Page 36 of A Summer Mismatch
Winnie wrung her hands. Couldn’t the road to love have been easy this time?
The men sat, their faces pink from the sun, and Nancy clapped her hands to stop the side chats and get the meeting started.
“Don and Walt, you called this meeting, so I’m going to let you lead out.”
Don gave Winnie a grim frown. “Things are worse than we thought.”
“Worse than Don’s swing,” Walt added. “Which is saying something.”
Don made an indignant sound. “I swing just fine. It’s the club that’s the problem.”
Walt’s back straightened, and Winnie winced. She knew that Walt had let Don borrow his clubs, and you didn’t insult a man’s clubs.
Walt held up his hands, exasperated. “Don, you need finesse. You can’t be out there hitting golf balls like you’re beating a rug. I think you chipped one of my balls.”
“Then golf needs bigger balls.”
“Maybeyouneed bigger—”
“What happened?” Nancy interrupted before that conversation could go any further.
Walt let out a long breath. “Smitty happened.”
Winnie closed her eyes. Earlier that afternoon, she’d been sewing a Queen Elizabeth-style dress for Sweetie when Horace came storming into the house from his morning golf game, slamming the door behind him, and going on about That Man.
It didn’t take long for her to intuit who That Man was.
“Horace completely forgot he was golfing with me and Walt, and engaged in a cutthroat one-on-one competition with Smitty,” Don said. He turned to Walt. “You thought I was aggressive with the clubs…”
Walt banged his fists together like two crashing cars. “It was like Horace and Smitty were picturing each other’s heads as the ball… and they were out for the kill.”
Everyone winced.
“Winnie,” Polly said gently. “We need to know the whole story behind their feud. When I’m reading a romance, the back story of the character is just as important as what’s happening in the present. It’s what makes the characters who they are.”
“And in this case,” Harry said, “we need to know what exactly we’re up against.”
Winnie thought she’d left this whole mess in her past, and had come here to retire happily. But perhaps that was the problem with the past. If Polly was right, and she usually was, it always had a way of rearing its head right when you wanted it to stay hidden the most.
“Horace and Smitty were college roommates who started a company together called BeamTech Homes the semester before they graduated.”
“Wait. Isn’t that what Horace’s company is called?” Harry asked.
“Yes. But before it was Horace’s company, it was owned by both of them. They have very strong personalities, and that’s partly what helped the company grow so fast. They had great, innovative ideas on how to build houses faster while still being safe and high-quality. They bought land in California, which was booming with real estate at the time, and from there, BeamTech became a household name.”
“So what happened?” Nancy asked.
“It started small. Disagreements about how funds should be handled and what states they should expand to. Horace wanted to stay in California because they knew the building laws there, and our families were there. At that point, we had moved every year or two to start up new locations, and the kids were in high school, and it was becoming too much for us.
“Smitty saw the potential of expanding BeamTech nationwide. Then Smitty wanted to build a new style of home, but Horace argued that part of what kept their price point so low was doing what they already knew how to do. They’d already worked out the bugs.”
“Couldn’t they have just had two legs of the business—one California-based, run by Horace, and a national-based one run by Smitty?” Nancy asked.
“Lydia and I tried to convince them that this was the way to go, but they’re both stubborn, all-or-nothing men. They grew angrier at each other, and even when we met for our annual family Christmas party, they could hardly look at one another.”
It had been an awful night. The kids were all grown and married by then, and they’d brought their little ones home. The tension had been palpable.
“Just a week later, Smitty announced that he was opening his own home construction company, Foundational Homes, and implementing all of his ideas. He must have had it in the works for at least a year and had kept it to himself. It was quite a hit to Horace, who lost investors and a lot of business. Though Smitty expanded out of California, he did a fair amount of business in California still.”
