Page 114 of The Pack Next Door
“You got it, Gretchen.” I tucked the box back under my arm.
“So where are you off to now?” she asked, following me out. “To slay yet more dragons to win the fair maiden? I admit, I’m invested in your story now.”
“Tom, a dragon?” I nodded slowly, remembering just how cantankerous the potter was. “That sounds about right.” With a lift of the box, I gave her a nod. “Thanks for your time and look forward to filling you in at the launch.”
“Can’t wait.”
Me either, I thought as I walked back to the car. My heart just wanted to get to the good stuff, where Briar turned around and looked at me with more than just lust or irritation, but I’ll say something about our parents. They didn’t raise me to be afraid of hard work. With that in mind, I brought up the old GPS destination we’d used when we took Briar to Tom and Honey’s and then set out.
One thing I knew was with Aussie men, there wasn’t much you couldn’t smooth over with a slab of beer. I’d pulled into a bottle shop when I reached the last major town before Tom’s, grabbing a carton of very nice beer and stashing it on the floor of the passenger side seat. It was within easy reach when I rolled up at the front gate of the potter’s place. A motorbike roared up and he squinted at me, his scowl illuminated by my headlights.
“What’re you doing back here?” he asked. “Come to help with the sheep again?”
I held the beer up against the windscreen, a proverbial white flag. His expression softened slightly, so he looked a fraction less constipated, and then he swung the gate open before turning the bike around. With a wave of his hand, he gestured for me to follow him. Ambling up the rocky drive, we came to a stop finally out the front of his house.
“Got a visitor, love!”
Honey emerged from one of the bedrooms and then smiled at the sight of me.
“One bearing gifts,” she said.
“Yep, and you know what the Greeks said about them.” Tom’s arms crossed as he settled back against the counter. “So what’ve you got in that box there, mate?”
This was the deciding vote. If I could prove to Briar that both customers and Tom were on board with the gold repair thing, they maybe, just maybe this crisis would be averted. I’d turn that frown upside down and she’d know I would always look after her. I set the beer down on the counter, passing him and Honey one. Tom cracked his, those beady eyes wary, right as I pulled his and Jace’s handiwork out of the box.
“Well…”
He stepped forward, taking the vase from me and then putting his specs on, looking at it from all angles as he stepped under the light.
“You’ve rendered him speechless.” Honey saluted me with her beer. “That is no mean feat.”
“It’s not his silence I need. So, Tom, we didn’t want to throw out the remains of all your hard work, so this is what we came up with. What do you think?”
Chapter 56
Briar
Make the call, I thought, staring at my phone for the millionth time today.Make the first call.I knew if I just started calling clients, then I’d break down this barrier in my mind that did not want to admit defeat.
But I didn’t wanna.
In the beginning of the business when it was just me, there’d been stuff ups, some of them major. I learned, sought to repair and renew consumer confidence, and then moved forward. While it didn’t make logical sense, in my heart I thought I was beyond this. There were too many failsafes, rules, and procedures for me to ever disappoint customers on this scale again.
Of course, fate had to make me her bitch and humble me.
Well, there was no point sitting there, waiting for humble pie to taste better. I just needed…
A coffee.
After I’d had a coffee. I’d make one in our kitchenette and after I’d drunk it, I’d start making calls. This was like the stages of grief and I was in the thick of bargaining, but hey, if that’swhat it took to get through this. Consumed by that thought, I never expected to hear another voice saying exactly what I was feeling.
“Fuck…!”
Seb had made me promise to keep a baseball bat in the warehouse so I at least had something to protect myself when I worked late. The industrial area where our building was situated was like a ghost town after six, but I picked the bat up now. Creeping forward, glancing down aisles of boxes, I expected many things, but Jace hunched over a table, his fingers covered in what looked like gold paint was not it.
“Oh gods…” Cracked ceramics, thin lines of gold, that gorgeous line of Japanese ceramics we stocked for a while. Each thought was there and replaced by another in milliseconds. “What did you do?”
The bat was up on my shoulder and both Jace’s eyes went wide, but he didn’t move to stop me. He just sat there, looking like a kid caught stealing cookies from the biscuit jar.
