Of course, I knew all of that was my own fault. He and I had been friends before. He had seemed genuinely happy to see me again the last time that he had been here, when Bailey had first bought the resort. He had asked me to look out for her. To help her out.
I had betrayed that trust. It was only right that he was pissed at me. I probably owed him a little help. But I didn’t really want to chat with Bailey in private about all the shit that Ian had done back in Vegas, whatever it was. I didn’t want to be in private with her at all. That was dangerous.
“Honestly, I think it’s better if you don’t know anything about the casino industry,” Bailey was trying to say. “I need an outsider’s perspective, someone who can look at things objectively and with different eyes.”
I shook my head. “Look, Bailey, I’d love to help,” I told her. “But I really don’t think I’m the right person for that. I’m just a mechanic.”
Bailey looked taken aback, and I could tell that she wanted to say something about that, but I interrupted her this time, glancing pointedly at my watch. “I really need to get some work done,” I told her. “But if I can help you with anything else, let me know.”
For the second time in as many days, I walked away feeling like an asshole. I didn’t want to upset her. But I also didn’t want to get too close to her. It would only end in heartache for both of us. Ian had been right all along; I didn’t belong in their world. And my lack of knowledge about the casino business was only the tip of that iceberg.
43
Bailey
Adam was the person I really wanted to talk to about Ian’s issues, but he made it clear that he wasn’t interested in talking about that. I hated those last words that he had said, about how he couldn’t help me figure it out since he was ‘just a mechanic’. That was a little too close to what Ian had said when he had told me that I shouldn’t be with Adam, and it made me wonder if Ian had said something similar to Adam at some point.
But there was no way to ask Adam about it without repeating all the terrible things that Ian had said to me, and I didn’t want Adam to think that I was the one who felt that way about him. Because I didn’t give a shit that Adam worked a blue-collar job. He was good at what he did, and he was one of the most hard-working people that I had ever met.
Besides, Adam wasn’t giving me much time to talk about anything with him. For the second time in two days, he hurried away from me, leaving me aching with all the things that I wished that I could say to him, about how sorry I was about all of this, and about how much I wanted to make things right between us. Things had been off ever since Ian had caught us kissing, and I hated that.
I wanted to tell Adam that Ian had agreed to quit meddling in our relationship. That we could really work things out. But I didn’t have a chance for that now.
I sighed and shook my head. Another time, I promised myself.
For now, I headed out to talk to Kayla about Ian’s situation and see if she had any insight into it. After all, she had been the one to tip me off to it in the first place.
She shrugged when I asked her what she would do in my situation. “Well, I assume that you still have contacts with the business, right?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “But I can’t, like, get one of them to take over Ian’s job. I’m not trying to get my brother fired. And even having one of them step in as an advisor or something wouldn’t work. Ian’s used to having the power now, and it would seem like a massive slight for someone to have to supervise his decisions.”
“Oh no, of course not,” Kayla said, shaking her head. “That’s not what I was suggesting at all. I just figure, someone in that company probably knows exactly what it’s going to take to get the investigation dropped, right? So if you can talk to them and figure out what they want, then you’ll know exactly how to proceed. Or at least, you’ll kind of have the starting point. If you decide not to just do what they want, you’ll at least know where the negotiating table is.”
“That’s a good point,” I said slowly, already thinking through who the best person would be to talk to about that. Kayla was right, I knew; what better way to know what they were looking for than to just ask? It was something that I probably wouldn’t have thought of on my own, but Kayla had always been blunter than I was. Sometimes, bluntness was exactly what was called for when it came to business.
“I’ll talk to you later, okay?” I told her.
“Sure thing,” Kayla said easily. “Good luck.”
“Thanks,” I said, grinning crookedly at her. “And thanks for all your help around here. I owe you about a dozen bottles of wine, I’m pretty sure.”
Kayla laughed. “Let’s have another girls’ day soon,” she said. “We’ll set something up after the holidays are over.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I told her.
I headed into my office to make the phone call. I couldn’t help feeling nervous about it. What if whatever they were demanding was too much? What if they never wanted Ian to come back to work? That casino was his whole life; he, unlike me, had never dreamt of quitting and going into some other business. And besides, I knew what it meant to him, being part of the family business. He would feel like a failure if he was forced out of it.
What’s more, I didn’t know if the head of the board of directors, Bill, would even agree to talk to me about this. I wasn’t part of the business anymore, and there wasn’t all that much that I could promise him. It wasn’t like I could force Ian to bend to their wills; he was my older brother, and he was the one who had gotten into this mess in the first place.
But I had to try. I had promised Ian that I would do my best to help him, and as Kayla had pointed out, this was the most logical starting point.
“I have to tell you,” Bill said gravely when I told him why I was calling, “the guys are all extremely upset with Ian.”
“I’m sure they are,” I said. I knew the kind of havoc he had wreaked trying to make changes here at Brooks Mountain, so I could only imagine the kinds of things he had done with the casino business, with no one to really check his power. “But we can fix things, I’m sure.”
“I don’t know if we can,” Bill said grimly. “We’ve alienated a lot of our regulars. Ian was so set on bringing in new customers that he was willing to make whatever changes he thought needed to be made. But our regulars come here expecting certain things from us. There’s an image associated with our brand. And it’s not a bunch of rich youngsters throwing parties in the middle of the casino floor or puking in the club bathrooms.”
I winced. I could imagine just the kind of people that Ian had been trying to appeal to, and knew just how obnoxious that would have been to a lot of our regulars. Ian had tried to remake the whole image to be young and hip and fresh, but he’d lost a certain amount of class in the process.
It was sort of the same thing that he’d been trying to do here at Brooks Mountain, when I thought about it; trying to bring in rich new folks at the risk of alienating the down-to-earth locals and vacationers who had been our staple clientele for years.
“We can fix things,” I repeated, more firmly this time.
“If you say so,” Bill sighed. “But honestly, I think that if you want to fix things, you’re going to need to come back here to Vegas to put in a certain amount of work yourself. Show your face to the regulars, apologize to them, help come up with ways to bring them back to the tables here.”
I frowned, twisting my chair back and forth for a moment. This was the busy season for a ski resort, although things were starting to wind back down to normal levels again. Still, I hadn’t planned to return to Vegas this season. I didn’t want everyone here thinking that I was one of those bosses who would only be there every so often, as it suited me.
But at the same time, Ian’s life and livelihood was on the line. If Bill was sure that my presence back in Vegas was what it would take to get the casino business back on track, then I had to take that at face value. And I knew that I had a responsib
ility to my family. Like Adam had said, family always came first. I couldn’t run my own business at the expense of my blood. Everyone here would just have to understand that.
Still, I hesitated. I wanted to believe that I could trust Ian being here in Park City while I headed back to Vegas to straighten things out, but I remembered the conversation that I had had with Adam the previous day, and the things that I had promised everyone that morning in the all-employee meeting. I had said that Ian wasn’t going to cause trouble around the resort anymore. I had promised that that situation was handled.
I couldn’t take a chance of Ian messing with things while I was gone.
“Bill, I know that you guys don’t really want to deal with Ian at the moment, but he’s going to come back with me,” I said firmly. “He and I will meet with the regulars together and see if we can straighten things out. I think that’ll be best for the long-term.”
Bill was silent for a moment. Then, he sighed. “A lot of our regulars aren’t going to want to see him,” he said. “But you’re probably right that it’s better for the long term. If they can see that he really does want to get to know their wants and needs, then they might even be willing to allow for some changes to the place.”
I nodded, even though I knew he couldn’t see it. “I’ll book our flights this afternoon,” I promised, already trying to think of a way to explain things to Ian.
He wasn’t going to get to make all the changes that he wanted to make. And what’s more, he was going to have to deal with me being there to help smooth ruffled feathers, even after I had refused to allow him to have any say in what happened here with my business.
I hoped he didn’t feel like I was trying to take things over from him, because that was the last thing that I wanted. No, if I had my way, I would stay right here in Park City through the entire winter season. But it didn’t seem like that was an option.
I spared a moment to think about Adam. I hated the idea of hitting the pause button with him now, when things were already so uncomfortable between the two of us. I was afraid that if I headed off to Nevada now, leaving things as they currently were, then we would never be able to build a relationship between the two of us.
But Adam knew the importance of family. He had been the one recommending that I help Ian in the first place. He would understand if I had to go off to Vegas right now. When I came back, when the Ian situation was settled, then we would have plenty of time to get back on the same page with our relationship.
44
Adam
I smiled as Ethan jumped up and down with glee at having finally managed to shoot down one of the cans that we had set up at the far end of the yard. I had spent the week working hard to get caught up on everything on my list of tasks. The busier I’d been, the less I’d had time to think about Bailey. And with Ian finally agreeing not to interfere around the resort, it meant I knew exactly what my tasks were and wasn’t trying to plan for weird things like replacing all the water heaters in the middle of the busy season.
I had gotten a surprising amount done, and I had been able to take another Saturday off to spend a little extra time with Ethan. That morning at breakfast, he’d asked if we could go skiing with Bailey today, of course. But it was easy enough to redirect his enthusiasm towards practicing with the BB gun that Dad had given him, especially when I reminded him that he was going skiing with one of his friends that afternoon. He didn’t want to wear himself out with us.
I wasn’t really in the mood for skiing that morning. I didn’t really want to be anywhere near the resort at the moment; every time I went there, I seemed to end up twisted in knots over the Bailey situation. And focusing on what he was doing with the BB gun and whether or not he was using it safely kept my attention away from my own thoughts of Bailey.
It was a win-win.
To tell the truth, I was still feeling guilty about the way that I had blown her off the day before. I had tried to apologize to her at the end of the day, to tell her that if she needed help thinking of some way to help him, I was at her disposal. But when I had gone to her office, she had already left for the day. I had thought about calling her or texting her, but the latter seemed too cold and I had a feeling that if I tried to call her, I was just going to end up totally tongue-tied and saying something stupid.
Anyway, I’d see her around the resort tomorrow and talk to her then. It wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t like I wasn’t going to see her again.
“Nice shot, buddy,” I said to Ethan. “Hey, do you want to see what it looks like when you shoot an apple? These guys are pretty rotten.”
“Yeah!” Ethan said excitedly, carefully setting the gun down and taking the apples from me. He raced off to set them down at the other end of the makeshift shooting range then came running back over to me, a big grin on his face.
Just then, I heard a car turn into the driveway. “Hold on just a second, buddy,” I said, frowning and wondering who it was. We didn’t get a lot of traffic out here since we were at the end of the road, and not a busy road at that. It wasn’t like anyone would drive all the way out here even to ask us those nagging political questions. But every once in a while, someone got lost and ended up out here.
When I turned towards the road, though, I was surprised to see Bailey’s car pulling up. She shut the engine off and got out, and Ethan cheered, racing over to give her a big hug. Bailey laughed, hugging him back. “Hey, Ethan,” she said. She smiled at me, but I could see something tentative in the expression, like she thought I’d be mad at her for coming there. “Hey, Adam.”
“Is there something wrong at the resort?” I asked automatically, pulling out my phone. But I didn’t have any missed calls.
Bailey shook her head. “Nope,” she said. “I just wanted to talk to you about something. Sorry to come over here on your day off.”
I frowned, trying to think of what she wanted to talk to me about. Was this it, was she going to fire me now? I glanced towards Ethan, hoping that she wouldn’t fire me in front of him at least. If we were going to have to move, I wanted to know all the facts first. I didn’t want to worry him.
Ethan tugged at Bailey’s hand. “Come and see, come and see,” he said, pulling her over towards his BB gun. “You have to be really careful,” he said seriously, showing her how to work the gun and explaining all the different safety rules that I had told him. “But then, you can aim it like this and then shoot.” Ethan frowned and shrugged when his shot hit the dirt in front of one of the apples. “I missed.” He cocked his head at Bailey. “Do you want to try?”
Bailey smiled down at him. “Sure,” she said, carefully taking the BB gun from him. She aimed it down the field and easily shot one of the apples.
“Wow!” Ethan said excitedly. “You’re the best!”
Bailey laughed and handed the gun back to Ethan. “Lots of practice,” she said seriously. “My brother used to have a BB gun just like that when I was a kid, and sometimes I would borrow it. I wanted to be just as cool as he was.”
Ethan giggled. “Bet you’re cooler,” he said.
I glanced at my watch. “Hey, Ethan, if you’re going skiing with Jack, you’d better go get your things together,” I said.
“Okay!” Ethan said happily, putting the gun down and darting towards the house.
Bailey smiled after him while I shoved my hands in my pockets. Then, she turned her attention back towards me. “There’s something that I wanted to talk to you about,” she said.
“Right,” I said. “Look, Bailey, I’m sorry about what I said yesterday, but I need to make sure that Ethan’s got everything that he needs. Otherwise, he’ll forget socks or something.” I couldn’t meet her gaze. There was so much more that I needed to say to her, but the words just wouldn’t seem to come out.
Bailey smiled softly at me. “Hey, don’t worry about yesterday,” she said gently. “I’m sorry if Ian said anything that made you feel like you didn’t deserve to, I don’t know, have an opinion on anything. I know he�
�s been kind of a dick lately.”
I didn’t know what to say in response to that. I couldn’t exactly agree with her, even if that was the truth. I glanced towards the house again, and she sighed. “I probably should have called before I just showed up like this. I know you’re busy. But I’m kind of on a tight schedule at the moment.”
I frowned at her, wanting to ask just what was going on.
“Are you skiing with Ethan this afternoon?” Bailey asked before I could.
I shook my head. “Nah, Jack’s older brother is going to go with them,” I said.
“But you’re going to drop them at the resort?” Bailey pressed.
“Yeah, I guess so,” I said. “Why?”
“Can you stop by my office while you’re there?” she asked.
“I’ll be at work again tomorrow,” I told her, but when she frowned and started to protest, I shook my head. “Fine, I’ll see you in a little while,” I said, wondering just what it was that she needed to talk to me about that was so pressing. I was either getting fired or she wanted to talk about us, and I wasn’t sure which I was more worried about.
Bailey nodded and went back to her car, giving me one last, long look before she started the ignition and drove off, presumably back towards the resort. I frowned after her and then shook my head. I really did need to make sure that Ethan had everything that he needed. We swung by Jack’s house on the way to the resort and I picked up the other boys. It was a bit chaotic when we got to the resort, making sure that they all had everything they needed for an afternoon of fun. But finally, they were on the lift headed up to ski.
I sighed and turned back towards the lodge, heading in to talk to Bailey. I would much rather just put this off, maybe tell her that I had forgotten or that something else had come up. But I knew she wouldn’t let me get away with that. Anyway, better to just get this over with. I had to admit, I was pretty curious.
One Shot At Love: A Billionaire Single Father Romance Page 25