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When they got home that evening, Samantha got to relax—Edo, on the other hand, had a meeting with his father. A business meeting.
Edo and his father had always gotten along just fine... As long as they were not talking about Il Castello Mio. Things didn't start off too badly, as they were just glancing over the website, ads, and discussing logistics of apartment layouts. Not Edo's favorite subjects, but things his business experience lent itself to. Eventually, though, they turned to the ledgers.
Il Castello Mio had a problem of costing more in upkeep than it made as a bed-and-breakfast. It was not fancy, it was not as close to the city as many other bed and breakfasts, and so it had a hard time drawing the types of clientele that would make this venture really worth it. Edo's parents had always managed to supplement this with his mother's cooking classes.
“You're going to have to make it work,” Antonio said. “Your mother and I will stay for the busy season, but after that, we are going to have our turn to see the world.”
On Edo's dime, of course. When his father had summoned him home, he’d made it clear that Edo would be supporting his parents as they traveled, and that he would also be expected to use the money he’d saved up in the States for upkeep on the Castello. To keep the peace, though, Edo wouldn't mention that tonight. “Is there anyone in the village who could take over the cooking classes?”
Edo's father scoffed. “No one who cooks like your mother. We would lose our reputation.”
“But would that be better than losing our income?”
His father whacked him lightly on the side of the head. “Our reputation is everything.”
How could Edo have forgotten? So, no cooking classes during the light half of the year. Also less tourist income then. That meant he would have to make the income from the tourist season stretch to cover the entire year. Looking at the figures from the last three years, that was going to be next to impossible.
Edo's father poured some wine from a bottle on his office shelf. “How were things with our cute guest?”
“Fine.”
“She's cute,” his father repeated.
Edo refrained from rolling his eyes. “And she’s a guest.”
“But she doesn't seem to mind the looks of you. We ought to get your face up on the website instead of ours; I bet you could bring in lots more guests like her.”
Could this meeting be over yet? It wasn't enough that he abandon his job, give his father access to his savings to travel the world, and take on the family ball and chain of the castle, but now he had to be sold along with it? “I'll pass,” Edo said dryly.
Antonio laughed. “Then you find a way to bring more guests.”
“What if...” Edo took a deep breath. “What if we rented out an apartment or two?”
His father wasn’t laughing anymore. “This is our home,” he said, launching into the familiar argument, his tone rising with each sentence, “the home our fathers were born in, the home they fought to maintain! Did they sell it off, bit by bit? Did they allow just anyone to come and bear their children here, to give them birthright claim to some piece of it?”
Edo sighed. “I just thought—”
“This is our home. If I come back and you have sold off bits of it, I will sell your birthright from under you!” He tossed back the rest of his drink and stood. “I'm going to go take a nap before dinner.” He stalked out.
As if. His father was barely sixty, hardly old enough to need a nap before dinner when Edo knew he had already had one after lunch. Edo rubbed his eyes and looked once more at the figures in the ledgers before him. This was what he had learned in business school to consider a bad venture. He would have advised an investor not to get involved. But here he was. It was almost tempting to rent the place out just so his father would sell it.
Edo suddenly pictured the way Samantha had run her fingers lovingly over the stone wall, and the way she’d seemed to fill with light and joy just by standing and looking at the front steps.
He groaned and raked a hand through his hair. It had felt good to go to sleep in his own room last night. And eating his mother’s food beneath the watchful gaze of the lion on the big coat of arms hanging in the formal dining room had brought back a feeling of closeness and connection he hadn’t felt in years.
He didn’t really want to sell the old heap, he just didn’t want to run it.
But here he was. And if he didn't want to end up with his face as the main attraction on their website, he was going to have to get busy with some new marketing efforts.