Chapter 9

I met Simon at the back office door of the inn. I pushed it open and moved to the side, letting him pass me as he made his way into the dim interior, a contrast to the late August sunshine outside. He wore a suit, looking all businesslike and professional, which was good. It would only help Ida feel better about her decision to let him help.

A month. An entire month. That was how long it had taken for her to finally let Simon come. Apparently she’d had a conversation with one of her sons—Jacob, I think—who wasn’t comfortable letting some stranger get his hands on the financials of the inn when no one but his dad had ever had anything to do with it. He’d offered to look at the accounts himself, but he was all the way on the other side of the country. Without access to Thornton’s handwritten ledgers, there was little he could untangle. Why this made perfect sense to me and everyone in the Thomas family didn’t see it, I had no idea. At one point, I suspected Jacob knew of some sort of tax evasion or fraudulent behavior he didn’t want anyone digging up. In the end, it seemed more like a control issue and a worry about someone taking advantage of his mom. At least, I hoped that was all it was.

I motioned for Simon to follow me. “I really appreciate you coming to help.”

“It’s no problem,” he said. “How are you? How’s Jamie?”

Jamie.

Jamie was good. Great, even. We saw each other a few times a week, went out every weekend. The Friday before, we’d run into one of the developers from his and Dave’s company, and he’d introduced me as his girlfriend without hesitation. So that felt significant.

“I’m good,” I answered. “You’re not seeing Jamie much yourself?”

He shook his head. “Not lately. I think he’s saving all his spare time for you.”

“He’s had so little spare time. All the buyout talk is keeping him busy.”

“I guess that’s a good thing. The opportunity,” Simon added. “Not the spending time away from you.”

“I knew what you meant.” The company in California had thrown some pretty impressive numbers at Jamie and Dave over the past couple weeks. I didn’t know all the details, but Jamie seemed excited about the offer to move their company—which they were told the brothers would still operate independently—under the larger company’s corporate umbrella.

I stopped and turned to face Simon. “Do you think it’s a good idea?”

“What? Selling LogiX?”

“Yeah. I mean, surrendering control. Isn’t it risky to pull others in like that? It seems like Dave and Jamie have a good thing going on their own.” I wasn’t necessarily opposed to Jamie’s selling his company. The way he talked, it seemed more like a merger than an actual buyout because he and Dave would still be involved. It’s possible I was just worried it would all end with Jamie moving to California, which left me . . . well, not with Jamie.

“There’s always risk,” Simon said. “But it could also mean more capital to invest in developing new apps and new software. It means access to better marketing and input from some of the country’s best developers. They would likely still be successful if they stay on their own, but from what I’ve been told, this deal would launch them into a higher level of business. I think it’s smart.”

“Hmmm.” We continued to walk, stopping outside Thornton’s old office, where Ida was waiting inside.

“That sounded like a loaded ‘hmmm,’” Simon said.

I smiled. “No, I was . . . thinking about Jamie’s options. That’s all.”

“About moving-to-California options?”

Dang. Perceptive. I shook my head. “It’s too soon to think about that.”

“You know they might not decide to move. So much work can be done remotely these days.” It was sweet, his trying to reassure me, but I’d seen the fire in Jamie’s eyes when he talked about it. He’d served his mission in California and described the place as both a land of incredible business opportunity and the home of the very best people on the planet. “I think he really wants to go,” I said. “He loves it out there.”

“Didn’t you go to school in California? How did you like it?”

“Berkeley was great. I loved it. But I’m a sucker for North Carolina.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I feel that way too. Virginia, North Carolina. I don’t really care where, as long as I’m close to the mountains.”

“Yes! I grew up in Asheville and literally lived minutes from the base of Mount Pisgah. The mountains have always felt the most like home for me.”

“I’ve hiked Mount Pisgah. It’s beautiful up there.”

“We hiked it every year growing up. Mostly in October, to see the leaves.”

“Sounds amazing.” He held my gaze for a long moment, and something crackled between us—a spark of connection that I felt in my fingertips and all the way down to my toes. Simon’s eyes said he felt it too, a realization that brought a different conversation I’d had with him into sharp relief. When he’d saved the wedding my first weekend on the job and we talked in the parking lot, I’d felt uneasy, like there was more to his look and I didn’t know what. It was the same look he was giving me now, only I wasn’t uneasy anymore because I felt the same spark.

Except, no. Simon had a girlfriend. And I had a boyfriend. Sparks were for people not already in relationships.

Time to change the subject. I reached for the doorknob. “Are you ready?”

He nodded. “Lead the way.”

* * *

Ida warmed to Simon immediately. There was nothing flashy about his demeanor, from his simple dark suit and pinstriped tie to his conservative, short haircut. But he was still a Hamilton. And when Hamilton men smiled, polite professionalism morphed into full-on charm, even if, in Simon’s case, it was completely unintentional. Simon was different from Jamie in that regard. Jamie knew how to work it, to play his strengths for greatest impact. Simon seemed utterly clueless about how charming—and handsome—he was.

It took about ninety minutes to work through everything and give Simon the information he needed to tackle the job. By the end of our meeting, Ida looked exhausted. She pushed the stack of Thornton’s old ledgers toward Simon. “I sure do appreciate your help, though I have no idea how you’re going to sort any of this out. We maybe ought to burn it all and start from scratch.”

Simon smiled. “I don’t think it will come to that.” He shuffled together a stack of papers and dropped them into his briefcase, then slid the ledgers into an outside pocket. He reached over and shook Ida’s hand. “Are you comfortable with me discussing my findings with Lane? If I have questions or need more information?”

Ida looked at me. “Oh, of course. Some days I think she’s more invested in this inn than I am. Whatever else you need, just let her know. I’ll help her track it down.”

We said our good-byes, and I followed Simon into the hallway, shutting the door behind me. “So what do you think?” I asked him.

His eyes shifted to the closed office door like he wasn’t sure if Ida could hear us.

“Here.” I moved across the hall and opened the door to my own office, then stepped to the side. “This is my office. We can talk in here.”

He followed me in. “Wow.” He gestured to the large sitting area in front of the big bay window. “You get the bigger office, huh?”

“Only because we do all our consulting for events in here.”

“And that’s your responsibility?”

“Pretty much.”

He walked over to a bookshelf against the far wall and scanned the shelves. It was mostly stuff that came with the office. Thick product catalogs, sample books, and a few historical volumes of Orange County, North Carolina, history. I’d at least added a few personal things on the middle shelf—a picture of my family, a couple of my favorite volumes of poetry, the cheesy paperweight my last boss had given me when I’d left California.

“Are these yours?” Interesting. He’d reached for the poetry first. Most people went straight for the family photo.

“Yeah. Those are my favorites.”

“I love poetry,” he said. “I know Billy Collins and Longfellow, of course, but I’m not familiar with Nikki Giovanni.”

“Oh! You should be. She’s incredible. Revolutionary. Groundbreaking. Brilliant.” I leaned against the back of the overstuffed armchair that flanked the sitting area. “What I love about Nikki Giovanni is that her language isn’t so obscure or flowery that you have to search and dig and ponder to understand. It’s simple and yet still so evocative and moving. Her word choice is brilliant. And so multilayered. I don’t think she’s ever written anything I didn’t love.”

He flipped through a few pages, then took a step forward. “Here.” He handed me the book. “Read me your favorite.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I mean, only if you want to.”

It suddenly occurred to me that hanging out with my boyfriend’s older brother, reading poetry alone in my office, might not be the greatest idea. But he seemed so earnest. And interested. And poetry wasn’t something I got to talk about often. The downside, I guess, to a soccer player dating another soccer player. Jamie and I spent a lot of time talking about soccer. Somewhere in the back of my mind it occurred to me that Simon was also a soccer player. But I didn’t feel up to dealing with the implications of that observation. I flipped the book open, searching the pages for something I could read.

I settled on “A Poem on the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.” Moving but not quite as evocative as my actual favorite, “Love Is.” Considering my audience, the assassination poem felt like a much safer choice.

“Okay. This one isn’t my favorite, but it’s still a good one.” He nodded his encouragement, and I started to read.

Simon was silent when I finished, just standing there, his arms folded across his chest, leaning slightly against the bookshelf. “That was . . .” He cleared his throat. “That was nice.”

I put the book back on the shelf. “Does Karen like poetry?” Karen? Yes. Dinosaur-bone-digging Karen. That felt right.

“Yes, she does. It’s one of the things I love most about her. She has a deep appreciation for literature.”

A blush of heat crept up my neck at his words. He loved her. Of course he loved her. Jamie said they’d been together a long time. I don’t know why it embarrassed me to hear him say it. “It must be nice to have that in common,” I said. “I don’t think Jamie cares for poetry much.”

“I don’t know,” Simon said. “He might surprise you.”

I raised my eyebrows. Jamie liking poetry would definitely be a surprise. “I don’t know. It’s fine though. He’s got a lot of other redeeming qualities.” I moved toward my desk. “So . . . the inn? Do I need to start searching for money under the mattresses?”

“I don’t think things are quite that bad, but it’s hard to say at this point. I’ll need to spend some time with the numbers to know for sure.”

“Any idea what the problem is? The inn is busy. Almost too busy. It seems like we shouldn’t be struggling to pay vendors, and yet, since Thornton died, it’s like we’re always a couple weeks behind. Waiting for payments on the next event so we can pay bills related to the last one.”

He scratched his jaw. “I’m going to have to break things down a lot further to have a clear picture, but my gut is telling me this is a classic case of mismanaged growth.”

I dropped into my chair and motioned for him to sit. He settled into the leather chair across from me, his briefcase sitting at his feet. “What does that mean?” I asked.

“Sometimes when businesses start and their operations are smaller and easier to manage, financial systems are put in place that easily accommodate a smaller business model but don’t necessarily accommodate potential growth. If the business does grow and the financial management doesn’t grow with it, it’s easier for funds to be mismanaged because, though well-intentioned, owners make decisions without a clear picture of how their business is really doing.”

“When Thornton and Ida opened the inn, it was a much smaller operation,” I said. “Just a handful of rooms. Ida did all the cleaning herself.”

“Right. So Thornton handling all the finances made complete sense. But then the business started to grow.”

“And his financial strategies didn’t.”

“Exactly. Think about it this way,” Simon said. “At a large hotel or any other multifaceted operation, there are individual profit-and-loss statements for each component of the business—the hotel restaurant, event services, room revenue. At any given moment, you can see what parts of the hotel are profitable and what parts aren’t. If you’re losing money on breakfast. If weekday bookings are down, creating a drain on the accounts. Maybe the restaurant loses money during the week but makes up for it during Sunday brunch when everybody brings their grandma in to get a mimosa.”

I smiled. I knew the exact Sunday brunch crowd he referenced.

“It doesn’t look like Thornton was itemizing out the costs of running the inn, at least not on paper. His ledgers list every expense, but they’re all jumbled together. Like the only numbers he paid attention to were the biggest ones. Money in. Money out.”

“But if there’s always enough money coming in, things have to be okay, right?”

“In the simplest sense, yes,” Simon said. “But that’s just it. It doesn’t look like there is enough money coming in. Like I said, I need to dig into the numbers to know for sure.”

“How is that even possible? The inn is still open and functional. We’re all still getting paid.”

“Unfortunately, if things continue like they are, I don’t think you’ll be getting paid much longer.”

My heart rate spiked. Gaspard. April. Me. Not to mention dozens of other employees. We all relied on the inn. But it was more than just a paycheck for Ida. It was everything she and Thornton had built together—his entire legacy. There had to be a way to fix things. I drummed my fingers against the desktop and forced out a frustrated breath. Simon was so calm, but there was a lot at stake, and thinking about it was stressing me out.

He reached across the desk and touched my forearm, his fingers light but somehow still steadying. “Lane. I don’t want you to worry. I’ll make this my top priority, okay? I’ll find you some answers. Soon.”

I took a deep breath.

“Okay?” he asked.

I nodded. “Okay.” I wanted to believe him, but it was hard not to feel like his measured diplomacy was a cover to keep from telling me the inn was two months shy of not making payroll. Or worse, shutting its doors altogether.

Simon moved to the door. “I assure you I’ll be as transparent as possible when I know how things stand.”

“Thanks, Simon. I appreciate it.”

He was out the door when I realized we’d never discussed his fee. He’d probably send us a bill, but I wanted to be sure he knew we were expecting it and not trying to freeload off a boyfriend/family connection. He was almost to his car when I caught him.

“Simon!”

He turned. “What’s up?”

“We never talked about your fee. I hope you’re planning to send us a bill for your time.”

He ran a hand across his jaw. “I’m going to do this one on the house.”

I put my hands on my hips. “No way. You can’t do that.”

“I’m the boss. I can do whatever I want.”

“But you shouldn’t do it, Simon. It’s not fair. I never expected you to help out as a favor. I wouldn’t ever ask that of you.”

“I know you didn’t. But just the same. I’d like to do this for you.”

Something akin to discomfort settled in my gut again. Not full-on discomfort. More like a distant cousin. A niggling. A tiny seed of a thought that, spurred by our earlier nanosecond of connection, was beginning to take root. I’d like to do this . . . for you, Simon had said. For me.

“Hey, can I ask you a question about Jamie?” I blurted out.

Simon paused, one foot already in his car. “Sure,” he said.

It was impulsive. But somehow in my messed-up brain, it felt like mentioning Jamie would make the weirdness in my gut disappear. “I, um, do you know of any restaurants he likes? He’s been working so much, I thought I might take him dinner this week. Surprise him, you know?”

Simon nodded. “I’m sure he’d appreciate that. Let me think a second.” He shrugged out of his suit coat, which had to have been hot in the early August heat, and laid it across the backseat of his car. “Oh, I’ve got it. There’s this Vietnamese place over on Franklin Street. I don’t remember the name, but I could look it up for you. I don’t think Jamie’s ever been there, but a client recommended it to me the other day.”

“And you think Jamie would like it?”

“Yes. Absolutely. All Jamie talked about when he first got home from his mission was pho. I bet he’d love it if you took him some.” Jamie had served in Anaheim, primarily among the Vietnamese who lived in the area. Funny we’d never talked about the food. I guess not liking sushi didn’t necessarily mean a distaste for Asian cuisine in general.

“That is an amazing idea.”

“Good. I can text you the name of the place if you want.”

“Yes, please. That would be awesome.”

“Will do,” he said. He waved one last time as he pulled out of the parking lot, the loose gravel crunching under his tires.

I watched him drive away but wished I hadn’t. I wished I’d turned and gone back inside without giving him a second thought. Instead, he was getting a second, third, and fourth thought. It wasn’t good. I stood in the center of the sidewalk just outside the inn’s office entrance and forced Karen into my mind, imagining her and Simon together. I didn’t know anything about her, but it was easy to picture her as beautiful and intelligent and totally worthy of a Hamilton brother’s affection.

I walked back into my office focused on that image. I imagined them laughing and talking, even reading poetry. The longer I imagined, the quicker my misguided feelings dissipated. I didn’t feel anything for Simon. A spark maybe, sure. But sparks didn’t have to turn into flames. They could be squelched in a second, put out with nothing but a drop of water or a tiny puff of air. I took a deep, cleansing breath. It felt good to be in control.

I turned my thoughts to Jamie. Surprising him. Taking him food I knew he’d appreciate. Feeling his arms around me and his lips on mine . . . yeah. I was good. I had the right Hamilton brother—no doubt about that.

Simon: Nikki Giovanni. Billy Collins. Henry Longfellow.

Jamie: ??

Simon: Those are poets Lane likes. You know, you could have just looked at the books on her office shelf. No real sleuthing necessary.

Jamie: Excellent. Guess I should have thought of that.

Simon: Don’t name-drop Giovanni. Lane wouldn’t buy it. Collins you can probably get away with, but Longfellow has been around the longest, so he’s your safest bet.

Jamie: Got it.

Simon: Also. I did some research. Nikki Giovanni is on the faculty at Virginia Tech, and she’s doing a signing at the university book store in September. That’s not too far away.

Jamie: This is very good information. Lane’s birthday is in September.

Simon: Well, there you go.