he remembered that Emerson had been trying to call him earlier. As he pulled away from the curb, he checked his voicemail.
I don’t know what game you’re playing, Connor. But finding out I’m an acquisition target for you by mail is a shitty way to draw a line under things. And to think I let myself fall in love with you.
Connor pressed replay, his heart pounding. He couldn’t have understood that right.
And to think I let myself fall in love with you.
Fuck…What had Cameron done?
Chapter Fourteen
Emerson pulled into the driveway of her father’s home. If there was anywhere she would be able to find out what had happened when Dyer’s Gin Distillery was built, it was in her father’s office.
Olivia was at work. She’d been concerned when Emerson had told her about the massive headache she had, which wasn’t wholly untrue. Emerson felt as though she’d been processed through one of the stills and spat out the other end. When Liv had offered to drive her home, she’d declined.
She let herself into the house, stopped in the kitchen to get a glass of water, and then walked to the office.
It felt as though the fabric of her relationship with Connor had just unraveled, but instead of being able to form a cohesive thought or emotion, she was adrift, unable to latch on to any thread long enough to process it. In any event, she chose action. Sitting wouldn’t answer the questions she had.
Her first thought was to go through the filing cabinets that still hadn’t been sorted. The first drawer she opened was simply household bills. Twelve months of cable, gas, credit card, and bank statements. Her father had been meticulous in some ways and messy in others.
The second drawer contained old correspondence. Personal letters, old Christmas cards, and tchotchkes from weddings, birthdays, and funerals. As she flicked through them, her father began to take on a different shape in her mind. People cared deeply about him, about their mother. There were in memoriam cards from her funeral.
Emerson felt tears rise. She couldn’t deal with the painful trip down memory lane when her heart was already in such turmoil.
Her phone rang, and she dug it out of her purse.
Connor.
With a sickness she felt down to her toes, she sent him to voicemail. When she’d called him from the distillery, she’d been operating on pure anger. But now she needed to pull herself together before talking to him. She couldn’t go from reading how her mother’s loss had affected so many to talking to him. She turned her phone off.
She’d call Connor when she was good and ready.
Emerson worked her way through each drawer, putting the papers that could be shredded into a large cardboard box.
The fifth drawer she opened in the second cabinet promised more relevant information. She found the original floorplans for the distillery. The old building had once been a machine shop. Emerson ran her fingers over the old photographs. It was barely recognizable, except for the roof, and the windows that ran along one wall. Dirt and grime covered ancient machinery, the floor was rough concrete with fine ridges in it to stop slipping, so unlike the smooth grip of the distillery’s floor.
There were folders from the architect, from the builders, from the electricians. Drawings, invoices, letters, copies of emails.
But nothing that pointed to there being any other partner involved in the business. Her father or mother’s name was on everything. There were no suppliers named Finch.
Emerson slammed the drawer shut.
Drawer six was equally a dud. Old employment files with lists of names revealed nobody by the name of Finch. She had no idea why the acquisition document would suggest the distillery had originally been a Finch asset.
Holding on to her father’s desk, she pulled herself up from the floor. A wave of panic swept through her. Were she and Connor really done? The thought left her breathless. She held on to a sliver of hope that all wasn’t lost. That there was some possible, feasible explanation as to why this all had happened.
Her mother’s boxes were still on the desk.
Perhaps there could be something in there that would be of use, since her father had always been clear that they had been equal partners in the distillery.
The first box was a different kind of memory lane. The family christening gown that she and her siblings, along with her mother, and grandmother, had all been baptized in. A little pair of Nike shoes in the tiniest size.