Page 30 of Colton's Last Resort

She took her seat. They would each have a vote, she knew. It was how they handled anything that involved their mother’s estate, resort capital or unnecessary risk. She folded her hands on the table, watching Clive settle in. He seemed relaxed. Expectant.

His statement about Quentin Randolph from yesterday came back. Had her own father sent a wolf to her door? She could hardly stand to look at him with that knowledge. Throughout lunch the day before, she’d wanted to ask if it was true. Had he known who Quentin was?

Would it influence her vote if she knew he had? She prided herself on separating business Laura from personal Laura. That was part of her success, just as it was Adam’s.

That task was hard enough knowing how Clive had treated her mother through the years, and how he had neglected Adam, Joshua, her and their half sister, Dani. Adding the implications surrounding Quentin’s place in her life would make being objective that much harder.

Clive adjusted his cuff links. He grinned. “Who calls the meeting to order?”

“It’s nothing so formal as that,” Adam informed him. “Though this time, I will ask Greg to start.”

Greg took a pair of reading glasses from the neckline of his shirt. He put them on and opened the folder. “After yesterday’s meeting, I placed a couple of calls to colleagues with a vested interest in Colton Textiles.”

“Why?” Clive drawled. “This is a simple family matter. Nothing worth meddling in.”

“I asked Greg to look into it,” Adam told him.

Clive’s serene smile dimmed on his eldest. “You don’t trust me?”

Laura spoke up. “If we agree to your terms, we could risk as much as half a million dollars.”

“Risk.” Clive batted the word away. “Come now, Precious. I said it was a loan, and that I’d pay you back with interest.”

“You wanted us going into this blind,” Joshua surmised. “Look around you. We built this place because we were smart. You still think we’re children you can easily bait and switch, don’t you?”

“I’ll ask you again to modulate your tone when you speak to me,” Clive told him.

“Greg,” Adam prompted again, “tell us what you found. Once the cards are on the table, the three of us will put it to a vote, yes or no, and that majority decision will be the one we go forward with.”

Greg cleared his throat. “Right. The reality is that Colton Textiles is going under.”

Palpable silence cast the room in a long shadow.

“I knew it,” Joshua said under his breath.

Laura stared at her father in disbelief. “Going under? How?”

Adam frowned. “How long has it been in the red?”

“Two years,” Greg revealed. “There are other investors, none of whom have seen a return on their investment.”

“How could you let it get this far?” Laura asked. “If you were going to come to us, you should’ve done it from the moment there was trouble.”

“Well, I’m here now,” Clive said, dignified. He spread his hands. “You must want to save your birthright.”

“If you cared about our birthright, you would have told us the truth,” Joshua retorted.

“You owe me this.”

Laura froze, feeling her brothers do the same. “What did you say?”

“You owe me,” Clive stated again. “I paid for it all, didn’t I? The house in LA. The private schools you attended.”

“Let me stop you right there,” Adam said. His hands slid onto the table, palms down. He leaned forward. “Because I sense this discussion going sideways. Our mother may have died when we were young, and you weren’t exactly there to take her place. But I’m fairly confident when I say a proper parent doesn’t talk like that.”

“Now wait just a second—”

“No.” Adam’s voice invited zero rebuttal. “She paid for the house in LA. And she paid every dime of our tuition. And before you claim you put me, Laura or Josh through college, we paid our way through the trusts she left in each of our names, the remains of which we pooled to make Mariposa what it is. You have no fingerprint here. If you’re going to come running to us to save the family company, I suggest you avoid leading with lies and grandiosity. That may have worked with your investors, but we know you. We know the real you.”

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