The Family You Make (Sunrise Cove #1)(29)

“Don’t ask when you don’t really want to know.”

The family store was the only sporting goods store on North Shore, which meant it was highly trafficked and did great business. But there wasn’t a huge profit margin in it, and Levi’s family had struggled plenty—something he hadn’t appreciated growing up because his parents had never let on about any financial strain.

Knowing that they’d protected him and Tess from that stress usually gave him more patience when his dad pulled the holier-than-thou crap. But he felt pretty rough this morning, and was definitely short on patience. “Dad, just tell me what’s going on.”

His dad pushed his chair back from the desk, looking disgusted. “The store’s books are a mess.”

For the past decade, Cal—Tess’s soon-to-be-ex-husband—had been doing the accounting for the store. He’d started right after college, the first nonfamily member to ever handle the books.

But when Cal took off with the babysitter a month ago, he’d walked away from the job. If he was being honest, Levi hadn’t even given it a single thought, knowing someone else would now be handling the bookkeeping.

Apparently that someone had been his dad. This wasn’t good because, though the man knew his stuff, he was impatient as hell when it came to the business side of the store.

His dad tore off his reading glasses and tossed them onto the desk. “Cal’s a piece of shit.”

“Agreed.” Levi took a closer look at his dad and saw the tight grimness to his mouth and the stress lines around the eyes. “What’s wrong?”

His dad rubbed his eyes. “It’s not good.”

Levi’s heart sank. “I’m going to need you to be clearer. Did Cal mess up the books, or did he help himself to the kitty?”

His dad opened his eyes and looked at Levi. “I’m not sure. But I think the second thing.”

“Jesus, Dad.”

The guy shook his head. “It’s just a gut feeling. I haven’t been able to find anything.”

“The software I sent you last quarter should’ve alerted you to anything out of the norm going on.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t make heads or tails out of that program. And why change something if it’s not broke.”

“Are you kidding me—” Levi broke off and drew a deep breath because nope, not getting baited into a fight. “Mom told me it was working out great.”

“Because that’s what I told her.” His dad looked away. “It was complicated to load and I never got around to it. Obviously, not my smartest move.”

A surprising admittance. But the thing was, Levi’s program wasn’t complicated. It was simple. And no one would have had to do anything but let the program run in the background. Levi drew a deep breath. “Dad.” He couldn’t believe he was about to say this. “Why don’t you let me take a look and see what I can figure out?”

“What, so you can get it all working, only to go back to the city?” His dad waved his glasses around. “I don’t want to be left trying to undo something someone did.”

Levi swallowed the automatic defense bubbling in his throat. “I’m not Cal, Dad. I’ve never left a mess behind.”

His dad sighed, scrubbed his hand down his face. “Yeah, I know. Sorry. I don’t mean to take this out on you. But shit, that asshole left us in a bad place.”

“Then why do you always say everything is fine when I call?”

“Your mother didn’t want me to bother or worry you. And anyway, you’ve never wanted the store, you’ve never been happy here, so what does it matter to you?”

“Jesus, Dad.” He started to scrub a hand down his face and realized he’d inherited the tell from his dad and stopped. “I love it here,” he said. And it was true. He loved it on the mountain, loved knowing that he could have any outdoor adventure he wanted. “I want to help.”

“You do?”

“Yes.” That he’d not given the store a single thought after knowing Cal had gone, leaving them in a lurch, had guilt swamping him. “Let me go through the books with a fine-tooth comb and see what I can find.”

“I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You didn’t ask. When I’m done, I’ll install the software for you, which will do the job of finding these problems when I’m not around.”

His dad looked uncertain, and wasn’t that a kick to the gut. Levi made a living, a really good living, and a lot of that came from solving people’s problems. Problems just like this. But because he was the baby of the family, and let’s face it, different, his dad had a hard time seeing his value to the family.

“Dad, let me help.” He gestured for him to move out from behind the desk so Levi could get to the computer.

“You going to put on some pants first?”

“Yeah.” He grabbed his jeans from the floor and stepped into them. A T-shirt too. He didn’t live like a slob at home, but here all he had was the couch, so things naturally ended up on the floor around it. When he sat behind the desk, he caught the look in his dad’s eyes. Maybe relief. Maybe hope. Hard to say, as the man wasn’t in the habit of giving much away.

Guess it could be said that Levi himself, the apple, hadn’t fallen far from the tree either.