Page 1 of Summer with the Single Dad

CHAPTER ONE

Bennett McEvoy plunked his elbows on the worn wooden desk of his office and hung his head, catching his scalp in his fingers and tugging harder than he probably should have. Baldness didn’t run in his family, thankfully, but he probably shouldn’t be testing the strength of his follicles anyway.

The business was hemorrhaging money, and it was up to him to stop it.

But his brothers figured because the restaurant was always full, the brewery continuously sold out of stock, and their cabin reservation book had a mile-long waitlist, everything was peachy keen.

Well, it fucking wasn’t, jellybean. It fucking wasn’t.

They took a massive hit during COVID-19. They stopped giving themselves a wage, but paid all their bills and staff from the beer sales. So even though technically, the business was slowly creeping back into the black, Bennett and his brothers themselves were struggling.

They poured every penny they had into buying the property and setting up the businesses, and although it was all successful, the price of everything needed to run a restaurant, brewery, and rental cabins just continued to go up. Fuck, even between now and a year ago, laundry detergent had gone up over fifty percent. And between the kitchen, dining room, and cabins, they did a fuck-ton of laundry.

And all that shit added up.

Not to mention, the electricity bill which pillaged their bank account like it was some medieval sheriff collecting taxes from the poor villagers.

It didn’t help that Clint just bought brewery equipment whenever he needed to, not bothering to discuss it with Bennett ahead of time. He just ordered what he needed—like a new unitank jacket conical fermenter, whatever the fuck that was?—which cost over a thousand dollars, and handed Bennett the bill, expecting Bennett to pull the money out of somewhere. His ass, maybe? Wyatt was the same way in the kitchen. He just bought a brand-new fucking commercial deep fryer for twenty-five hundred bucks, because the other one broke. And yeah, they needed it, but he didn’t even talk to Bennett about it first. He just told Bennett to deal with it.

A knock on his office door pulled him from his spiraling funk. “Come in,” he murmured.

“Daddy?” It was Aya, his seven-year-old daughter. Her nine-year-old sister, Emerson—or Emme, as they called her—was right behind her. They both had smoothie cups with reusable silicone straws.

“Hey, sweethearts,” he said, throwing on a smile and pushing his rolling chair away from his desk so Aya could perch on his knee. “What kind of smoothie did Uncle Dom make you guys this time?”

She offered him the straw. “Pineapple, spinach, mango. It’s really good.”

He took a long pull off the straw, regretting it instantly when the brain freeze tried to render his children orphans for twenty seconds.

“Brain freeze?” Emme asked with a giggle.

He blinked open his eyes as the pain receded. “Yeah.” Kissing Aya’s temple, he inhaled her fruit punch shampoo. “It’s a good smoothie though.”

“We’re boooooored,” Aya said. “What can we do?”

“Where are all your cousins? Go find them to play with.”

Both girls made faces and rolled their matching brown eyes. Eyes they inherited from their late mother, who was half Colombian. “The boys are playing video games and we don’t want to play video games,” Emme said. “And Talia is in Seattle with Brooke and Uncle Clint. She skipped school and went over with them this morning.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Bennett said, nodding. “Brooke had to chat with the police about—”

“All that crazy stuff that went down with her stalker-killer,” Emme replied, plunking a hand on her hip and shaking her head. At that moment, she reminded him so much of her mother. Both girls looked a lot like Carla, but Emme was her doppelgänger. Aya inherited Bennett’s mother’s blonde hair, but Emme had Carla’s dark-brown curls, darker skin tone, and long eyelashes.

“Yeah,” he confirmed, shoving the wave of grief and nostalgia down to the very bottom of his gut. He didn’t have time to deal with that right now. “And Uncle Clint went over for support. He also took over some shipments of beer. Talia tagged along because she just wanted to.”

The girls pouted. “I wish we could have skipped school and gone to Seattle.” Aya took a sip of her smoothie. “We never get to do anything fun.”

He tickled her ribs. “Oh, is that so?”

She giggled and squirmed on his lap.

“I seem to remember just last night, I let you both stay up late. We made microwave s’mores and watched two movies. That was pretty fun, wasn’t it?”

“You know what we mean,” Emme said, all sass and pre-teen angst.

Inhaling deep through his nose, he scrambled to collect every ounce of patience and compassion he could find. “I know,” he said, meeting Emme’s gaze. “It isn’t the same, but it’s something. It’s all I can offer you right now. This isn’t the first time we’ve had this discussion either.”

“I know.” Emme hung her head and broke eye contact.

---