Page 330 of The Parkers' Handsome Holiday
I took a deep breath and went about my afternoon activities mostly as normal. But around two-thirty, I stopped by Adam’s office, hoping that he was in there and that I wouldn’t have to track him down. I tapped lightly on his door and was relieved when he opened it.
I saw his face fall when he saw me, and he took a step back to let me in. “You’re probably here to fire me,” he said dully.
“What?” I asked in surprise. “No!” I shook my head. “Adam, I know things have been tricky with Ian being here, and I’m sorry that I haven’t addressed the issue. I’ve just been having a hard time because he’s my brother and he’s got some other things going on in his life right now.” She paused, emotion flickering across her face. “But I am going to figure all of this out.”
“Sure, okay,” Adam said, and I could tell that he didn’t exactly believe me. That was like a knife to the heart, but I couldn’t blame him.
“Could you tell me what happened this morning?” I asked him. “I’m going to dinner with Ian tonight to talk to him about all of this, but I want to make sure I have all the facts straight first.”
Adam sighed. “I was just working on the hot water heaters. One of them has a drip. Ian came and found me and basically told me, on penalty of losing my job, not to keep working on them because he has new ones coming.” He paused. “There’s no reason to install new water heaters; I’m sure that I can fix the leak. And besides, installing new ones now, when we’ve got people staying in all the condos, is going to be a nightmare. We’ll get a ton of complaints from people who, for good reason, are pissed that they can’t take hot showers.”
I shook my head, grimacing. “We can’t afford new hot water heaters right now anyway,” I said. “I keep trying to tell him, we’re turning a profit, but that money’s all earmarked for other improvements. I mean, it would be one thing if we needed new hot water heaters, but I expect that you or Gretchen would tell me if we did.”
“Yeah, well, Ian seems to think that he knows best,” Adam said sourly.
“I’ll talk to him. And I’ll make sure that the order is cancelled,” I sighed, hoping that we weren’t going to lose money on yet another unnecessary purchase. “If you could get that leak fixed when you have a chance, that would be great. I’m sorry about earlier.”
Adam rolled his eyes, and I couldn’t help wincing. “I know, I know,” I said, holding up both hands. “It should never have happened in the first place.” I took a step closer, but Adam stepped backwards.
“Don’t,” he said shortly. “Look, Bailey, all of this is getting too complicated. Focus on sorting things out with your brother. Please.”
I wanted to say something in response to that. His rejection was like another knife to my soul. But I knew that he was right. Until I made things right around the resort, until I made sure that Ian wasn’t doing his best to sabotage things between Adam and me, I had no right to continue trying to be in a relationship with Adam.
Which meant, I needed to figure out things with Ian as soon as possible. I still wasn’t entirely sure how to approach him about the casino stuff, but I didn’t think taking more time to think about it was going to make things any better. In fact, it might just make things worse since the more time we wasted, the more difficult it was going to be for me to help Ian. I needed to know exactly what was going on.
It was easy enough to get him to go out to dinner with me that night. We went to one of our old favorites, a cute little pizza place with vinyl booths and the best pizza crust in the world. “I need to talk to you,” I said as Ian took a bite of his pizza.
Ian frowned at me. “If this is about the orders for the resort, it’s like I told you,” he said. “It’s all stuff that the resort could use. Stuff that will improve the place.” He paused. “Anyway, I heard what you said about that, and I haven’t ordered anything new.”
I shook my head. “It’s not about the resort,” I said. “It’s about the casino business.”
Ian raised an eyebrow at me. “Are you hoping to come back to work for us?” he asked. “Because I have to say, Bailey, I know it’s the family business, but there might not be a place for you there anymore. We replaced you a while ago, and your replacement is doing a good job. Plus, you can’t just leave whenever you want to and come back whenever you’re bored with your other projects.”
I stared at him, wanting to say something nasty in response to that. But this wasn’t about me. I wanted to talk about his place in the casino business. I wondered if the only reason he was saying that at all was because he wanted to deflect the attention from himself.
So I shook my head. “I’m not planning on coming back,” I assured him. “But I wanted to talk to you about how the business is going.”
“It’s great,” Ian cut in, before I could say anything else. “Things have really been picking up. We’ve been drawing in more and more high rollers. Lots of improvements around the place.”
I frowned. “That’s not exactly what I’ve heard,” I said slowly, and I could see uncertainty flicker across Ian’s face for the first time. “I heard there have been a lot of improvements, or at least attempts at improvement. Lots of changes to the way things have been run. All those changes that you always said you wanted to make.”
Ian shrugged, but he looked wary. “Yeah, well. The place needed some changes, you know that. Things have been run the same way for decades now, and business has been stagnating. Gambling just isn’t what it used to be, especially not with all the online gambling now. We needed to get with the times and draw in a new crowd.”
“Sure,” I said easily, knowing that the best way to get information from him was to agree with him. “But I’ve heard that not everyone is happy with the changes.”
Ian scowled. “Who told you that?” he asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said easily. I paused and then laid my hands flat on the table. “Ian, come on. You know you can talk to me. What’s really going on? I hear some of the investors might be suing you.”
Ian stared at me for a long moment, and at first, I thought that he was going to deny everything. And what would I do then, pull out the news articles and demand the truth? I didn’t want to have to do that.
But finally, my brother sighed. “I am under investigation,” he admitted. “They mainly just want to know where the money has gone and why we’re not making more of it. I’ve tried to remind them that things could take time, that some of these things are long-term investments, but that’s not what everyone wants to hear.”
I sighed and shook my head. I barely stopped myself before I said something about how he was a better businessman than that and he should have known better. Whatever changes he had put into effect, the damage was already done. All that was left was to figure out how to deal with all of it now.
“I just don’t know what I’m going to do,” Ian said quietly. “I took all the money from my inheritance and put it into the casino, so it’s not like the investors are the only people losing money.”
“We’ll figure something out,” I told him simply. Then, I paused. “But if I help you with this, you have to promise to quit meddling with the resort. Because you’ve been driving me crazy lately.”
