Page 333 of The Parkers' Handsome Holiday
I headed into my office to make the phone call. I couldn’t help feeling nervous about it. What if whatever they were demanding was too much? What if they never wanted Ian to come back to work? That casino was his whole life; he, unlike me, had never dreamt of quitting and going into some other business. And besides, I knew what it meant to him, being part of the family business. He would feel like a failure if he was forced out of it.
What’s more, I didn’t know if the head of the board of directors, Bill, would even agree to talk to me about this. I wasn’t part of the business anymore, and there wasn’t all that much that I could promise him. It wasn’t like I could force Ian to bend to their wills; he was my older brother, and he was the one who had gotten into this mess in the first place.
But I had to try. I had promised Ian that I would do my best to help him, and as Kayla had pointed out, this was the most logical starting point.
“I have to tell you,” Bill said gravely when I told him why I was calling, “the guys are all extremely upset with Ian.”
“I’m sure they are,” I said. I knew the kind of havoc he had wreaked trying to make changes here at Brooks Mountain, so I could only imagine the kinds of things he had done with the casino business, with no one to really check his power. “But we can fix things, I’m sure.”
“I don’t know if we can,” Bill said grimly. “We’ve alienated a lot of our regulars. Ian was so set on bringing in new customers that he was willing to make whatever changes he thought needed to be made. But our regulars come here expecting certain things from us. There’s an image associated with our brand. And it’s not a bunch of rich youngsters throwing parties in the middle of the casino floor or puking in the club bathrooms.”
I winced. I could imagine just the kind of people that Ian had been trying to appeal to, and knew just how obnoxious that would have been to a lot of our regulars. Ian had tried to remake the whole image to be young and hip and fresh, but he’d lost a certain amount of class in the process.
It was sort of the same thing that he’d been trying to do here at Brooks Mountain, when I thought about it; trying to bring in rich new folks at the risk of alienating the down-to-earth locals and vacationers who had been our staple clientele for years.
“We can fix things,” I repeated, more firmly this time.
“If you say so,” Bill sighed. “But honestly, I think that if you want to fix things, you’re going to need to come back here to Vegas to put in a certain amount of work yourself. Show your face to the regulars, apologize to them, help come up with ways to bring them back to the tables here.”
I frowned, twisting my chair back and forth for a moment. This was the busy season for a ski resort, although things were starting to wind back down to normal levels again. Still, I hadn’t planned to return to Vegas this season. I didn’t want everyone here thinking that I was one of those bosses who would only be there every so often, as it suited me.
But at the same time, Ian’s life and livelihood was on the line. If Bill was sure that my presence back in Vegas was what it would take to get the casino business back on track, then I had to take that at face value. And I knew that I had a responsibility to my family. Like Adam had said, family always came first. I couldn’t run my own business at the expense of my blood. Everyone here would just have to understand that.
Still, I hesitated. I wanted to believe that I could trust Ian being here in Park City while I headed back to Vegas to straighten things out, but I remembered the conversation that I had had with Adam the previous day, and the things that I had promised everyone that morning in the all-employee meeting. I had said that Ian wasn’t going to cause trouble around the resort anymore. I had promised that that situation was handled.
I couldn’t take a chance of Ian messing with things while I was gone.
“Bill, I know that you guys don’t really want to deal with Ian at the moment, but he’s going to come back with me,” I said firmly. “He and I will meet with the regulars together and see if we can straighten things out. I think that’ll be best for the long-term.”
Bill was silent for a moment. Then, he sighed. “A lot of our regulars aren’t going to want to see him,” he said. “But you’re probably right that it’s better for the long term. If they can see that he really does want to get to know their wants and needs, then they might even be willing to allow for some changes to the place.”
I nodded, even though I knew he couldn’t see it. “I’ll book our flights this afternoon,” I promised, already trying to think of a way to explain things to Ian.
He wasn’t going to get to make all the changes that he wanted to make. And what’s more, he was going to have to deal with me being there to help smooth ruffled feathers, even after I had refused to allow him to have any say in what happened here with my business.
I hoped he didn’t feel like I was trying to take things over from him, because that was the last thing that I wanted. No, if I had my way, I would stay right here in Park City through the entire winter season. But it didn’t seem like that was an option.
I spared a moment to think about Adam. I hated the idea of hitting the pause button with him now, when things were already so uncomfortable between the two of us. I was afraid that if I headed off to Nevada now, leaving things as they currently were, then we would never be able to build a relationship between the two of us.
But Adam knew the importance of family. He had been the one recommending that I help Ian in the first place. He would understand if I had to go off to Vegas right now. When I came back, when the Ian situation was settled, then we would have plenty of time to get back on the same page with our relationship.
CHAPTER 44
ADAM
I smiled as Ethan jumped up and down with glee at having finally managed to shoot down one of the cans that we had set up at the far end of the yard. I had spent the week working hard to get caught up on everything on my list of tasks. The busier I’d been, the less I’d had time to think about Bailey. And with Ian finally agreeing not to interfere around the resort, it meant I knew exactly what my tasks were and wasn’t trying to plan for weird things like replacing all the water heaters in the middle of the busy season.
I had gotten a surprising amount done, and I had been able to take another Saturday off to spend a little extra time with Ethan. That morning at breakfast, he’d asked if we could go skiing with Bailey today, of course. But it was easy enough to redirect his enthusiasm towards practicing with the BB gun that Dad had given him, especially when I reminded him that he was going skiing with one of his friends that afternoon. He didn’t want to wear himself out with us.
I wasn’t really in the mood for skiing that morning. I didn’t really want to be anywhere near the resort at the moment; every time I went there, I seemed to end up twisted in knots over the Bailey situation. And focusing on what he was doing with the BB gun and whether or not he was using it safely kept my attention away from my own thoughts of Bailey.
It was a win-win.
To tell the truth, I was still feeling guilty about the way that I had blown her off the day before. I had tried to apologize to her at the end of the day, to tell her that if she needed help thinking of some way to help him, I was at her disposal. But when I had gone to her office, she had already left for the day. I had thought about calling her or texting her, but the latter seemed too cold and I had a feeling that if I tried to call her, I was just going to end up totally tongue-tied and saying something stupid.
Anyway, I’d see her around the resort tomorrow and talk to her then. It wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t like I wasn’t going to see her again.
“Nice shot, buddy,” I said to Ethan. “Hey, do you want to see what it looks like when you shoot an apple? These guys are pretty rotten.”
