Page 7 of The Workaholic Down the Hall

That got her attention. She looked at me, eyebrows high. “The landscape remodel on the Westgate property?”

“Yep.” I knew what was coming, but I also knew I couldn't avoid it.

“Mitchell's been with us for seven years, Noah. I think we can trust him to do a good job.”

“I just want to see what he has in mind, maybe look at some plans with him.”

Jill shoved her phone in the waistband of her pants, since she had no pockets, and stuck her hands on her hips. “What happened?”

This was the problem with family. There was no fooling them, no sliding by without being noticed. I only spent time at Mitchell's when I was in a pissy mood. I'd taken some landscape design classes in college and I liked talking shop with him, solving problems that had to do with land and growing things. I'd spent a solid week at Mitchell's when Aubrey left the first time. “I'm fine, Jill. I just need to get out of the office.”

She continued to stare at me, hands on her hips.

I sighed. “Aubrey stopped by.”

Jill's expression hardened. “What did she want?”

Jill and Aubrey had been friends, not close friends, but they'd gotten along. I wasn't sure Jill would ever forgive Aubrey for leaving me the way she had. “I don't care what she wanted. She left and I've filled her position. We had nothing else to talk about.”

Jill's mouth twisted with concern. “I agree, but you should have at least found out what she wanted. That way, you could have told her no and closed that door permanently.”

“I told her to get out of my office. I told her I never wanted to see her again. I closed the door.” Except that Aubrey had apparently gone behind my back and spoken to my mother. She had no compunction about getting my mother involved and using her against me.

Jill stepped toward me, probably coming in for a hug, but I was in no mood for a hug.

I raised my hands to ward her off. “I'm fine.”

“You know I'd never interfere in your personal life, but you should give her name and description to security and make sure she doesn't show her face here again—”

“I can handle her.”

“Like you handled her disappearing? I thought I was going to have to—”

“She gave me no explanation,” I said. “I thought she'd been hurt or kidnapped or killed. I was worried about her, that's all. Seeing her again just threw me. Quit worrying.”

I hugged her then. I felt better about being the one to comfort her, rather than the other way around. I released her and stepped back. “What were you coming to see me about?”

She frowned. “It's nothing. We can discuss it tomorrow.”

“Just tell me now, Jill, or I'll sit back down behind my desk and figure it out for myself.”

“I've run the numbers until I can't see straight and I can't come up with any other option. We're going to have to sell the Brantley properties.”

“All of them?” The Brantley properties were the first my dad had bought when he'd started the corporation. They were older and in need of extensive remodeling, but they were the heart of the corporation as far as I was concerned.

“I'm sorry, Noah. I don't see any way around it.”

I sighed. We owned fifteen different hotels and resort properties around Georgia, and it had been our father's dream to grow the corporation and make the name first in luxury resorts. Unfortunately, he'd spread our resources too thin and made some poor choices. We weren't on the verge of bankruptcy, but we were going to have to make some hard choices if we wanted to stay afloat. The Brantley properties were three hotels in and around Atlanta on prime real estate. We couldn't afford the upgrades they needed, but we could make a good profit on them if we sold them, enough to fuel the company's needs and keep us from going under. I'd hoped to sell some of the newer acquisitions, the poorer choices my father had made, but they wouldn't sell as quickly or bring in the money the Brantley properties would. “Let's do it.” The words scraped my throat on the way out. This company was my father's dream, and I hated to see it diminished.

Jill swallowed. “The sale would give us the cash we need to survive, but it would also give us some extra. Maybe we could add some character to the hopeless properties?”

The hopeless properties were my dad's poorer choices, properties that were bleeding money. He'd dreamed big, but he hadn't always been realistic. They were all in rural, rarely visited parts of Georgia, lovely areas, but too low traffic to bring in guests without some sort of draw. The kind of draw that would cost us a ton of money. Jill, the marketing team, and the design team had been working on ideas to draw people to those resorts without breaking the bank. The ideas were out of the box, to put it mildly. “We're going to have to do something. Do you want me to stay and work on it with you?”

She waved me off. “Go to your happy place. We'll talk more tomorrow.”

CHAPTER THREE

Aubrey

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