Page 358 of The Parkers' Handsome Holiday
I raised an eyebrow at him, thinking through the shared calendar that we had put together. “Who with?” I asked, not remembering seeing anything on the schedule for the morning. But the board of directors wanted me to be there with Ian while he talked to most of our important clients, just in case, so I supposed I was going to have to accompany Ian now.
“It’s with the board of directors,” Ian said, and I blinked in surprise. A secret meeting with the board? What did they want to talk to Ian about? Had they purposefully tried to exclude me?
They weren’t going to fire him, were they? They had to know that I would protest the idea of firing him. He was doing a lot better. Maybe they were trying to keep me from making a scene.
Ian grinned as though he knew just what I was thinking. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m the one who asked for the meeting. They kind of scheduled it last minute, so that’s why it’s not on the calendar.”
“Oh, okay,” I said, still feeling like I had been caught flat-footed by it all. “Well, I guess we should go, then. Where are we meeting them?”
But Ian shook his head. “You don’t need to come with me,” he said. “There’s just something that I want to talk to them about. And I want to do it on my own.” He paused. “Don’t get me wrong, I really appreciate all the help that you’ve been giving me. But I need to start asserting myself again if I want to have any chance of proving to the board of directors that you can go back to Utah.”
He grinned crookedly at me. “And as much as I don’t want to let you go back to Utah, because it would be great to have you here with me again, I understand that that’s not totally possible. So I need to get my act together.”
I nodded slowly. “Honestly, I wanted to have a talk with the board as well,” I admitted. “I know I should just be grateful that I got to have Adam here with me this weekend, but it’s only made me want to spend more time with him. I want to go back to Utah. So I’m hoping that the board will be reasonable and let me leave a little sooner.”
I don’t know what I expected from Ian. Of course, he was as anxious to get back to being in charge of his own business as I was anxious for him to take over again. I knew it must gall him to have his younger sister here to look out for him, after all. He liked having me here, but he didn’t like that his company was worried to let him take over again.
But I didn’t expect him to nod in agreement. “So actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to the board about,” he admitted. “Maybe you should come with me after all. Basically, I just wanted to point out that the longer you’re here and doing business with our clients, the more used to your presence they’re going to get. And the more of a change it’ll be when you leave again. But they can’t keep you here forever.”
He shrugged. “I know that I messed things up before, but I’m not going to do that again. And I’m ready to make sure that everyone knows that.”
I laughed. “All right, let’s go,” I said.
“Let me do the talking,” Ian said confidently as he led me to one of the conference rooms.
Inside, I was more than happy to sit back and watch as Ian chatted with the board. He had regained his confidence, but he also was deferent in a way that he wouldn’t have been before.
“I’m ready to take the reins back,” he said. “And more than that, I’m ready to see my sister go back to doing what she loves doing. You know as well as I do that she isn’t happy working for this company anymore. She’s been wonderful in helping us get things back on track, but she has her own company to run back in Utah, and it’s not fair to pull her away from all of that. She shouldn’t be stuck here because of my mistakes.”
He glanced over at me, and I smiled at him, grateful to hear him talk about me going back to Utah. He really understood that that was where I wanted to be, and he was willing to let me go back there.
Even though he knew that as soon as I was back there, I would be back with Adam. That was as close to approval as I could expect to get at the moment. That meant even more than his flying Adam here to Nevada for the weekend, really.
“As you know, I’ve been working mostly on my own this weekend, and I also chatted with a few of the shareholders this morning,” Ian continued. “I’m ready to take things back over and do things right this time. Of course, Bailey will still be in close contact. I’ll run things by her before I make any major changes in the future. And I’ll continue to run things by the board as well, to get the proper approval before I do anything. But it’s time for me to assume a leadership position again.”
There was silence in the room. I looked around, trying to gauge the board’s reactions. Would they agree with Ian that it was time for him to take things over again? In reality, this was the same conversation that I had had with the board before, telling them that I was ready to leave. But maybe it would mean more to them coming from Ian. He certainly looked like he was poised and ready to assume his role again.
Finally, I was relieved to see a couple of nods. “Bailey will need to be in close contact,” the board agreed, and a few of the members exchanged glances. “However, as long as she’s in daily contact to weigh in on decisions, I see no reason why she shouldn’t be allowed to go back to Utah.”
I stared at the board, hardly believing what I had just heard. A broad grin broke out across my face. “Thank you so much,” I said. “I’ll definitely be around if you need me for anything.”
It was an easy promise to make, after all. I got to go back to Utah, now instead of in a few weeks as originally planned. By this time tomorrow, I could be back in Adam’s arms.
That thought made me feel surprisingly nervous. What if things weren’t as good once I was back? What if by the end of the season, we had seen too much of one another and realized that we were never all that interested in one another to begin with?
But with that nervousness came a thrill as well. I got to see Adam again. To explore this relationship with him. Things were going to be okay for Ian here in Nevada, and I got to go back to running the business that I wanted to run.
I could barely believe it.
CHAPTER 61
ADAM
My first task on Monday morning was to talk to Kayla and Gretchen about what had happened while I was gone. Michael’s health was still causing him some trouble, so he couldn’t quite take over running the business yet. I hadn’t realized how much I was pinning my hopes on his being back to work on Monday, when I returned. I had to fight not to groan when Kayla told me that the reins were still in my hands.
“I’m just ready to go back to being unnoticed,” I admitted to Kayla after she had caught me up on the weekend’s news. We had broken some of our records for number of skier visits in the month of January as well as number of skiers on the hill for one day. And not only that, but in spite of how busy it had been over the weekend, it sounded like things had run really smoothly. The comments box was full of compliments for how well our staff had handled the business.
That was a relief. But not only that, it made me proud of a couple of the changes I had made in how things were run. Some of our staff had managed to fill in roles that we wouldn’t normally have had them in. They were just changes that made sense to me, like having our marketing team double as happy on-snow ambassadors, cheering up people who were sick of waiting in lines. We’d even had one of them dress up like our snowman mascot and entertain the kids out at ski lessons.
