Authors: Sherryl Woods
Trace regarded him with bewilderment. “But you asked her first.”
“When has your sister ever paid any attention to logic? She’s convinced I only asked her because I knew you wouldn’t want the job.”
“I don’t suppose you tried to convince her she was wrong,” Trace said.
“How could I when she was right?”
“Do you think you two will ever learn to communicate?” Trace grumbled. He and his dad might be at loggerheads ninety percent of the time, but Lawrence Riley and Laila were rarely on the same page about anything, from a choice as inane as breakfast cereal to a decision as critical as who ought to run the bank. It had been that way from the moment she learned to talk.
“You mean communicate the way you and I do?” his father retorted wryly.
“Yeah, at least that well,” Trace responded. “Look, I’ll talk to her. I’ll smooth things over between the two of you. Her pride’s been hurt because you’ve made it plain over the years that you want me back here, but she’ll come around.”
His father hit his fist on the desk. “Dammit, you’re the one who needs to come around, Trace. What ever happened to family loyalty? A man works his whole life to build up something good for his son, and you toss it aside without a second thought.”
“I’ve had a lifetime to think about it. You’ve never made a secret about what you expected. I’ve given it a second thought and a third, for that matter, ever since you called. Dad, come on, you know the whole nine-to-five drill would never work for me. I like a job that’s creative, a word that tends to make bankers nervous as hell.”
The faint hint of a smile finally touched his father’s lips. “True enough,” he admitted. “How about this? We give it six months. If you still hate it, you can take off again with my blessing. That’s fair, isn’t it?”
As a respected and in-demand artist working freelance for several of New York’s top ad agencies, Trace had the flexibility to do as his father asked. He could even keep up with a few accounts to keep himself from going totally stir-crazy in Chesapeake Shores. If it would buy him his freedom permanently, surely he could survive six months in a suit. He owed his father that much respect. And in the long run that short-term display of loyalty would be wiser than causing a family rift.
Moreover, he could spend the time trying to convince his sister to forget about her stupid pride and being second choice. She’d wanted this job since she’d learned to count. She ought to grab it, rather than wasting her talent by keeping the books for a few local businesses. Unfortunately she’d inherited their father’s stubbornness. It would probably take Trace every single day of the allotted six months to make peace between the two of them.
“Okay, six months,” Trace agreed. “Not one day longer.”
His father beamed at him. “We’ll see. You might discover you have an aptitude for banking, after all.”
“Or you’ll realize I’m incompetent when it comes to math.”
“I have your college test scores and grades that say otherwise.” He stood up and held out his hand. “Welcome aboard, son.”
Trace shook his hand, then studied his father intently. There was a glint in his eyes that suggested there was more to the negotiations than Trace had realized. “What are you up to?” he asked warily.
“Up to?” Lawrence Riley had a lousy poker face. Half of his pals at the country club would testify to that. For the past thirty years, they’d lined their pockets with his losses.
“Don’t even try to play innocent, Dad. You’re up to something, and it has nothing to do with me becoming your protégé around here.”
“We’ve made a business deal, that’s all,” his father insisted. “Now let me show you your office. It’s fairly Spartan now, but if you decide to stick around you can decorate it however you want. Meantime, I’ll have Raymond go through some loan folders with you. We have a meeting of the loan committee first thing Tuesday morning. You’ll need to have your recommendations ready then.”
Trace held up a hand. “Hold on a second. I don’t know enough to make recommendations on whether loan applications should be approved.”
“Raymond will show you the ropes. He’s been my right hand for years. And they’re not all loan applications. There’s a possible foreclosure in there, too.”
Trace’s stomach knotted. “You want me to decide whether or not someone’s home should be taken away and put up for auction?”
“It’s a business, not a home. And you won’t be deciding on your own, of course. The board will have the final say, but we’d likely act on your recommendation.”
“No way,” Trace said. Who was he to rip someone’s dreams to shreds? Businesses in Chesapeake Shores were small, family-owned operations. It would be like taking the food right off someone’s table, someone he knew, more than likely. He wasn’t sure he had the stomach to do that.
“You can’t be softhearted, son. It’s strictly business, a matter of dollars and cents. You’ll see once you’ve taken a look at the paperwork.” His father patted him on the back. “You start looking over those files and I’ll send Raymond in.”
Trace scowled at his father’s departing back, then turned to the stack of folders sitting neatly in the middle of the huge mahogany desk that took up most of the corner office. Right on top sat one with a large, ominous red sticker pasted on the front.
He sat down in the leather chair behind the desk, his wary gaze on that folder. Curiosity finally got the better of him, and he flipped open the file and stared at the first page.
“Oh, hell,” he murmured as he read it:
Possible notice of foreclosure—The Inn at Eagle Point. Owner: Jessica O’Brien.
He knew Jess O’Brien, but it wasn’t her image that immediately came to mind. It was that of her older sister, Abigail, the woman who’d stolen his heart years ago on a steamy summer night, then disappeared without even a goodbye. Over the years he’d told himself it was ludicrous to cling to such an elusive memory. He’d tried to chase it away with other relationships, most of them casual, but even a couple that had promised a deeper intimacy. In the end, he hadn’t been able to shake his desire for someone with auburn hair, laughing eyes and a daredevil spirit that matched his own.
Now he was supposed to decide the fate of her sister’s inn? One thing he knew about the O’Briens, they stuck together. If he took on Jess, he’d be taking on the rest of them, Abby included. Was that what had put the gleam in his father’s eye earlier?
He shook off the possibility. His father couldn’t know that he’d been carrying a torch for her all these years. No one did.
Except Laila, he realized. His sister had been Abby’s best friend. She’d even covered for the two of them that amazing night they’d spent together in a secluded cove on the beach. Could she and his father be conspiring?
Damn straight, he thought with a shudder. Maybe he was finally about to get his wish and see Abby again. Or maybe he was about to land in a whole mess of trouble. He wondered if, with Abby involved, he’d actually be able to tell the difference.
An hour later with the inn’s dismal financial figures still in his head, Trace climbed on his bike and took a drive to see the property. He was hoping he’d find something—
anything
—to convince him to let the loan stand. He needed arguments he could take to the board and his father with total confidence.
Winding along the coastal road, he breathed in the salty air and relaxed as the sun beat down on his shoulders. It was late spring, but there was still the scent of lilacs on the breeze as he rounded the curve by the Finch property. Widow Marjorie Finch, who’d been bent and wizened when he was a boy, loved her lilacs. They’d been allowed to grow and spread until they formed a hedge all along the road. When honeysuckle had grown up in the bushes, she’d attacked it as if it were an alien invader. Her loving attention had paid off. The bushes were heavy with fragrant, delicate blossoms.
To his right, along the narrow strip of land that ran along the beach, ospreys were building their nests back in the same bare branches where they’d built them for years. To his amusement, one intrepid osprey was constructing an elaborate configuration of branches, bits of string and even a strand of yellow police tape on a post at the end of someone’s dock. The owner was going to be ticked as hell to discover that his dock would be off-limits for the rest of summer while the birds of prey took up residence.
Eventually he reached the turnoff to the inn, converted from what had once been a sprawling Victorian home on a pinnacle of land overlooking the bay. The last time he’d been here, the place had been badly in need of paint, its boards weathered by the sea air and harsh winter winds. The Adirondack chairs and rockers on the porch had been in an equally sad state of disrepair. The once perfectly manicured lawn had gone mostly to crabgrass, the gardens to weeds. The Pattersons hadn’t put a dime into the place for years, and the neglect had shown.
Now, though, there was plenty of evidence that Jess had been hard at work remodeling the inn. The exterior was a soft white that seemed to reflect a hint of blue from the nearby water. Shutters were a bold red. The grass wasn’t as lush as it had once been, but it was green and well-trimmed. The azaleas and lilacs were in bloom, and one overgrown purple rhododendron spilled its huge blooms over a porch railing at the back of the house. The inn’s sign had been freshly painted and hung from brass hooks on a new pole at the edge of the driveway. It looked to him as if the place was ready to make a comeback.
Jess’s payment record, however, told a different story. Since taking out the loan a year earlier, she already had a history of late payments, had missed several altogether. She’d spent every penny of her small-business loan, and no opening date for the inn had been set. Her cash flow was nonexistent. She’d already had a couple of formal warnings from the bank. Ever since the credit disaster in the mortgage industry, banks were getting jittery about loans that looked as if they were going bad. On paper, it appeared the bank had no choice except to issue a foreclosure notice. Trace cringed at the prospect.
Even as he sat on his bike in the driveway, the door opened and Jess stepped outside. She caught sight of him and frowned.
“What are you doing here, Trace?” she asked.
Scowl in place, she crossed the lawn, hands on hips, her feet shoved into a pair of rubberized, all-weather clogs from one of the big outdoor apparel companies. Her jeans and T-shirt were splattered with paint—white, plus something close to Williamsburg blue, if he remembered his color palette correctly.
When she was standing practically toe-to-toe with him, her defiant gaze locked with his, she reminded him of another O’Brien with a fiery Irish temper.
“Well?” she challenged.
“Just looking things over.”
“For your father, no doubt.”
“For the bank,” Trace corrected.
“I thought you’d left town years ago, that you wanted no part of the bank.”
“I don’t. I’m just filling in for a few months.”
“Long enough to make my life hell?”
He grinned at that. “Maybe longer.” He made a sweeping gesture toward the house and grounds. “You’ve been busy.”
“It’s taken a lot of work. I’ve done most of it myself to save money,” she said, her chin lifted with pride and a hint of belligerence.
“Might have made more sense to hire people and get it done sooner, so you could open.”
“I didn’t see it that way.”
“Obviously not.”
“Do you want to take a look around inside?” she asked, her expression hopeful, her tone filled with enthusiasm. “Maybe once you’ve seen how great it looks, you’ll be able to go back and tell your father to be patient.”
“It’s not that simple, Jess. I know he’s warned you that you’re getting too far behind. The bank looks at the bottom line, not at whether or not you’re doing a good job with a paintbrush.”
“When did you turn into a hard-ass, by-the-numbers guy like your dad? You weren’t that way when you were seeing my sister.” She gave him a considering look. “Or were you? Is that why the two of you split up?”