A Little Too Late (Madigan Mountain #1)(57)

“So what does your timeframe look like?” Mark asks. “I’d like to get the contract signed before the holidays.”

He sounds awfully convincing. Too convincing.

“That we can do,” Grandpa Sharpe says. “We’ll let the lawyers do their thing, and we’ll give you an update before the end of next week. Let you know where we’re at.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Mark says. “You’re going to do great things with the place. I can feel it.”

The pancakes I’ve eaten have already turned to lead in my stomach. But now they’re turning to battery acid. I push my cup of coffee away with a jittery hand and wave over the server so I can sign our check and add a tip.

I’ve got to get away from this table.

“Well, ladies and gents, we’d best be getting on the road,” Trey says, checking his phone. “Our limo is waiting outside.”

“Don’t let us keep you,” I say, sliding back my chair in a big hurry and rising to my feet. I want to bolt for the door, but I force myself to walk the Sharpes through the lobby and toward the entrance.

If I’m lucky, I’ll never see their faces again.

“I’ll be in touch about your employment contract,” Trey says. Then he gives me a wink.

“Thank you,” I say with as much sweetness as I can muster. Which is very little. I hold out my hand to shake, and then I tell the biggest lie of my life. “It will be a real pleasure working with you.”

He gives me a full body scan, then smiles. “Likewise.”

I feel nauseated.





CHAPTER 27




THE THING ABOUT SHARKS





REED

After Ava leaves to go to breakfast with the Sharpes, I sit down and check all my messages. There’s nothing new from my client, so I have to man up and call my anxious boss.

It’s a video chat, because he likes to look you in the eye when he tells you all the ways you’ve fucked up. I position the phone where he can’t see the mountain out the window behind me. I don’t want him to think I’ve fucked off to Colorado just for fun.

He answers from the sofa of his high-rise bachelor pad in Palo Alto. His mood has already gone past handwringing to full on Armageddon. “Reed! Your guy got cold feet, and I had to hear about it at the tennis club.”

Oh shit. “What did Deevers do?”

“He took a meeting with Blink Fifty Capital. And you don’t even know about this? Where are you?”

I would explain, but I know he doesn’t actually care. “Family emergency.”

“You have a family?” Prashant rubs his temples. “Just get home. Get a meeting with Deevers for Monday and beat some sense into him. This is the best deal he can find, and he’s wasting our time and making us look like assholes.”

Not actually true, but he doesn’t want to hear that, either. “Okay. I’m on it,” I promise. “I’ll see you Monday morning.” Which is forty-eight hours from now.

He hangs up, and I toss my phone onto the sofa with a shout of irritation.

Nobody else hears it.

Then I leave a message for Sheila, who will have to make travel plans and finagle our Monday schedule. After that, I shower and head downstairs.

It’s an accident of timing that I arrive downstairs just as the doors are closing on the Sharpes’ backsides.

Go me. “Looks like I arranged this perfectly.”

“Well-played,” my father snorts as he turns around.

Ava looks tense. Uh-oh.

“What did the Sharpes have to say for themselves this morning?”

Ava just shakes her head.

My father is the one who answers. “They were exactly as they’ve been before. No more, no less.”

“All right.” I slide a hand into Ava’s. “Dad, can we talk? Maybe in your office?”

“I suppose.” His chilly tone doesn’t help anything, but at least he turns around and heads toward the office suite.

“Should I make myself scarce?” Ava whispers as we follow him.

“No. You’re part of this. I want you there.”

Her glance says she doesn’t quite believe me, but Ava is the whole reason I’m willing to fight for the mountain. Without her, it’s doubtful I’d be willing to spend time steering the resort into its future.

Hell, if I have to, I’ll change my whole life for this place. And for Ava. It’s scary stuff, but I think I’m ready. The last week has taught me a lot about what’s missing from my life.

My father, of all people, should understand.

We crowd into the inner office, and I close the door. My father moves around the big oak desk to take a seat in his chair. The same messy desk was my grandfather’s before it was his. When I was little, I used to play with my action figures on the floor over by the copy machine.

I don’t remember exactly which year my grandfather retired, and the desk became my father’s. I was in grade school. But the transition doesn’t stand out in my memory because my father had worked at the mountain since the day after graduating from Cornell with a hospitality degree.

It occurs to me now to wonder if he always imagined I’d have that desk next—or Weston or Crew. And I wonder exactly when he realized that wasn’t about to happen.