Phyllis Bourne - Every Road to You

Tia sighed. “I’ll touch base with Carol.”

Ethan was relieved to see no traces of her earlier amusement.

“I expect you to fix this, Ms. Gray.” He left off an unspoken, but heavily implied, or else.

* * *

Tia swallowed a sip of tea, along with a sharper retort to his demand. “I already told you I’d speak with her. That’s all I can do.”

Ethan stood, and again, she tried not to notice how easy he was on the eyes. If she had a type, the man in front of her would be it. Then again, what woman didn’t like tall, dark and delicious?

Until he started to talk, Tia thought. If you could even call barking orders talking.

“Then I suggest you be extremely persuasive,” Ethan said in a tone instantly neutralizing the effect of his potent good looks. “I look forward to seeing my grandmother return to her old self.”

Tia watched his broad back as he strode out of her office. Everything in his commanding manner was confident she’d do as he’d directed.

She sighed, and she would.

Strip away the overbearing arrogance and he was simply a man worried about his grandmother, Tia reminded herself. Now she was worried, too.

Carol in jail. The mental image didn’t fit the kindhearted nurse who years ago had cared for Tia’s late mother during her losing battle with cancer.

Tia looked up at Max, who’d returned to the office.

“What’s his deal?” he asked.

“Family problems.”

“What makes them your problems?”

“He’s Carol Harris’s grandson,” Tia said.

Max’s eyes widened as he made the connection. “Ah, the Tina Turner transformation,” he said, referring to the makeover that was so stunning it had earned its own name throughout Espresso Sanctuary, the flagship of the ten spas Espresso Cosmetics had scattered throughout the Southeast.

Tia and her top-notch staff had cut, colored, made up, manicured and massaged years off the senior citizen’s outdated appearance. The upshot: Carol Harris was now one smoking-hot woman of a certain age. But it appeared the dramatic change might have done her friend more harm than good.

“So I gather he’s not happy with his granny’s new look,” Max observed.

“Apparently, there have been some side effects, and Carol’s gone wild.”

Max sat in the chair in front of her desk. “If she’s happy, your job is done.”

“Normally, I’d agree, but he wants me to talk to her, and I told him I would.”

Max grunted.

“I take it you don’t approve.”

“Considering the way he stormed through here, you should have let me use one of my old wrestling moves on him before tossing him out the door,” he said.

Tia regarded her assistant, a former pro wrestler and longtime friend, with a frown.

“All three of us couldn’t be hotheads.” She leveled him with a look to emphasize her point.

Max nodded. “Point taken,” he said. “Want me to ask Carol to meet you here at the spa’s café for lunch or book you a table somewhere else?”

“Neither,” Tia said.

Ethan Wright’s problems would have to take a backseat for now. She had her own family to deal with this morning and a problem she needed to readdress today.

“In fact, clear my afternoon schedule. I’m headed downtown to the Espresso building to talk to my father.”

“Does that mean your conversation with Cole went well, despite the interruption?” Max sounded hopeful.

Tia shook her head. Her stepbrother had sequestered himself on his boat somewhere off the coast of Italy. She doubted he’d heard more than a word or two she’d said over the crackling line of the static-ridden call, let alone her desperate request.

And even if they had been able to talk, Tia thought, she wasn’t the family member who needed to reach out to her brother and convince him to return to Nashville and their family business.

“It doesn’t appear Cole is an option for Espresso right now,” Tia told Max. “All I can do is try to reason with my dad.” Again, she silently added.

“You’ll want to take a look at this first.” Max left her office briefly and returned with a familiar document from Espresso’s accounting department.

“Another authorization form?” Tia asked.

Max nodded. “Malcolm Doyle faxed it over while you were with Mr. Wright.”

Tia looked over the form giving her permission, as president of the company’s spa division, to redirect more profits from Espresso’s ten sanctuary day spas into the floundering cosmetics side of the company.

Damn, Tia thought as she snatched a pen from her desk and signed her name. At this rate, she’d never be able to expand from the Southeast to spots she’d been eyeing in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

“So how long do think you can continue propping up the cosmetics division?” Max asked.

Tia pushed out a weary sigh. “This is the last time.”

Her father’s steadfast refusal to allow major changes at Espresso Cosmetics so it could stay relevant in a changing marketplace was contributing to the brand’s slow death.

“Whatever you say.” Max reached for the signed form, but Tia held on to it.

“I mean it, Max. In fact, I’m delivering this one to my father personally, so he’ll know I’m serious.”

Tia knew very well that Max had heard it all before. Still, he never judged her. Instead, he gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Good luck with that.”

“Thanks,” Tia said as she rolled her eyes. “I’ll need it.”

An hour later, Tia rode the glass elevator to the top floor of the eleven-story building her late mother had constructed in 1984 to house what back then was a rapidly expanding makeup empire. While other cosmetics companies had located their headquarters in the fashion capital of New York City, her mother had insisted Espresso remain in Nashville. The decision provided jobs for their hometown as well as allowed them to draw on the brilliant young talent graduating with degrees from Fisk and Tennessee State universities.

Unfortunately, now nearly half the offices in Espresso Cosmetics corporate headquarters stood empty, victims of the recession, increasing competition and the company’s failure to keep up with the times.

The elevator pinged and the doors parted at the top floor.

“He’s got to listen to me this time,” Tia muttered as she stepped off the car.

Still, there was no finessing the cold, hard facts laid out to her by Malcolm Doyle, Espresso’s head bean counter. Sales from Espresso Cosmetics’s spring collection—Parisian Getaway—had been dismal. Not only had it failed to bring new customers to their department-store counters, they were rapidly losing their loyal ones to other brands.

Bottom line, women of color had more options, and they were no longer choosing what they considered their grandmothers’ makeup.

“Morning, Loretta,” Tia greeted the woman who’d been her mother’s secretary ever since she could remember and now worked for her father.

Like Loretta Walker, hardly anything had changed in the presidential suite since the death of Tia’s mother and company founder, Selina Sinclair Gray, seven years prior. Worn carpeting had been replaced with identical carpets, and walls had been repainted the ivory shade her mother had loved.

But the decor wasn’t the problem.

Tia exchanged a few moments of small talk with Loretta revolving around the weather and the woman’s granddaughter, who would start medical school at Meharry Medical College when the fall term began next month.

“He’s not in there, sweetheart,” Loretta said as Tia headed toward her father’s office. “He’s waiting for you in your mom’s old office.”

Tia raised a curious brow, but Loretta merely shrugged in response.