“All the more reason not to move forward.”

Her body tightened, and heat simmered inside her. “That doesn’t even make sense. What if he was working on something really important? I’m going to review all the work my father did on it, and then we’ll make a decision about whether to move forward. It’s not just your decision.”

She threw his words back at him, and he flinched only slightly, a tiny flicker of his eyes and the tick of his jaw muscle letting her know how frustrated and angry he was. A shimmer of delight slid through her, and the corners of her mouth twitched.

“Fine,” he bit out, standing. “You go right ahead.”

He walked out of the office.

An hour later, Samara pushed her bangs back and sighed. She’d gone through every folder and file in her father’s computer and found very little about the trip to Matagalpa and what her father had been doing there.

She finally gave up and went to ask Paulette.

“You said my father had files on Matagalpa,” she said. “Do you know where they are?”

Paulette nodded. “Yes. They should be in the file drawer behind his desk.”

Stupid. Why hadn’t she thought of that? She returned to the office and slid open the deep, wide drawer. Rows of files hung neatly from suspension rods. Again she suspected this was Paulette’s work. She ran her fingertips over them until—yes, thank you, Paulette, for alphabetical filing—she found the Matagalpa file. Eagerly she pulled it out, swiveled her chair to the desk and opened it.

Once again she was disappointed. The file had few papers, only some correspondence between her father and a man named Javier Alvarez in Matagalpa discussing his upcoming visit and their telephone calls, but no details.

She sat there, drumming her fingers on the desk. Then she reached for the phone and called the number for Javier Alvarez. After long moments of ringing, she hung up. Damn.

She drew in a long, slow breath. She was going to have to ask Travis.

She was sitting there, stomach tight, teeth clenched, when Travis appeared in the door. He stopped and looked at her, and she sat up straighter. Why was he looking at her like that? Was her hair all wacky? She put a hand up to smooth it.

“What?” she asked.

One brow lifted. “We’ve set up a meeting with everyone for tomorrow afternoon. One o’clock in the boardroom.”

She blinked. “Oh. Okay. Great.”

“It’s just a planning meeting,” he told her. “No final decisions will be made. There’ll likely need to be a vote.”

She licked her lips and sank back into her chair when Travis’s eyes dropped to her mouth. Her lungs tightened, and it was hard to breathe. She tried to focus on business.

“I’ve been going through some files,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “Looking for information on the project in Matagalpa. But I can’t find much.”

He stood there, looking back at her, face impassive.

“Do you have any ideas where else there might be information?”

He blew out a long breath and ran a hand through his hair. “Check his emails,” he finally said.

“I did already.”

He gave her a look from beneath lowered brows.

“What?” she asked. “I did nothing wrong. But I didn’t see any emails about it.”

“They could be in a separate folder.”

Shit. She hadn’t thought about that. She rolled her lips in then gave a short nod. “Thanks.”

Later that day, Travis strolled back into the office. “How about lunch?”

Samara looked at her own watch then up at Travis with wide eyes. “Lunch?”

“Yeah. You know. That meal you eat in the middle of the day.”

“You want to have lunch with me.” What was going on?

A smile tugged his lips. “No. I’m just trying to get you out of here so you can’t get into any trouble.”

She laughed. Even though she suspected it was true.

“Never mind,” he said, turning away. “Bad idea.”

“No, wait. That sounds good. Lunch.”

He stopped, turned, and tipped his head. “Okay. Come on.”

They left the office tower and walked out onto the street, shaded from the sun by leafy green trees lining the brick-paved sidewalk. “There’s a nice place on the next block,” Travis said. “You can tell me what you learned about why Parker was in Matagalpa.”

“Oh, so that’s why you wanted to have lunch,” she said, matching his pace. “Now I get it.”

He grinned. “You’re on to me.”

“I still can’t believe it’s real,” she said slowly. “That he’s gone, and he’s not coming back.”

“I know. Me too.” They shared a glance of understanding, then she pushed away the wave of sadness and straightened her shoulders.

In the busy restaurant, the hostess seated them at a window table with a view of the street, the traffic, and the people passing by. Watching all the interesting individuals who worked in the neighborhood was always entertaining.

A fern hung in a brass container in the window beside them, the sun illuminating its lacy leaves. Samara traced a finger over the white table cloth and straightened the heavy silver fork in front of her. “This place is nice.”

“They have a great steak sandwich,” Travis said.

Samara studied the menu and decided on a spinach salad. Travis ordered the steak sandwich.

“Okay,” he said after the waitress had taken their orders. “Tell me what you’ve found.”

She tipped her head to one side. “Are you sure you don’t know what going on there?”

“Samara. I already told you I don’t know anything.”

“Fine.” She sank her teeth into her lower lip. “It looks like Dad was working with the Palizada co-op in Matagalpa. It looks like he wanted to put a new pricing structure in place.”

“Yes. He mentioned that.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I thought you said you didn’t know anything.”

Travis’s gaze slid away. “When I asked him what he was working on in Matagalpa, he brushed me off, but he did say it had to do with the co-op. That was it. I had no idea he was going to take off and go there.”

She gave a short nod. “I’m not sure why he wanted to do that, but from what I gather, he thought there were issues because some farmers were growing better-quality beans than others, yet they were all being paid the same.”

Travis nodded, picked up a spoon, and turned it between his fingers. “He always believed we should pay a premium price for the best quality coffee.”

“Which makes sense.”

“I suppose. But the co-ops exist for a reason.”

She remembered when the Palizada co-op had been started a few years before. Farmers had been concerned that local middlemen were taking more than their share for their services. It was difficult for individual farmers to have the resources they needed to export their beans. The beans increased fifty percent in value if they were processed, but they didn’t have the ability to do that on their own. The co-op helped them get credit, which they couldn’t do on their own, and they didn’t have to wait to harvest their crop to get payment.

“There are a lot of advantages,” Travis continued. “Why would Parker mess with that? It’s been working so well.”

She leaned back to allow the server to pour coffee into the cup in front of her.

She raised her eyes to Travis.

The corners of his mouth lifted. “Yes, it’s Cedar Mill. It’s Costa Rica La Magnolia.”

She smiled, well familiar with the excellent coffee. They both drank it sin-black and strong. She picked up her cup, and closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply. The aromatics were such a big part of coffee taste, and this one was lovely, dark and rich. She took a sip, testing the temperature then slurped delicately. She met Travis’s amused eyes.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“There are flavor receptors all through our mouths,” she told him. “To get the full experience, all the nuances, you need to expose even the back of your mouth to it.”