devote yourself to my product, you should let me know now.”
“I promise you, I have all the time and energy in the world for you. And I’m sorry about the technology issues we’ve been having which have been a bit of a distraction. I am relocating to a new building on Monday and I assure you, this won’t happen again.” He doesn’t know the details of why I’m not in the same room as Graham when we videoconference, but it’s hardly unusual these days, and he hasn’t asked so far.
“Well, I appreciate that. I bhzfhrszzz–” The sound cuts out and it’s all static.
My smile holds steady as I surreptitiously send Graham a frantic text:
I can’t hear him, I’ll just nod. You need to take over and talk for me.
As far as I can tell, the next couple of minutes go well, except at the end when Constantine seems to ask me a question and I have to point to my ear and shrug apologetically, signaling that I can’t hear him. We sign off, then my phone rings with a video call.
“What. The. Hell!” Graham shouts at me, face flushing red.
“Graham, I’m sorry. I am moving into the new office Monday, and our next meeting with him isn’t until Tuesday. I will be in town, where they have excellent internet and no ducks.” I hope to God they don’t have ducks.
“You promised everything would go fine,” he says accusingly.
“We haven’t had any major disasters.”
“Other than you acting so distracted that our most important ever client remarked on it, and also losing the sound halfway through our meeting? Not to forget, you attended the most important pitch meeting of our careers with mud on your face, because you decided to spend the day helping your fake wife playing in the dirt.”
I didn’t tell him what it really was. And as Sienna said, it might have been mud. Didn’t smell exactly like mud, but I like to think positive.
Graham takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes with his hands. I can see that he’s been chewing his nails until they’re ragged, which is what he does when he’s super-stressed.
“Graham. Is everything else okay? You getting enough sleep? Eating okay?”
He scowls. “Like it makes any damn difference to you?”
“It does,” I say quietly. “And you’re chewing your nails down to the nubs.”
His shoulders slump. “I shouldn’t snap at you. I’m sorry. It’s just that you know how much we have riding on this. We’ve turned down other very lucrative contracts because we’re expecting this deal to go through, our debt payments could buy a small island nation every single month…”
“Our finances are in good shape, and even if this deal didn’t go through, we’d be fine. And it will go through. Constantine knows that we are providing the best solutions at the best price, and our track record is impeccable. We have never had a single customer complaint, ever. Our references are solid platinum.”
“Yeah.” He doesn’t sound convinced. He starts chewing his thumb, catches himself, and drops his hand. He has circles under his eyes. Damn it. I’m doing this to him.
“All right, what can I tell you to make you feel better? Sing, dance, tell bad jokes?”
He manages a wry smile. “Well, there are some things that we–”
My phone bleeps with an incoming text message from my father. I check it and suck in a breath of alarm at what I see:
Emergency! Emergency! Come to the winery! Get over here ASAP.
“Graham, gotta go!”
His forehead wrinkles in concern. “But we haven’t–“
“Sorry!” I hang up and sprint from the house.
Is it a heart attack? My father’s been over-the-top stressed lately. Or an injury? There’s a lot of big heavy equipment at the winery. Accidents happen.
My heart hammering in my chest, I pull up in front of the winery in a spray of gravel. I don’t see any ambulances or police cars and I don’t hear sirens. People are walking around outside looking calm and happy.
I rush through the building, past employees who shoot curious looks at me.
“Where’re my parents?” I shout. Our events manager gives me a puzzled look and points in the direction of the office. I shoot past him, barrel across the room, and fling open the office door.
My father spins to face me, his eyes snapping with anger. “What took you so long?” he demands.
My mother is leaning on her desk. My sisters are standing across the room from them, watching them warily. Jamie has on some kind of weird headband