The Last Bride (DiCarlo Brides #6) (6 page)

“Not so great. He’s keeping a good attitude though.”

“Good. I’m glad he’s enjoying it. Any news from the doctors?” Jonquil kept hoping his condition would improve.

“Nothing good. We decided to try that holistic doctor Sage recommended. It can’t hurt, anyway. I’d do almost anything to keep your dad here for a few more years.”

Jonquil felt her throat tighten. “I wish I could be there for you now. Only three months left here and then I can come home to help.” She really wanted to stay, but how could she when her mother needed her?

“Don’t be silly. They need you there and there’s nothing you can do for us. We do appreciate the money though, and you putting up Angela for the summer. It is a big relief not to have to come up with money to take care of her this summer. And she needs her big sister—even if she doesn’t act like it all of the time.”

Jonquil felt her stomach tighten. Because she’d been given a choice in the matter? She would have said yes, if anyone had bothered to ask, but wondered if her mother even realized everything had been dumped in her lap. Did it make her petty to be bothered about how it happened? “Yeah. You know I’d do anything for you.”

“Well, don’t worry about us. We’ll get by somehow.” The sound of her father calling to her mom came through the phone. “Oh sorry, your father needs me. Gotta go. Love you, honey!”

“Love you too, Mom.” Jonquil pulled the phone from her ear to see the call had already ended. Did her mom wait to hear her goodbye?

She put the phone back in her pocket, feeling discouraged. She could help, she knew she could. So why did her mom always push her away? Didn’t anyone want her around?

Gage checked out the sample ads his PR expert, Jeanine, had put together to drum up ski business the next fall. Advertising always gave him headaches—what worked one year, didn’t always work the next, and with the economy in shambles, they’d made a decent profit, but it hadn’t exactly been record-breaking. He made a few notes for Jeanine and clicked send on the email just as there was a knock on his office door.

“Hello, come in,” he greeted when he looked up and saw the inspector the county had sent out to check his lifts. Ronald was a large man, making the spacious, wood-paneled office seem to shrink around him.

“I hope you’re having a good day,” Ronald said as he settled his large frame in a nearby chair. He brushed thinning hair away from his face and leaned back, looking tired.

“I hope that doesn’t mean you have bad news for me.” Gage already had a bad feeling forming in the pit of his stomach.

“It’s not good. Your haul ropes are fraying. They aren’t dangerous yet but several of them will be crossing that line before next year’s ski season ends. They need to be replaced before ski season opens again.”

Gage felt the breath whoosh from his lungs. His non-spectacular year just became nearly bankrupting. “How many of them?”

“All of them.” Ronald gave him a sympathetic look.

“Even the one up to Moose Ridge? I replaced it when I bought the resort.” Gage felt a little sick. The last thing he needed right now was to scrounge five figures for maintenance on the ski lifts. But not fixing them would mean not opening in November, and that wasn’t an option.

“Sorry, you should check the rest of the line closer to see if you can find what’s wearing on them.”

“Thanks. I’ll do that.” Gage walked him back out of the building and returned to his office to contact Ross about checking out the lifts.

Gage recalculated the winter profits, grateful he didn’t have to explain to a corporate head about why there would be none. The numbers came out exactly the same as before and he wished he’d made different decisions about the advertising for the mountain bike festival in July and the other smaller mountain biking events through the rest of the summer. He hoped the advertising paid off because it was too late to change any of it now.

He made a couple of calls to companies that could sell him the needed haul ropes—heavy, weaved metal ropes that carried the chair lifts up and down the mountains. Double-checking against the specs on his computer, he realized he could scrounge the cost for the materials. But installation was going to be far from cheap.

After everything he’d put into the business, was it possible he would have to sell after all? The thought made him feel a little sick. Having no other options, he picked up his cell phone and sent text messages to Jeremy and Vince, asking for a partners’ meeting at his place that night. When they responded that they’d be there, he called and ordered a pizza to be delivered for the meeting. They might as well eat something good to wash down the bad news.

Gage got home half an hour before the guys were supposed to meet with him. He never held meetings with them about the ski resort
at
the ski resort. When he first bought the business, he decided to incorporate it and created a shell company that held ownership. He then hired himself to run the resort, and kept the true owner a secret. It was bad enough that people had thought a kid of twenty-five had been chosen as manager without the extra hype about him owning it. When Vince and Jeremy helped him out one season by investing in the company so he could upgrade, they each took on a five-percent interest in the resort. Only his payroll department and accountant knew the truth about the business’s ownership, though he knew some of the others who had worked in the resort for several years suspected the truth.

His house was less than a mile away down a quiet mountain road, so he frequently biked to work. It was a large Swiss-style home, two stories with cream-colored stucco and wooden beams. There was a stone chimney for the fireplace that could heat most of the house during the occasional power outage and big windows that brought the forest into the back and sides of the house. The forest had always been a refuge for Gage, so he’d wanted to surround himself with it as much as possible.

He entered to find a stack of dirty forks and knives, and several dirty paper plates on his counter from the previous night’s dinner and breakfast that morning. He glanced at the cupboard full of good china he’d inherited from his paternal grandmother, but cleared the dirty paper dishes and plastic forks and pulled out a stack of new ones for dinner that night. He knew better than to put china in the dishwasher and he was opposed to washing dishes by hand. He wiped down the counter and swept up the dirt from the kitchen floor. One of these days he really ought to get out the mop.

Checking the clock, he trudged up the open staircase to his room to grab a load of laundry. It was too bad clothes weren’t disposable too, because that would save him a lot of time in washing and folding.

His mom kept saying he should get a housekeeper to handle those kinds of things for him—she had always had one—but he didn’t want someone else in his stuff, hanging around the house, folding his boxers. He’d become too independent since heading off to college.

He started the washer and checked the dryer full of polo shirts and pants he’d washed days earlier and never folded, then put them in for a quick refresher run to get the wrinkles out—no way was he pulling out the iron if he didn’t have to.

By the time the clothes were ready for folding, he had cleared off the pile of stuff he left on the table beside the door, and was happy to find the key to the classic 1967 Camero he was restoring in his garage in the few free hours he could eek out of his busy schedule. He really needed to figure out how to juggle work, family, friends and come home before he was ready to drop into a coma. He hung up his clothes on the bar over the washer and told himself he’d move them to his closet later.

That done, he sank into one of the leather sofas he’d bought soon after he bought the house—it could hardly be his house if it didn’t have a nice-sized HDTV and a comfortable set of living room furniture to stretch out on while he watched the games. The doorbell rang as soon as he got comfortable. It had to be the pizza. He couldn’t remember the last time Vince or Jeremy bothered to ring the doorbell.

He hauled himself out of the chair to answer it, dropping some cash in the kid’s hand. When Gage told the kid to keep the change, his face brightened with excitement. Gage set the pizzas and soda on the table and slumped back into his sofa again. The house was quiet. Too quiet. Too empty. The hum of the refrigerator and ticking of the clock in the next room were all that broke the silence. He told himself he liked it that way, but he couldn’t quite believe it.

Intertwined with the suggestions that he get a housekeeper, his mother badgered him to move back into the family home. “After all, honey, you’re still single and it will be yours one day. Unless Natalie wants it.”

He most definitely did not want it, and he seriously doubted Natalie could afford it. The utilities alone would kill a man. People criticized him for his own home, saying it was far too big for a bachelor, but his parents’ place was several times larger.

Moving home would only make it so he was
really
on call around the clock, something that would drive him crazy. He needed his space. He loved his space. So why was it feeling really big and empty lately? He turned on the television for company, though he didn’t pay attention to the sitcom that came up.

Jeremy and Vince came in together a few minutes later, saving him from insanity. “Hey, lazy bones. What’s up with this? You came home before eight? What a slacker.” Jeremy joined him on the sofa as Gage hit the power button on the remote. “What’s the emergency meeting for?”

“Hey, pizza! I’m starving.” Vince flipped the box open. “I haven’t had a chance to eat anything in seven hours.”

“Food first. Bad news second.” Gage pushed himself out of the sofa and snagged a slice of meat lovers.

“Emergency meeting was discouraging enough. Now you’re saying it’s definitely bad news? I might need something stronger than Pepsi. Got a beer?” Jeremy asked as he crossed to the fridge.

“Doubtful. I haven’t been to the store in almost a week. I used the end of the milk yesterday.”

Jeremy looked and closed the door, shooting Gage a look of censure. “You’re a terrible host. Seriously, there’s beer in
my
fridge.”

“Mine too,” Vince said.

“Yeah, and I bet your women did the grocery shopping, didn’t they?” Gage took a fortifying bite of pizza, appreciating the melding of flavors on his tongue. It had been too long since lunch.

Neither man responded, which was answer enough.

The pizza and soda hit the spot, fortifying Gage with more energy so he was finally able to give them the bad news. “Those dividends you were expecting in a couple of weeks? Yeah, they’re not coming. Not unless you’d rather we sell the resort to that investor who was looking at it a few months ago.”

“What happened?” Jeremy asked, setting down his half-eaten slice of pizza. Gage treated his friends like full partners when big decisions came up, even though he had the final say.

“The haul ropes are wearing down—all of them. Not just a couple. I made a few phone calls about parts. We’ll have to use the profit from the winter receipts, and sink an extra twenty grand of personal cash if we don’t want them to shut down the lifts before the snow flies.”

“Can we even get them here and installed that soon?” Vince asked.

“My engineering department is cut to the quick for summer. I can give Ross a hand, but we’ll have to bring in some help—the companies I called for quotes both have crews who can come help with a lot of it—but they can’t guarantee that we can get the parts and timing right to get it all restrung unless we make the commitment in the next week or so. The big thing is coming up with the money—like yesterday—because they have to be paid for in advance and I have a lot of money sunk into the mountain bike festival and advertising for the other events we’ve got going.” His brain hurt from an afternoon of phone calls and calculations.

“You wanna sell some more of your business to us?” Vince asked. “We can come up with the capital. Well, I can come up with it.” He flashed a grin. “Or rather, Cami can. All of it if we need to. I’ll have to talk to my wife, but I’m sure she would be okay with that. If you wanted to pay us back and just make it a loan for now, that would be okay too.”