” He paced the room, eyes narrow. “I emptied my trust fund. I’m working my ass off twenty-four-seven to be the man you want! Give you the perfect life, make you happy!”
Tessa stepped in front of him, forcing him to a stop. “Except it’s always about you, though. You parade me around at your corporate bullshit, plotting what I wear and where I sit. You told the world we’re engaged, without even checking with me! All your life, you’ve gotten exactly what you want, exactly when you wanted it. Don’t you stand there and pretend it’s all for me.”
“Really? You’re insulting me now? You wanted me to run the firm, remember?” His voice barreled off the high ceiling. “WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS IS?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You don’t want to help anymore, fine. Take another eight years to pick a job, go back to school, do whatever the hell you like! I’ll be right here, making sure you have everything you could possibly want.”
“I don’t want any of it! Not if I can’t trust you!”
Will’s voice was ice and flame all at once. “You’re one to talk about trust.”
Tessa fell silent. This bizarre shift she was witnessing was supposed to have been a shuddering, short-lived anomaly, gone forever after the night of the gala.
“I heard about your sleepover. Makes sense now, why you never called on Canada Day.”
“The night you got wasted in Muskoka?”
“I was not wasted in Muskoka!”
“Please. Portia tagged me. I’m invisible in person, but on social media we’re besties, remember?”
At this, the perpetually unflappable Will teetered. “What’s your point?”
Tessa’s gut curled. The clip of Will throwing back shots on the rented yacht, a lubed-up Portia in the foreground with one devilish eyebrow cocked, should have sparked at least a flicker of propriety. But Tessa had scrolled on. Not Will, she thought. Not ever. Looking at him now, she wasn’t so sure. She wasn’t sure about anything. “I could tell in two seconds you were trashed, on some fancy yacht with the same woman who’s been at your dick since Mommy-and-Me, and I’m being grilled about fucking sleepovers?”
Will’s face twisted. “Honestly. Is the filthy language absolutely necessary?”
“It is, actually. Care to explain why I didn’t have a missed call from you?”
“I was honest from the beginning about where I was! Who I was with! I begged you to come, but no, you couldn’t possibly. Then you spend the night at some strange guy’s place and don’t tell me?”
She stared at him. “Oh, my God. You’re jealous.”
Will barked. “If you actually believe I’d be jealous, of an idiot loser like that, we have a much bigger problem.”
“That’s why you told Luke. That’s why you put it in the paper!”
“All I’m saying is, why not just tell me about it afterwards?” Will rolled the next words around in his mouth like vile chewing gum before spitting them at her left chest. “Unless you threw him a thumbs-up.”
Tessa’s eyes popped. “Do you hear yourself? I had heat prostration, which I slept off . . . on the porch. I didn’t tell you because talking to you is like facing a firing squad! Luke isn’t some strange guy. And if you must know, it’s not his house, it’s Rowan’s. Any of us can stay there.”
Will snorted. “For now.”
If he’d ever worn such a smug expression, if his tone had sounded so high-and-mighty before, Tessa, for all her freakish intuition, had failed to notice. She stopped cold. It was three in the afternoon; she wasn’t even supposed to be here. If the Blue Iris hadn’t been shut down due to a complaint the group could easily have pinned on her, she’d be on shift another three hours. So why was Will already plating their food when she stepped off the elevator?
Rowan had mentioned an earlier problem, too. Something about missing permits.
And city council.
Tessa whimpered. Knees buckling, she fell into a squat, as if bullets threatened the windows. As if she might dodge the realization that, like his father, there was no such thing as out-of-bounds for Will Westlake anymore.
“Today. The shop. That was you, too.”
She hugged her knees, rocking as it pelted her; the reach he would have exercised, the layers of premeditation. The inside information she’d fed him about Rowan’s unmanageable debt, and the shop’s vulnerability due to Sam’s death. She looked up at him, face on fire. “Why?”
“You could have been seriously harmed because of their negligence! Someone has to hold these people accountable!”
Tessa shot to her feet, her finger springing. “These people are my friends, and you’re destroying them. Why, Will? For what? Because you had to prep a few cases with your pants on?” She grabbed the bridal magazines from the coffee table, whipping them like frisbees. “Because I didn’t look at these fast enough? What is this? Is this you having a tantrum?”
“It’s business, Tessa. You should probably get used to it.”
She glared at him. “It didn’t work, you know. Rowan’s lawyer will have us back open by tomorrow. You Westlakes aren’t the only sharks in town.”
Will’s eyes curved into a bone-shuddering smirk. “Rowan Miller is a law school dropout and a Bay Street washout, whose days were numbered regardless. It was pure luck the inspector didn’t find more violations today, but that place can’t survive without a permit—and I guarantee you, the city will not be approving one.”
The sun slunk behind a skyscraper, recasting them in shadow. In another version of this day, she was pulling him close, the two of them whole again in the glow of all these candles. Instead, she stared dazedly, memories flashing like fireworks under a new moon.
Will crossing Ainsley’s backyard to clear the busted screen door like a dragon slayer with dimples.
The flip of her diaphragm when he pulled his cashmere jacket around her shoulders, sealing out the autumn chill and the world.
His voice in her hair the first time he entered her, restraint unspooling to ecstasy.
The orange of the Caymanian sunset in his eyes, right before everything changed forever.
Will’s image was stitched deep into every layer of herself. Yet, in looking at his face now, Tessa could find nothing familiar about it. “This isn’t who you are,” she whispered.
Will’s eyes lolled like a watery dynamite fuse, his voice cracking. “That’s what I keep trying to tell you. Lately, when it comes to you? I don’t know who I am.”
Purple Lettuce / Prenanthes Purpurea
Snake deterrent.
TESSA
This was meant to be her day off, a day spent wearing Will’s diamond and his softest baby-blue tee. Instead, Tessa’s throat was sob-stripped, and her brain felt swollen from crying.
They’d fought in venomous upsurges and teary downdrafts all night as the even-handed man Tessa adored dissolved in front of her like a ghost. Patronizing, impervious, impossible to reason with. In the black truth of three in the morning, it was unthinkable that forever had ever seemed possible.
And then, it was time to go back to work. Tessa’s body cried for sleep as she drove, but her mind was still outrunning these last surreal hours. The lines Will had crossed to further the Westlake endgame.
It wasn’t a buying day, but Darryl was making a special trip to the terminal to pick up yesterday’s product delivery, which the inspector had turned away. Tessa, determined to get Rowan out of the mess she’d unknowingly helped Will create by confiding about the shop, intended to tag along. She would speak to Carlo; he was well-connected in the industry, and Iris and Henry had been dear friends. Maybe he could help.
Tessa parked at the Lodge and made her way by the full moon’s light through the beer garden into the storage yard. She wandered up the middle aisle, weeping softly to the sky, fingers trailing through the tufts on either side.
Before leaving the penthouse, she’d pried the truth from Will in grudging scraps. Peter’s biggest campaign sponsor, EnvidaCorp, was a company set on redeveloping the Blue Iris site, and counting on Peter, as the next mayor, to steer the project through council’s red tape. But there was one problem; unrelenting Rowan Miller refused to sell the land.
Tessa grew nauseous as Will admitted he’d been using the inside information she’d shared with him these past weeks. After botching that Hewson trial, Will needed to reassure his father he could handle running things, and scoring the Blue Iris site would be a huge win.
It was Will who had ensured EnvidaCorp’s offer struck all the right chords for Rowan, while working Peter’s connections to level sanctions at the shop until Rowan conceded. Tessa was only working there one summer, Will reasoned, and Rowan would have folded before long, anyway. Will would gain Peter’s confidence and show his father he could separate personal from professional.
Tessa reached the laneway, where the cube truck sat unlocked. She climbed inside to wait for Darryl, staring numbly through the windshield, replaying the previous night’s battle. For one, she’d called Will a Westlake like it was the filthiest insult possible. Rage mounting, he’d picked up the phone, right there at two in the morning, and instructed his banker, who actually picked up, to set a clock on the offer to buy Nano and Pop’s. If the bank draft wasn’t cashed by midnight on Labor Day, it was to be cancelled, and Will’s trust money reinvested in EnvidaCorp holdings.
