Page 307 of The Parkers' Handsome Holiday
But there was more to it than just the fact that he was my employee.
I hadn’t moved here to Park City just to fall in love with a man. I was here as a businesswoman, and I had plenty on my plate at the moment between learning everything that I could about the resort industry as well as dealing with the little daily challenges of owning a ski resort. I didn’t have time for foolishness.
And then there was the fact that Adam had always been one of Ian’s friends. They may have fallen out of touch in the years since we had stopped coming to Brooks Mountain as a family during the holidays, but the fact remained that Ian had always been the one who was close to Adam. And now that I owned this place, it was likely that Ian would be around a lot more and would want to be friends with Adam again. I couldn’t get in the middle of that.
Not only that, but there was Adam’s past. He had a son, Ethan. And I had no problem with that, but it did complicate certain things. It meant that any sort of relationship between Adam and I wouldn’t be just a fling. There was a certain level of commitment there.
Plus, I could tell that Adam was still, at times, bothered by the loss of Ethan’s mom. I didn’t know anything about her or about them, not even how she had died, and maybe that was something that I needed to know about before I fell head over heels in love with Adam. I doubted I would ever be able to measure up to her, and that was something that I would have to come to terms with.
I pushed all of those thoughts out of my mind for now, though. What I needed to do right now was to calm Ian down. Further conversations with Adam would come later, when all of this was resolved.
I found Ian waiting in the main part of the lodge. He gave me a look and then started walking away, clearly not wanting to have this conversation here. I felt my cheeks flush as I hurried after him. Like I had said to Adam, I wasn’t a child, and Ian’s disapproval of my actions shouldn’t bother me this much. But I couldn’t help feeling shame bubble up inside of me.
“Sleeping with one of your employees? Really?” Ian asked scathingly when we finally made it out behind the lodge. He shook his head. “I would have expected more from you as a business owner.”
I gaped at him, trying to think of what to say in response to that. To be honest, his words cut pretty deep. I’d felt uncertain ever since I had started here at Brooks Mountain, but things had been better in recent days. I had actually started to feel like I understood what I was doing there.
Part of that feeling, I knew, stemmed from the fact that Adam had been so supportive of me. But that was another thing that I couldn’t dwell on right now.
Maybe I should admit to Ian that Adam and I weren’t sleeping together. That we had just kissed. That we had only had that one kiss. But there was a part of me that insisted that that was none of his business anyway. Besides, if I made my argument about that now, it meant that there would be no chance for anything more in the future. If I assured Ian that Adam and I had only kissed and that I would never dream of sleeping with him, I was setting myself up to never go any further with Adam.
So instead, I just shook my head at Ian. “Calm down,” I told him. “What are you doing here, anyway? You never even said for sure that you were going to be able to come for Christmas. I thought things were busy with the casino business.”
“They are,” Ian said shortly. “But the more I thought about it, the more I worried that you might need my help here and not be asking for it. I didn’t want to leave you in that position.”
“I don’t need your help,” I protested, trying not to sound too snippy about his assumption that I would. I appreciated that he wanted to look out for me. Even though I thought it was a little ridiculous. I was a big girl, and this wasn’t my first foray into the business world. But Ian and I had grown up together, and he had always had my back when I still worked for the family business. It was only natural that even though I wasn’t part of the family business anymore, he would want to look out for me.
Still, looking out for me didn’t mean that he had any right to interfere in my personal life.
I tried to turn things even further away from my relationship. “Things have been going really well the past couple weeks,” I assured Ian. “It helps that we have really great snow this winter, but I also feel like I’ve been doing a good job here, and the staff seems to be responding to that too.”
“Look, I don’t want to talk about the business right now,” Ian interrupted. “Clearly you don’t have everything in control if you’re sleeping around with an employee. That’s not a responsible business practice, and you should know that. If you don’t, then you need my help even more than I had realized.”
I stared at him, fuming. But there was a part of me that knew that he was right, that kissing Adam had been irresponsible. It was part of why I had tried to hold back in the first place.
Ian continued, though. “Look, even leaving beside the fact that he’s your employee, you shouldn’t be with someone like Adam.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked in surprise. “I thought you guys were always friends.”
“We were,” Ian agreed. “We are.” He shook his head. “But come on, Bailey, you deserve someone better than some tradesman who has never even left his hometown.”
I blinked at him in surprise. I had never thought of Adam that way. Adam was Adam; kind, attractive, gruff but sincere, helpful in more ways than I could keep track of. He might work with his hands, but wasn’t the important thing that he was a hard worker? And he might not have gone to college that I knew of, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t intelligent.
Ian shook his head. “Look, he’s a great guy; I’ll be the first to say that. But you’re from different worlds, Bailey. He mentioned he married a girl he met when he was still in high school, and he’s never shown any interest in anything beyond this place. Why would you want to tie yourself down to that? And moreover, do you really think that things could possibly work out between the two of you in the long run? You’d get bored with him, and he’d hate how flighty you are.”
I swallowed hard, not even sure how to respond. Ian knew me better than anyone in the world. Was there a possibility that he was right? Maybe I was too flighty. It had been a pretty quick decision on my part, after Dad’s death, to buy this resort with my inheritance money. I had been struggling ever since, given that I just had no experience in the winter sports industry. Hell, I hadn’t even owned any winter clothes prior to moving up here.
And it was true that Adam was a creature of habit. From his morning routine to everything else in his life, there was a script that he followed. He wasn’t going to change that for anyone. Maybe he would get sick of me. Maybe I would get frustrated with him. It didn’t feel like that at the moment, but then again, what did I really know? All new relationships seemed exciting at first.
“Exactly,” Ian said, as though I had agreed with him already. He shook his head. “Lucky for you, I managed to find someone to take over for me for a couple weeks through the holidays. So I can help you out with turning this place around.”
“This place doesn’t need turning around,” I said, but my voice was no longer as certain as it had been before.
“Well, there are definitely certain changes that need to be made,” Ian said firmly, giving me a no-nonsense look.
There was a part of me that wanted to remind him that I was the one who had bought this place, that I was the one responsible for it. There was a part of me that wanted to tell him that he had no right to swoop in and start making changes to things.
But instead, I found myself nodding at my older brother. “All right,” I said quietly. “It’s good to see you.”
