Page 10 of Marrying the Nanny

“The initial business plan was more modest,” George said. “Things changed on the fly. I didn’t realize how far he’d overextended himself until we began pulling numbers for this meeting. The loan was never approved for this much.”

“Fifteen thousand to rebrand.” Trystan leafed through pages. “How does a website cost forty thousand dollars? I made my own for a couple hundred bucks. That plane he was flying? New two months ago. Did he even know how to fly it?”

“Please tell me it was insured?” Reid asked George, trying to ignore the churn in his stomach.

“I’ll check.” George picked up his pen to make a note.

“None of these upgrades are complete?” Logan was gray beneath his tan.

“No. And you’ll need to refinance before work can continue—which you’ll want to arrange quickly if you want to open on time for this season.”

Logan swore and ran his hand down his face, but it didn’t remove his flabbergasted expression.

Trystan swallowed loud enough Reid heard it.

Reid was ready to vomit. He didn’t want to believe any of this. He hadn’t come in here thinking to cash in on his father’s death, but he hadn’t expected to be at such a loss—pun intended. This was a strange feeling. He generally knew what to do in a given situation. He assessed quickly and set down the trail of breadcrumbs that got his clients out of whatever mess they’d created for themselves. That’s why they paid him the big bucks.

Reid ran the most esteemed, expensive corporate consulting firm in Western Canada. How had he got to the top so fast? By working his ass off, sure, but also by coming out of school not owing a penny.

He had earned his business degree without being sure what sort of business he would run, knowing only that he wanted to inhabit the corporate world, where he could print money for a living if he made the right choices. Since he excelled at telling people what to do, consulting had been a natural fit.

Thanks to his father, he had had a leg up, right out of the gate.

Had Reid viewed it as his father trying to buy his love or forgiveness and deliberately withheld both? Maybe. He’d been eighteen and angry. His father might have been making support payments, but Reid had known as he left Raven’s Cove that responsibility for his mother would forever fall on his own shoulders, not his father’s. He’d taken the “inheritance” Wilf offered as his due.

If Wilf had cratered his bottom line to give that to Reid, that had been Wilf’s choice. The ability to remain objective about other people’s bad decisions was Reid’s signature edge. He never took responsibility for how others conducted themselves, and he wasn’t swayed by a sob story, either.

Like one where an orphaned baby’s inheritance, if she ever saw a penny of it, would be spent on her upbringing, not on giving her the foundation for the successful adulthood that her three older brothers enjoyed.

He bit back a string of curses and scraped his hand down his melting face, gaze catching on Emma’s frown of concern as she made a tiny adjustment to the way the blanket framed the baby’s sleeping face.

Reid wondered exactly what kind of shape Raven’s Cove was in. Vultures would swoop in and pick anything apart. From an emotional standpoint, Reid honestly didn’t care what happened to the place. He had lived there under duress and hadn’t been back in the fourteen years since he’d left.

But he didn’t steal. He sure as hell didn’t steal from a baby. He might not have much of a heart, but he understood duty, especially to family.

Emma caught him staring. Her cheeks went pink with self-consciousness. Or contempt. He refused to wonder which. He took the bull and the other bull by the horns.

“We have to see what we’re up against,” he said to his brothers. “Figure out how to make it profitable again so someone will buy it for what it’s actually worth.”

“How long will that take?” Logan grumbled.

“I don’t know. That’s why we have to see it.” Reid twisted to glance out the window. The sky was low and gray. Spring on the coast. There was a reason he made Calgary his home. The days were almost always sunny, even when the temperature was well below freezing. “Fishing season starts in a month. Surely Dad expected the work to be done by then.”

“I have a show to finish,” Trystan said.

“I have drawings due,” Logan said.

“We all have jobs.” Reid didn’t have room for pity. “You came here for at least a week, right? To stay for the service?”

“Hey, if running up the coast and finishing whatever Dad started isn’t any inconvenience to you, then have at it. Take charge, captain. God knows you will anyway,” Logan muttered.

“I don’t like it, either. Is spitting and hair-pulling going to help?” Reid shot back.

“Are we going to have to ante up from our own pockets to finish the renos?” Trystan glanced at George and reached for the pages again.

“That would be the most expedient option. I think you’re best to assess it yourself and decide how much you’re willing to invest or whether you’d rather cut your losses.”

Losses? Reid thought of his mom and mentally rearranged his portfolio, calculating how much he could invest to bring things back into the black.

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