Page 271 of The Parkers' Handsome Holiday
I shrugged. “If I don’t like it, I’ll come back,” I promised him. “People are always looking for places to rent in those mountain towns. Even if I don’t like the place, I’m looking at it like an investment.” I grinned cheekily. “A real investment would be if I just went ahead and bought the whole mountain and ski resort,” I said casually, as though I hadn’t already thought about that.
Ian sputtered for moment. “I’m not sure right now is the time to be buying a ski resort,” he said.
“Why not?” I asked. “I have the money, and buying the resort would give me the peace of mind to know that some conglomerate isn’t going to come over and make a bunch of changes to the place. I always liked how charming the mountain was. No pretenses. I want to keep it that way. And if I buy it, then I have the chance to.”
“You don’t know the first thing about ski resort management,” Ian protested.
“The way I look at it, I’d be more of an investor,” I said, shrugging. “I’d let everyone keep doing what they were doing before. That’s what I want, after all. But I’d be the one signing off on any new changes.” I paused. “Besides, I know all about how businesses are run. Sure, maybe not ski businesses. But I think I can figure it out.”
The way I said it was a challenge. What was he going to do in response, tell me that I knew nothing about running a business? He knew that that wasn’t true. And even though he didn’t like change, he also had always been my biggest supporter. If I made sure he knew that this was really what I wanted to do, I would have him on my side for life.
Ian was quiet for a moment. “I really think you should think about this,” he finally said.
“I will,” I promised him, just as quietly. But in my heart, I knew that my decision had already been made.
CHAPTER 3
ADAM
I hummed to myself as I bustled around the kitchen, trying to simultaneously make breakfast while preparing a packed lunch and a couple snacks for Ethan. It would be his first afternoon on the hill with the race club, and I wanted to make sure he’d have enough snacks for not only himself but for a couple friends as well. Not that I was worried about him having friends in the club; a bunch of the other kids were returning from the year before, and it wasn’t like Ethan had ever had a hard time getting to know new kids.
It was honestly a relief to know that I wouldn’t have to pick him up until a little later that afternoon. The school bused the kids over to the hill right after they finished their lunches, around one p.m., and they’d ski until the lifts closed at four, rather than the normal school day when they ended at two-thirty. I had a bunch of things on my agenda for the day, starting with some lift maintenance and ending with cleaning out a bunch of snowmaking hoses that were no longer needed on the hill, and I was hoping I could squeeze it all in. The extra hour and a half would definitely help.
I paused as I opened the fridge, staring at the picture of Beth that was still stuck on there. She was laughing in the picture as she formed a snowball to throw at Ethan, who was on the right-hand side of the frame. It had been two years since she had died, and it was still hard to see her smile like that. But I could never bring myself to take down the photos of her. I couldn’t forget her, either way, and it was better to remember the good times rather than the way that things had been towards the end.
My thoughts started to drift, but before they could really take me down the rabbit hole, Ethan came bounding into the kitchen already wearing his bibs and jacket. I laughed when I saw him. “Buddy, remember you have to go to school before race club,” I reminded him.
Ethan pouted. “Why, though?” he asked. I knew that in his little head, he was going to grow up and be an Olympian. But what he, at his young age, didn’t understand was that after his years of racing were over, he was going to need to do something with the rest of his life. And not only that, but skiing was a fiendishly expensive sport, especially at the most competitive levels. Between skis and helmets and everything else, he was probably going to need to find some way to finance that Olympic bid.
Now wasn’t the time to get into all of that with him, though. Instead, I just grinned at him. “Because you wouldn’t want a bunch of dumb-dumbs on the hill with you, would you?”
It was an argument designed just for him. He had always been a rule-follower, and I remembered how proud he had been when he had finally memorized all seven parts of the skier safety code. In fact, I was sure that I could still recite all the rules in my head, he had told them to me so many times.
Right now, he nodded seriously. “That would be dangerous,” he said, his little eyes going wide and round. “I guess maybe I need to go to school,” he finally allowed. “But I hate math.”
I fought the urge to laugh. “Go get changed into some school clothes and put your bibs back in the hall with your boots,” I told him.
He scampered off. I had breakfast on the table by the time he reappeared. I glanced at my watch and was relieved to see that we were still on time.
“I’m going to learn to do all the tricks this year,” Ethan told me as he munched on a piece of toast.
“Oh yeah?” I asked.
“Uh huh. Like flips and stuff. And trees! I want to ski through all the trees this year.”
I grinned. “We’ll see what we can do,” I promised him. “But you’d better make sure you’re wearing that helmet if you’re going to be doing flips and stuff.” Personally, I hoped it was a long, long time before he started doing any sort of tricks on his skis. I knew the kinds of videos that were out there these days. And I knew the kinds of injuries that a kid could end up with if he landed one of them wrong.
Fortunately, I trusted the instructors who ran the ski club to keep the kids in check. Ethan had gone off a few little kickers the previous winter, but when he showed them to me when he and I skied together, I was relieved to see that he barely got a few inches off the ground, and he was sure to check out the jump before he hit it. His teachers had taught him well.
I just hoped that those rule-following tendencies of his didn’t disappear as he got older.
And I really hoped that I could get him more into the racing program so that he wouldn’t have time to get too involved with freestyle skiing or anything else. Not that racing didn’t come with its own share of injuries, but at least the kids in race programs weren’t always trying to one-up the others with something ridiculous. Or at least, not exactly.
We chatted for the rest of breakfast. Or rather, Ethan did, keeping up a steady stream of chatter even when I didn’t respond as often as I should have. As for me, I was going through my task-list in my head, trying to figure out what order to do things in so that the most important things would definitely get done. But the trouble with that day was, everything on my schedule felt pretty damn important.
Two weeks into December, we were just heading into the holiday season, our busiest time of the year. And with the way that it had been snowing that year, I just knew that it was going to be even busier than normal. That meant that the new condos had to be one-hundred percent ready to go, with hot water and everything, and the older condos had to be checked out as well. Plus hill operations had to be running as efficiently as possible. The more we could get ahead on maintenance and other on-hill operations now, the less I would be hindered by the hordes of guests that came out for the holidays.
And the happier Gretchen and the rest of the mountain staff would be.
