37. More Than That
MORE THAN THAT
“ W hy the hell didn’t you tell me what was going on?” West asked two days later the minute Elias answered the phone.
He had barely pulled into the parking lot at the brewery. He hadn’t even gotten out of his truck.
“I didn’t need to tell you,” he said.
“Yes,” West said. “You did. I shouldn’t have had to hear from Braylon that someone was trying to sabotage your business and kill a massive deal that would lead to any expansion plans you had. Then to find out it’s a woman that’s been doing it.”
He frowned. “This is my business, not yours,” he argued. “I don’t need you coming to solve all my problems. I handled it on my own.”
By Monday afternoon, Beth had started to get nervous. It came from gossip around the plant and, of course, people started to talk to Talia.
His sister wanted to know what was going on, and said some were talking about an employee getting caught having sex on the premises.
That made his blood boil higher than lava spouting out of Mount Vesuvius. He hated rumors spreading and told his sister what was going on.
Talia said that she’d overheard Emma in the offices talking about how much of a slut Beth was. Talia normally ignored things, but word was spreading Beth was screwing someone in the brewery.
That wasn’t enough for him to make accusations, but more research on the cameras showed Beth with Skip at lunch, the two of them talking in private. Even Foster noticed that Skip had his key card hanging on him before he met with Beth and then not on him after they parted.
Guess many wouldn’t notice that if they weren’t looking.
The kicker was the video of Beth walking to the locker room less than ten minutes after Skip’s card had been swiped leaving the room that the water gauges were in.
About the amount of time it’d take to get there, the key card swiped multiple times on that path. It wasn’t Skip using the card; it was Beth caught on cameras she didn’t know were there.
“I’m not solving your problems,” West said. “I’m asking for some common courtesy and information. It shouldn’t come from Braylon that this has been going on for months . Then to find out from Foster this morning that you got new security installed on top of it. You know how we feel about this.”
His brother wasn’t wrong.
Security was always discussed with family.
He did though, just not West.
“Foster has his pulse on it and that is who I talked to,” he said firmly.
West was silent for a second. His tone dropped. “Tell me what is going on. Your words.”
“It’s taken care of,” Elias said.
“That isn’t what I asked,” West said. “I want an update. I want to know what is going on and how it was solved. A summary if you will. Just like I’d request of any business that I have a stake in. But we know this is more than that.”
His brother wasn’t yelling. Not like he used to do in the past.
But he was businessman cool. They’d both touched a nerve with the other.
“I feel as if you’re the principal calling me in for detention and I’ve got to give my side of it,” he said. “I’m the one making you money on this, not the other way around. You know as well as everyone else, I appreciated the start-up money for all of this.”
“It’s not about that,” West said. “I just told you I’m not treating you any differently than any other investment and if you don’t believe me, that’s on you. Ask Braylon or Laken, but you’re not being treated differently no matter how much you think you are.”
He weighed those words.
He couldn’t argue it because he didn’t know.
“Why did you bring up the expansion?” Elias asked.
He had said nothing to West about it.
West sighed. “Because I know my family,” he said. “You’re out to prove you can be the best, just like we all are. No way you’re settling with one location. It’s in your mind to branch somewhere else at some point. Maybe not soon, but you can’t deny it has crossed your thoughts.”
“I don’t need your approval to do that,” he said. “It’d be my money.”
“I never expected otherwise,” West said. “But I also would have hoped since you are one of the most profitable of my investments that I’d be given a chance to have ownership in more. That’s business, not family .”
Used to be West did everything for family. Now it was for business.
It was a moment of respect that maybe he’d been waiting for in his life and hadn’t realized it would come in this form.
“When I’m ready, you’ll be the first to know,” he said.
West laughed. As if he won.
Elias wasn’t sure how he felt about it but was going to ignore it for now.
“Now, will you tell me what has been going on?” West asked. “I do still have a lot of stake in your business.”
A third of it, Elias thought. West could have taken more, but he didn’t. Not as things expanded.
He told West how things started out slowly. Nothing alarming.
The wrong product was ordered and no one caught it.
Beth hadn’t been involved in that that he could pinpoint at the moment.
But Skip had been one to sign off and there were a lot of reports Beth seemed to be at Skip’s side distracting him.
A temperature gauge being off. A leak costing them an entire vat of product. The water pressure issue just recently.
Everything timed to when he’d be working with Fierce.
“It had to do with my collaboration. Beth was an employee of the previous owners. I had no clue she was married to one of their best friends. She thought she was being loyal to them. It all boiled down to jealousy. That I was succeeding where they couldn’t.”
“Jealousy is a big motivator,” West said. “Not sure what she thought to accomplish. That collaboration failing wasn’t going to discredit your business. If it never went through you’d still be killing it.”
“She broke down in tears in my office,” he said. “She knew she was caught. I had enough on camera. She said her best friend’s marriage was on the rocks because of the loss of the brewery years ago. It was a plan they made after drinking one night. She thought it’d make her friend feel better.”
It didn’t make any sense to him.
The one thing that got answered was that Skip wasn’t sleeping with Beth. She was just flirting with him and giving him attention since he’d been down and out that his girlfriend broke up with him. It was to use him.
Elias felt horrible for the guy and was trying to ease the fact he was played and set up to take the fall.
West snorted. “I’ll never understand any of that.”
“It’s not for me to understand,” Elias said. “Just know that I took care of it. Mason is satisfied and everything is going on as planned. He’ll be here next week for us to move forward with Fifth Kid Fierce.”
They were just reversing the names for now, but if things continued to go as projected, it might be an annual thing they’d do with the same setup.
It was going to depend on how well the product sold at his brewery.
With the marketing both places were doing, he was pretty sure it was going to be his top seller. Anything that was limited edition normally was.
“That’s good to hear,” West said. “Next time, don’t exclude me.”
“Fine,” he said. They hung up after and he walked into his office and got to work.
He was still stewing over the conversation when his phone rang two hours later.
Why wasn’t he surprised to see his mother calling?
He wanted to ignore it, but knew there was no ignoring Aileen Carlisle for long.
“Hi, Mom,” he said. “I’m sure you know.”
“Know what?” his mother asked. “Did you get engaged?”
He sat back and looked up at the ceiling. “No,” he said, sighing. “I don’t think Phoebe is even thinking along those lines.”
Because she didn’t know how long she was going to stay in Southern Pines.
She didn’t know what her future held and that meant he couldn’t know what his did either.
He was working on her and felt he was making a lot of progress, but time would tell.
He just hated waiting.
“Don’t sell her short,” his mother said. “And don’t drag your feet. But if it’s not that, what is it I was supposed to have heard?”
There was no way out of this. Or the fact that his mother would badger him or his siblings to get the answers.
“Nothing major. I had some issues here that I handled with Foster and Braylon.”
“But not West?” his mother asked, laughing.
“There was no reason to bother him with it. I had it under control.”
“Elias. You’re always so worried that he’s being your father and monitoring you and ready to tell you how to handle something.”
“Maybe because he did it enough in my life.”
“Which was wrong of him, but he took on that role,” his mother said. “He has complete faith in most of his siblings when it comes to their jobs.”
“Most times,” he said.
“Elias,” his mother said. “Stop. I know you always think you have to prove everything to him, but you don’t.”
“He told me,” he said.
“Then start to believe it,” his mother said. “You want to be respected, and in order for that to happen, you need to understand your brother. You need to realize that family will always come first, business second.”
“He told me this was business, not family.”
“And that is your answer. He’s looking at it that way. If you weren’t family, it’d be business first.”
“Once he said it, I felt like that.”
“Then why are we having this conversation?” his mother asked. It’s as if he could see her rolling her eyes too.
“You started it,” he said, forcing out a laugh. “You called me.”
“And you assumed your brother tattled on you,” his mother said. “Just so you know, West threw none of you under the bus. But you all did it to him enough.”
Elias smirked. “He had it coming. He was bossy. Is still bossy.”
“I’m not going to dispute that,” his mother said. “Now back to Phoebe.”
“So that is why you were calling? Mom, don’t even think about an engagement. It’s not even been four months.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” his mother said. “When it’s meant it’s meant. But I’ll let you two figure it out.”
“Gee,” he said. “Thanks for that.”
He hung up after that and went back to work.
But he thought of it all day knowing Phoebe was the one he wanted to talk to.
She’d been in court most of the day and he wouldn’t bother her.
He sent her a text asking if she wouldn’t mind getting dinner at his house later.
“I’ve got takeout,” she said at the end of the day.
She walked in his front door with a pizza box in her hand. She didn’t knock. That was the first thing that occurred to him and he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t realized it before.
“I’m starving,” he said. “I spent a lot of my day talking to family.”
She moved over to kiss him. “I know that feeling well.”
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Just work related,” she said. “Some personal. What happened with you?”
He told her about the call with West. How it made him feel to start and finish it.
“I guess it was an eye-opener,” he said.
“Imagine that,” she said. “My call with my mother the other day was the same thing. It’s funny, don’t you think?”
“Not sure how funny it is,” he said, opening the pizza box and pulling out a slice. “Unless you tell me what happened with your call.”
She grabbed plates out of his cabinet and handed him one for his pizza and one for hers.
“Well. Remember when you asked me to Laken’s wedding and it was funny because my mother had just talked to me about inviting you to Ben’s?”
“Yes,” he said. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“My mother said a few things to me to open my eyes. That I’ve done so much in my life to prove myself and it was me I had to prove it to. Not them. Kind of like you.”
He laughed. “I agree with that. From what you’ve said, your family is very proud of you and supportive.”
“The same as yours,” she said. “I’ve seen it. Why couldn’t you?”
“The same reason you couldn’t see it of your family,” he said. “Maybe we have blinders on when it comes to those important to us.”
He was testing the waters by saying that.
Waiting to see her response.
“We do,” she said. “Me more than you. I’ve had a few days to think about my mother’s words. I’ve come to a conclusion.”
He grinned. “What conclusion is that?”
“That I’m not as out of place here as I thought.
That there is no reason for me not to commit when I love what I’m doing, where I am, and who I’m with.
That I’m always halting things I’m uncomfortable with until I can get comfortable.
But the truth is, I’ve been comfortable since the day I met you knowing that even if things go wrong, you and I can figure it out. ”
“We can,” he said, moving closer to her. He never expected this conversation to happen but was going to let her keep going.
“So I’ve been thinking and made a decision,” she said, putting her pizza slice down and hugging him. “I know where I want to be and who I want to be with. I’m not going anywhere, Elias. Just letting you know that.”
“I wasn’t about to let you go,” he said. “Just letting you know that too!”