JAKE
Where the hell was she?
I’d been calling Gabi over and over for the last hour, and she hadn’t answered my calls. She hadn’t even read my texts either.
John had walked back to the office with me and come up to check things out. He now sat across my desk from me, fingers resting on his chin, observing as I dialed Gabi for the tenth time.
“I don’t think she’s going to answer, Jakey. Maybe something is wrong.”
“Something is definitely wrong,” I grated. “She knew how important this was. There’s no excuse as to why she couldn’t have gotten those documents there in time.” I ended the call when she failed to answer yet again. “Fuck!”
“Deep breaths, little brother.”
“You don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t, but you don’t know what happened yet. Maybe there’s a perfectly good explanation. Maybe she’s in their office right now. You never know. This could be nothing.”
“Or it could be the biggest deal of my career going down the drain.”
The clock hit eleven thirty.
Then eleven thirty-five.
Damn it.
Eleven forty.
Eleven forty-five.
My phone rang. I answered it immediately. “Hello?”
“Mr. Cassidy, I’ve been waiting on your assistant for forty-five minutes,” Theo said. “Where is she?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and began pacing. Shit, shit, shit. “I can’t get a hold of her, Theo. I know how important this is and that you needed these documents forty-five minutes ago, but trust me, she’s not the sort of person to drop the ball like this. Something must have happened to her. I’m trying to get a hold of her, and once I do, I’ll let you know right away what’s going on.”
Theo sighed. “I’m not interested in doing business with people who can’t be on time.”
“I understand, but—”
“I think we have to pull out, Mr. Cassidy.”
No. I gritted my teeth. “Give her fifteen more minutes.”
“No,” Theo said firmly. “You guys had your window. We were clear about our expectations. If you can’t respect this, we don’t want to enter into a deal where you could let us down in the future. We appreciate all of your efforts thus far and we’re sorry things didn’t work out. I know you were excited about this, too. Sometimes things just aren’t meant to be.”
He hung up. Just like that.
I stared at my phone. “Son of a bitch.”
John frowned. “That didn’t sound good.”
“You should go.”
“Come on, don’t let this get to you. Shit goes sideways sometimes. Cut the girl some slack. You don’t know what happened yet. For all you know, she could walk in here with a perfectly good explanation. And hey, maybe you don’t want to do business with these guys. Ever think of that? If they’re not willing to give you a little bit of a grace in the face of an anomaly, then—”
“John.” I closed my eyes. “Please. I need you to go. I’ll check in with you later. I just… I need to fix this.”
John sighed and got to his feet. “Fine. But don’t be an ass when she gets here. Hear her out. I know you have a short fuse.”