Good Girls Don't (Donovan Brothers Brewery 1)
She nodded, and Jamie turned and walked away without another glance at Luke. Tessa stared after him.
“I’m sorry,” Luke whispered. “I don’t want to cause any trouble between you.”
“No, it’s lots of things. Thirteen years’ worth, I think.” A deep breath raised her shoulders up, but when she turned to him, she was smiling again. “Come to my place. I’ll make you dinner. I’m actually a pretty good cook. And then…maybe I’ll let you get to second base.”
“Oh, yeah? Maybe I can steal third.”
Her smile said she had a better idea. “How about sliding into home?”
Luke groaned at the joke and told her she wasn’t funny, but he was secretly giddy as a damn schoolgirl. And falling even faster than before.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
TESSA THOUGHT SHE’D found a way around the problem of the contract. If she wrote up a second contract agreeing to cover the cost of each shipment of Donovan Brothers beer to High West Air for the next six months, Roland Kendall could simply sign the contract that Eric had already had drawn up. That would be the contract her brothers would see.
The only problem with this plan was that Tessa would feel like a scheming, underhanded crook of a sister who’d pulled multiple people into the deception of her family. But she’d already done that, hadn’t she? She’d already let half a dozen people know that she was willing to go behind Eric’s back to advance her cause.
Well, she’d be the bad guy if she had to be.
Tessa called up the brewery’s lawyer and asked if she could put him on retainer for herself personally. It was the only way to keep him from blabbing to Eric.
“Tessa,” he said when she finally told him what she wanted drawn up. “What the heck are you doing here?”
“I’ve made an arrangement to keep the deal alive. That’s all.”
“But this is… You’ll be personally liable for this. I can’t allow that.”
“Come on, Richard. You’re my lawyer, not my boss. Write it up with some safeguards and limits, all right? You have the estimates we worked out with High West, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Protect me from ruin, then, but I know what I’m doing.”
“You have the money to cover this?”
“I do as
long as you can find a way to limit it to around thirty thousand. I don’t want to lose the house.”
He sighed in a way that told her Richard was also an older brother. “And I assume Eric and Jamie have no idea you’re doing this?”
“I’ll counter that with a question. Do I know everything that Eric does?” He didn’t answer. She’d known he wouldn’t. “When can you get this to me?”
“Wednesday,” he said gruffly. He wanted to say no—she could feel that coming through the phone like the pull of gravity—but he likely didn’t want to take the chance she’d go to another attorney and do it badly. Richard was a nice guy—compared to anyone, not just other lawyers. She’d have to buy him a beer when this was over.
“Eric!” she called when she got off the phone. He didn’t answer, so she walked to his office and knocked on the half-closed door. He waved her in as he finished up a phone call and hung up.
“I just talked to Monica Kendall!” she said.
“Are you two friends now?”
Oh, God, no, she wanted to groan, but she ignored the question. “She said Roland still intends to go forward with the deal. Has he called you yet?”
“No.” He looked doubtful. “I don’t know, Tessa. I heard through the grapevine that he was talking to a competitor in Denver. I’m beginning to think something isn’t right.”
“I’m sure it’s fine. She said he hasn’t signed the contract yet, but he intends to. Maybe he was just doing some last-minute comparisons.”
“It’s beer, not a defense contract.” He frowned and leaned back in his chair. “If this doesn’t go through, I’m going to have to revamp our marketing strategy for the next two years. I’ve worked everything around this.”