Page 299 of The Parkers' Handsome Holiday
“I can, if you want,” Kayla offered, giving me a sympathetic look.
I shook my head. “Nah, I’ll do it. If I have to, I’ll pull the boss card and tell him that whatever’s going on, I need him to get his ass over here.” I just hoped it didn’t come to that.
I headed inside and back to my office, where it was a little quieter. Then, I gave Adam a call.
“Bailey?” he asked in surprise. “What’s up?”
“You know how you keep telling me that I can always call you during your days off? Well, I need you to come in today. As soon as possible,” I told him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, sounding worried.
“Something with the Dasher lift,” I told him. “No one really knows what. But we’ve got people stranded on the lift and down in the lift line there, so we really need you.” I paused. “I wouldn’t have called if I knew anyone else who could help. But I at least need a recommendation for someone else who might be able to help.” I paused. “It’s our busiest day ever, and I really don’t want to have the bad press over this.”
Adam groaned, and I could hear the frustration in his tone. “Did the lifties hit the emergency stop?” he asked. “Sometimes it sticks a little and you just have to jiggle it a bit to get it working again.”
So much for how I could call him whenever it was his day off. I started rethinking whether it made more sense to hire someone on to work with him. I knew that he was against that idea, that he liked having control of every part of the maintenance of the mountain. But it meant we had a serious problem if he wasn’t available.
“They didn’t,” I said tightly. “They have no idea what happened, it just stopped.”
“All right,” Adam said. “I’ll be right over there.”
“Thanks,” I said, hanging up the phone before he could say anything else. Then, I headed out to talk to our mountain operations lead to chat about how we were going to minimize the bad press from this.
Just when things were really going well for the resort, I thought with a sigh as I walked. But then again, wasn’t that always the way with businesses? You could never just count on things to go well. There were always going to be some hitches in there. Half of being a good business person was knowing how to minimize the messes.
And making sure that your staff were going to be there when they were supposed to be there. I tried not to feel frustrated with Adam, especially since I didn’t know what was going on with him that day, that he couldn’t be there. But at the same time, it was hard not to be frustrated. Our busiest day and no mechanic on site?
Yeah, we were definitely going to need to have a talk about that. I sighed, filing that away for now. First, we needed to get all our guests off the lift and to safety. We’d worry about the rest later.
I should just be glad that it wasn’t too cold right now, and that it wasn’t snowing. The guests stranded on the lift probably weren’t too comfortable, but things could have been much worse. We’d get them off there as quickly as we could, even if it meant evacuating the lift.
CHAPTER 21
ADAM
Of course this was the day that there was a problem at the mountain while I wasn’t there. Of course. I closed my eyes and counted to ten, trying not to let frustration get the better of me. I knew that Bailey had done exactly the right thing in calling me; I knew that she hadn’t had any choice in the matter. And I knew that I needed to get over there and get that lift working again. It probably wouldn’t even take that long, in the scheme of things.
But it wasn’t like I could leave Ethan here alone. On any other Wednesday, he would have been at school right now, and it wouldn’t have been an issue. Hell, before Bailey showed up, I wouldn’t even have minded taking him over to the resort with me. But now, well. The trouble was, there was something that insisted that I should have told her about Ethan before now.
Which was ridiculous, really. It wasn’t like Bailey and I were in a relationship or anything. She didn’t need to know every detail of my life. She didn’t deserve to know every detail of my life, even. But she had asked me if I was single, and she had made it seem like maybe she was interested in me. Hell, she had invited me in for wine, after we’d had dinner together in what might have been a date.
I should have told her about Beth, and I should have told her about Ethan. I didn’t even really know why I hadn’t. But I did know that if I just showed up at the resort now with my son in tow, things were going to look bad. It was going to look like I had been hiding this from her, like I was either ashamed to have a son or else didn’t trust her with that information. I wasn’t sure which was worse.
Either way, I didn’t really want to do that.
So I tried calling Dad. But either he was out or else he was ignoring my call after my snappy words from that morning, my insistence that I could handle this on my own, without his help. I swallowed hard and called up the babysitter who sometimes helped me out. But she was busy as well. I tried Dad again, but I still couldn’t reach him.
There was nothing else that I could do. I knew we couldn’t leave our guests stranded up on the lifts, and I knew that even if we got them all evacuated by other means, I was going to have to get that lift spinning as soon as possible. With the way we’d been getting slammed with snow lately, it was one of the most popular lifts on the hill, servicing a good half of the expert terrain, from bowls to glades and everything in between. It would be a huge media issue if the lift was out of commission for more than an hour.
I sighed and headed into Ethan’s room. “Hey, buddy,” I said, unable to keep the unhappiness out of my voice. “How are you feeling?”
“Better,” Ethan said, and he definitely did sound and look better. A lot more lucid. And when I felt his forehead, he was nowhere near as warm as he had been that morning. Whatever bug he had had, it seemed to have mostly gone. My relief was short-lived, though; all I could think about was the fact that I had no choice, I had to take him to the resort. Whatever might come of that.
“I’ve got to go fix one of the lifts at the resort,” I told Ethan slowly. “And I tried calling Gramps to see if he could stay with you, but he’s not around right now.”
“That’s okay,” Ethan said immediately. “I can come with you. I like going to the mountain.”
I swallowed hard, resisting the urge to ask if he was sure. Because even if he had said that he didn’t want to go with me, I had no other choice. This wasn’t a good idea, not by any stretch of the imagination, but there was nothing else that I could do.
