and leaned forward on his elbows. “What’s going on that you aren’t telling me, Lexi?” When she looked up at him with those big green eyes, full of embarrassment and guilt, he felt his chest tighten. “I can’t help you unless I know what you’re up against. No judgment, Lexi. Just a friend wanting to help, I swear.”
And just like that, her entire body deflated like a popped balloon. “Last summer Pairing was having some money problems.” Yeah, that much Marc knew. The shithole that was the restaurant’s financial state had been a big concern of Monte’s. And Gabe’s. “We changed suppliers, picked a bad one, and lost a lot of money.”
“How much money?” Marc asked, although he already had a good idea. He had known that Jeff was having financial difficulty. Had told Jeff that the only way the deal would go forward with him as the restaurateur was to take out a loan, buy Lexi out, and get his company back in the black.
“Two hundred thousand dollars.”
Marc gave a low whistle. That was a hell of a lot more than Jeff had admitted to needing. And a hell of a lot more than the loan was for. And suddenly Marc knew exactly where the other hundred thousand had come from. “All on changing suppliers?”
“Yeah, we had to secure six months of orders to become a new client. Plus lost business.”
“Is that normal?”
“No, but Jeff said that if we wanted to play with the big boys, we had to fake it—”
“Till you make it. Yeah, yeah.” It was one of the fundamental differences between them. It was also a big reason Marc had been hesitant to go into business with his friend. Marc was all about presenting your best face, even if that meant taking a calculated risk. But regardless of what his brothers thought, Marc was not the kind of guy who placed perception over the bottom line. That was just bad business.
“Wait,” Marc said. “Jeff went with the new supplier?” That was so far from what Jeff had told Marc. Problem was, Jeff’s story had always struck Marc as odd. Why would he buy Lexi out of the restaurant and give her all the equity in the house? Even worse, Lexi’s side of the story not only rang true, it also sounded exactly like Jeff.
She waved her hand dismissively. “He’s your friend, and I shouldn’t have said anything. Plus, it doesn’t matter whose idea it was. We made a bad move and lost a lot of money. We almost lost the restaurant.”
“So you borrowed money from Pricilla.”
She nodded and polished off the last of her wine. He filled up her glass. “Thank you.” She took a sip, stopping midswallow. “How did you know? Did Jeffery tell you?”
He had to be careful here. “About borrowing money from Pricilla? No. There are three identical withdrawals from the bakery’s account right about the same time.” He flipped through the folder that held all of Pricilla’s statements and account records. He turned to the first dog-eared page and pointed. “One under supplies.” He flipped to another page. “One under petty cash, and one under utilities. And then small payments came in over the past year, were put into petty cash, and all marked LM. At first I couldn’t figure out where the money was coming from, but then a large deposit went in the week you came home for seventy thousand.” He pulled out a bank statement showing the deposit.
“It was most of what we made selling the house,” Lexi said, taking the statement and studying it. “But this doesn’t make sense.”
What didn’t make sense was why Lexi would be willing to borrow money from her grandmother to keep a restaurant going that she had already walked away from.
Jeff had come to visit Marc right around the time they started having money problems, right around the time, he now understood, that their supplier went under. He stayed for a few weeks, licking his wounds and claiming he needed time away to think because Lexi wanted out, out of the restaurant, out of their marriage. Out. Period.
Marc had met with Monte a few weeks before and saw the potential for not only his family, but for Jeff as well if they partnered. As expected, Jeff had been on board. But before Marc would even bring Jeff in on it, he made him promise that he would wrap things up at home. Meaning that he would get his restaurant back in the black