Page 176 of Trapped with the Billionaire

“Yes,” Mom said. “All of you abandoned the company earlier and left Josh as the last one to carry it on.”

Dennis shrunk in his chair. He’d originally been the one tapped to take Dad’s place.

“Your mother and I have discussed this,” Dad said. “Much of this is my fault. We wouldn’t be in this mess if I hadn’t been so difficult to work for. And Josh wouldn’t be in this position if I hadn’t run each of you off until he was the only one left, but that’s where we are today.”

I could see where this was going if I didn’t put a stake in the ground. They’d all decide that the easiest route was for me to stay working for Dad, and punt the problem down the road.

“There’s more to it,” I said. “I originally agreed to go to London because I’d be running my own operation within Benson, just as each of you have been able to run his own company. It’s not fair that because I’m the youngest, I have to stay a VP working for Dad and bear all of the family responsibility.”

The looks around the table showed I’d transferred some of the guilt for this situation to them.

“Well put,” Dad said, surprising me. “This is a problem for the whole family to pitch in and solve, not just Josh and me. You’ve placed too much of a burden on him. And yes, I had a hand in that as well. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so hard to work with.”

Everyone exchanged looks around the table, trying to figure out where this was going.

“Thank you, Lloyd,” Mom said. “Now it’s time for us to discuss alternatives that don’t put us right back where we were yesterday.”

Chapter 46

Nicole

Thursday morning,I walked the orchard rows.

Ernst was such a terrible caretaker of the trees. He would have starved a century ago if they had been his livelihood.

I’d given the almonds the water they needed, and then run some extra at the bases of the two sickly ones he’d never replaced. Any good farmer knew the sick trees had to be weeded out and replaced with strong ones to make proper use of the land.

Things always seemed to go better for me after I put in time in the orchard. Daddy had always said staying close to the land was the best medicine.

After throwing a chain in the bucket, I climbed up onto the tractor’s seat. The old Ford belched a little black smoke and settled into its normal fast idle. That was the good thing about a diesel tractor—if the battery turned it over, it would start, and this one had served our family faithfully. The small backhoe on the back made digging holes for new trees a breeze.

I rumbled down between the almonds and lowered the bucket when I got to the first of the two sickly trees. A good shove as I floored the tractor, and the tree bent over a little in the moist ground. After wrapping the chain around the trunk and attaching it to the bucket, I lifted, and the tractor squatted down in its tussle with the tree’s roots. It took several tries, but the tractor’s hydraulics won, and the tree came out.

The second wasn’t any easier than the first, but machine eventually won out against nature there as well. The chainsaw would make short work of all the branches now that they were down, but my parched lips demanded something to drink first.

On the walk back to the house after parking the tractor in its shed on the corner of the property, I tried to be casual as I looked next door.

Lara had been right. For a second, I caught a glimpse of our creepy neighbor Hugo Lenz in a window, looking my way.

I changed my path toward the center of the orchard, away from prying eyes.

Before I made it past the first row, what seemed like a dozen police cars roared down the street. Their lights were flashing, but there weren’t any sirens. They passed my house and converged down the street somewhere. I couldn’t tell where from back here.

A half minute later, Winston appeared on the back porch.

I waved.

“You should come in,” he called, waving me toward the house.

“In a minute.”

“Now,” he yelled emphatically.

I’d tried arguing with Winston once. It hadn’t gone well. It was like having a discussion with a hunk of granite. Nothing budged him if he’d made up his mind.

I reached the stairs. “What’s the problem?”

“There are too many people on the street for you to be outside right now.”

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