Page 41 of Taming the Boss

The most intense and active member of our business was Xavier Hastings. He and Gavin Forrester were homegrown Crescent Covites, and in the past, I’d relied on them to do a majority of the in-person details.

That would be changing now that I lived in the Cove, as well, but I was still getting caught up after my cross-country move. Not to mention my new full-time father status. They’d been giving me leeway for the last few weeks.

I had a feeling that would be ending.

“Maitland just tried to buy the bank note on the Cove Commons.”

“What the fuck?” I paused next to my parked car, the first plops of rain adding to the already humid air.

“Yeah.” Xavier sighed. “He’s really pissed that we outbid him. You’d think after all these years he’d get his head out of his ass about it, but here we are. I checked in with my contact at the bank. The lovely Adrienne let it slip that Maitland bought two of the properties across from us.”

“What the hell? I thought that was a done deal for us to buy them?” I slid inside my car and turned it on, switching to Bluetooth through my speakers so I could check my email.

Had I fallen that behind?

“I’ve been trying to handle it with your new…situation.”

My fingers tightened on my phone. “Owen is not a situation, X.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know what else to call it.” I could hear his fingers on his keyboard. Xavier’s setup at FHK’s office reminded me of a teenager with unlimited money, complete with an annoying clacking keyboard.

He also didn’t know the first thing about dealing with responsibilities outside of work. Much like I’d been a few months ago, which was why I wasn’t going to rip into him.

“He’s my son.” It was getting easier to say, even if it was still so new for me.

“I know, J. And I know you need some time to get comfortable in that big ol’ mansion on the lake. I think that house was actually the impetus for Maitland to go after us again. He wanted that house—badly.”

I knew that all too well. And I’d taken quite a bit of joy in outbidding him for the house. I knew Maitland would just flip it for a profit by slapping on a few upgrades. He didn’t care about what a home could mean for people. His concern was just adding to the tax bracket increase on the lake.

It was the biggest difference between what we were trying to do for the town and what Maitland had been doing for far longer than I’d been aware of Crescent Cove.

The moment I’d seen the Windsor mansion, I’d known it was for me. From the boat launch—which I had not made use of yet, mainly because I needed a damn boat first—to the privacy of the trees, to the massive yard for Owen, to the gorgeous house itself that I hadn’t even fully made my own yet… All of it was perfect.

The house was also far enough from the town to give me privacy, but it would make a statement about my serious intent when I got the guts to ingratiate myself into the community.

“How the hell did he think he was going to get the bank note?”

“He tried to swoop in with another bank to buy out loans. Gavin and I convinced Crescent Cove Bank that we would take our business elsewhere if they even thought about going out from under us. I had to pull my family name in on it, and you know how much I hate that shit.”

“Jesus.”

The Hastings name was as old as the Hamiltons in this town. Arthur Maitland was equally as powerful, but instead of putting funds back into the town like we were, Maitland only cared about owning more of the real estate. And his plans included turning the Cove into some sort of resort town that would crowd out the people who wanted nothing more than a safe, family-centric town to raise their families in.

“I know. But the old strip mall across from the Commons got swept up in his little coup. Bastard.”

“We don’t need the other buildings.”

“No, but he’ll probably put in some bullshit national store in there instead of the boutique stores we were planning on.”

Which would invariably cut into our profit margins.

We’d put a hell of a lot of time and effort into the Cove Commons. What should have been an easy build had run into unimaginable problems since it was so close to the water. That and getting zoning permits for the commercial and residential spaces we had planned.

Gavin was convinced Maitland was behind those additional problems, as well.

Which we needed to take with a grain of salt since Gavin had his own issues with Maitland that had occurred far before the birth of our partnership.

In an ideal world, we should have been writing up contracts for rentals already. Every month the Commons stayed empty was another month that ate into our profits. And the clients we’d already been in contact with to come on board were falling by the wayside because we were taking so long to get this damn thing moving.

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