Levi woke up to the unmistakable sound of paws scrambling in his direction, but he didn’t move or open his eyes, hoping he was invisible. Not likely though, as he was on the pullout couch in the Cutler family den slash office.
Which was how a very hot, wet tongue was able to lick him from chin to forehead.
“Thanks, Jasper,” he murmured.
Apparently encouraged by the greeting, his mom’s goldendoodle slash Wookiee leapt on top of him, wiggling all ninety pounds with the grace of a bull in a china shop, breathing his doggy breath all over him.
Levi managed to hug the silly, lovable dog while protecting his favorite body parts, not an easy task with Jasper’s four massive paws. “Good boy, but time to get down.”
Jasper lay down—on top of Levi.
He had to laugh. Who’d have thought he’d actually miss his childhood bedroom? But after Tess and Peyton had moved back in for the duration of her ugly divorce, his room had been turned into a proud princess palace. They’d offered to move out for his stay, but he’d refused, saying the couch was fine.
Not that it mattered where he slept in this house, because he’d always felt just a little misplaced in it. The square peg shoved in a round hole. For one thing, he’d been an oops baby to his parents, who’d thought they were done after having Tess nearly ten years earlier.
The three of them had been a tight unit by the time he’d come around. Levi had done his best to fit in. He’d been a good skier and probably could’ve gone somewhere with it, but even though he’d gone to the University of Colorado, where he could have skied competitively, he’d concentrated on getting his data science degree instead. Which of course had baffled his parents beyond belief. As far as they were concerned, he’d taken his athletic talent and walked.
Looking back, Levi understood their point of view, but he also knew they’d never understood his. He’d worked at the family store growing up, putting in his time, even if he’d always had his nose in a book or been on the computer creating software and apps, and then later working in tech before, during, and after college to support himself.
More than Levi being good, he’d been lucky, making the right connections, and now his start-up, Cutler Analytics, was thriving. Yes, he missed the mountain. Actually he missed the mountain a whole bunch, but hadn’t missed feeling like that square peg again.
He’d done well on his own and had learned how to be okay exactly as he was. Sometimes he was even more than okay. Sometimes there was actual joy and excitement—like five minutes ago when he’d still been sleeping, his dream starring one sexy, smartass nurse named Jane. Unfortunately, his reality was as far from that erotic dream as humanly possible.
That was when his niece, Peyton, bounced into the room like the Energizer Bunny in a tutu and tiara, waving a sparkling staff.
Jasper jumped down—finally—and ran to his favorite person.
“Down,” the six-year-old commanded, the one who weighed less than the dog.
Jasper lay down like a perfectly behaved dog. Probably because Peyton was also carrying a bowl of cereal, and Jasper knew only good boys got bites of cereal.
Peyton leaned over Levi, her warm little girl breath scented like the Froot Loops she’d carried in. When she saw his eyes were open, she grinned her toothless grin. “Uncle Levi! Uncle Levi! Uncle Levi!”
“Yes, baby.”
“Is your girlfriend here?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Did your mom tell you to ask me that?”
“No. Grandma.”
Levi sighed.
She giggled. “Where is she hiding?”
He had no problem bending the truth for his nosy mom and sister, but he wouldn’t lie to Peyton. “Can we talk about something else?”
“Okay, let’s talk about my tea party. It’s soon. You’re coming.” She had a purse around her neck, one of Tess’s, and from it she pulled a small notebook and pencil. She opened it and made some scribbles and quickly closed it back up.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“It’s my secret diarrhea.”
He bit his lower lip so as not to laugh. Maybe one day he’d correct her, but today wouldn’t be that day. “What do you write in there?”
“Important notes. Mommy writes important notes in her diarrhea to save and show Daddy so she can kick his ask if he comes to visit.” She lowered her voice. “Don’t tell her I said ask, okay? Ask is a bad word.”
Levi mimed zipping his lips closed.
“Do you think my daddy’s coming soon?”
“I don’t know, baby.” But he’d gladly help Tess kick the guy’s “ask” for leaving two of his favorite females hurting. He sat up and realized that his dad sat only a few feet away, behind his desk, head bent to an awkward level so he could peer over the top of his glasses instead of actually using said glasses. He was muttering about “bullshit, crap internet reception” as he pecked with his index fingers on his computer’s keyboard.
Paying none of them any mind at all—not the dog, the man, or the little girl. Just as well. Peyton was back to jumping up and down, and shit, she was making him dizzy as hell.
“Can we have a tea party?” She put her face back close to his. “Can we? Can we? Can we?”
“I might need a nap first.”
“But! But! But!” Peyton liked to repeat herself. At high decibels. “I’m ready now!”
“Peyton!” Tess yelled from somewhere down the hallway, also at high decibels. The apple never fell far from the tree . . . “Don’t wake up Uncle Levi!”
“He’s already awake! Jasper did it!” Peyton squatted down and carefully picked up her bowl of . . . yep, Froot Loops. Sans milk because everyone was tired of slipping or sitting in spills that never got reported. “I brought you breakfast,” she said, the bowl balanced precariously in her little hands.
Levi leaned in to take a Froot Loop, but she held up her wand. “Any color but red,” she said very seriously. “The red ones are my favorite.”
“How about the yellow?”
“Those are my next favorite.”
“Green?”
“You can haz green,” she decided.
“Thanks.” He popped one in his mouth and she grinned at him, a sweet guileless toothless grin that tugged at his heart. He playfully pulled on a strand of her hair. “You know they all taste the same, right? They’re not individually flavored.”
She blinked, this new intel sinking in. “The reds are the prettiest.”
“Understood.”
She did the Energizer Bunny imitation again. “Get up, get up, get up!”
“Okay, okay.” He started to sit up before remembering he’d stripped down to just boxers last night. “Uh, why don’t you get the tea party all set up and I’ll come meet you after I shower.”
“Yay! Yay! YAY! DON’T BE LATE!” And she skipped out of the office.
Silence filled the room except for his dad’s two pointer fingers continuing to pound away on his keyboard.
Levi stood up and groaned. The bed sucked. Or maybe it was his life.
His dad slid him an unimpressed glance. “’Bout time you got up. I don’t know what you do in the city, but here in the mountains, our mornings start before ten.”
Levi had always operated on the assumption his dad enjoyed pushing his only son’s buttons. And he was good at it. It hadn’t been easy growing up knowing he’d been expected to stay in town, take over the family business, and live happily ever after—without following any of his own hopes and dreams.
He’d gotten past all that. Okay, so maybe he still harbored a little resentment. But since his stint in the hospital and now his stay here at the house, Levi was starting to realize that maybe it wasn’t that his dad didn’t respect or understand his son’s choices. Maybe . . . maybe the guy was just doing the best he could to get through his own day, and being a cynical ass helped him do that. “What’s going on, Dad? What’s with all the mumbling?”
“Don’t ask when you don’t really want to know.”
The family store was the only sporting goods store on North Shore, which meant it was highly trafficked and did great business. But there wasn’t a huge profit margin in it, and Levi’s family had struggled plenty—something he hadn’t appreciated growing up because his parents had never let on about any financial strain.
Knowing that they’d protected him and Tess from that stress usually gave him more patience when his dad pulled the holier-than-thou crap. But he felt pretty rough this morning, and was definitely short on patience. “Dad, just tell me what’s going on.”
His dad pushed his chair back from the desk, looking disgusted. “The store’s books are a mess.”
For the past decade, Cal—Tess’s soon-to-be-ex-husband—had been doing the accounting for the store. He’d started right after college, the first nonfamily member to ever handle the books.
But when Cal took off with the babysitter a month ago, he’d walked away from the job. If he was being honest, Levi hadn’t even given it a single thought, knowing someone else would now be handling the bookkeeping.
Apparently that someone had been his dad. This wasn’t good because, though the man knew his stuff, he was impatient as hell when it came to the business side of the store.
His dad tore off his reading glasses and tossed them onto the desk. “Cal’s a piece of shit.”
“Agreed.” Levi took a closer look at his dad and saw the tight grimness to his mouth and the stress lines around the eyes. “What’s wrong?”
His dad rubbed his eyes. “It’s not good.”
Levi’s heart sank. “I’m going to need you to be clearer. Did Cal mess up the books, or did he help himself to the kitty?”
His dad opened his eyes and looked at Levi. “I’m not sure. But I think the second thing.”
“Jesus, Dad.”
The guy shook his head. “It’s just a gut feeling. I haven’t been able to find anything.”
“The software I sent you last quarter should’ve alerted you to anything out of the norm going on.”
“Yeah, I couldn’t make heads or tails out of that program. And why change something if it’s not broke.”
“Are you kidding me—” Levi broke off and drew a deep breath because nope, not getting baited into a fight. “Mom told me it was working out great.”
“Because that’s what I told her.” His dad looked away. “It was complicated to load and I never got around to it. Obviously, not my smartest move.”
A surprising admittance. But the thing was, Levi’s program wasn’t complicated. It was simple. And no one would have had to do anything but let the program run in the background. Levi drew a deep breath. “Dad.” He couldn’t believe he was about to say this. “Why don’t you let me take a look and see what I can figure out?”
“What, so you can get it all working, only to go back to the city?” His dad waved his glasses around. “I don’t want to be left trying to undo something someone did.”
Levi swallowed the automatic defense bubbling in his throat. “I’m not Cal, Dad. I’ve never left a mess behind.”
His dad sighed, scrubbed his hand down his face. “Yeah, I know. Sorry. I don’t mean to take this out on you. But shit, that asshole left us in a bad place.”
“Then why do you always say everything is fine when I call?”
“Your mother didn’t want me to bother or worry you. And anyway, you’ve never wanted the store, you’ve never been happy here, so what does it matter to you?”
“Jesus, Dad.” He started to scrub a hand down his face and realized he’d inherited the tell from his dad and stopped. “I love it here,” he said. And it was true. He loved it on the mountain, loved knowing that he could have any outdoor adventure he wanted. “I want to help.”
“You do?”
“Yes.” That he’d not given the store a single thought after knowing Cal had gone, leaving them in a lurch, had guilt swamping him. “Let me go through the books with a fine-tooth comb and see what I can find.”
“I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t ask. When I’m done, I’ll install the software for you, which will do the job of finding these problems when I’m not around.”
His dad looked uncertain, and wasn’t that a kick to the gut. Levi made a living, a really good living, and a lot of that came from solving people’s problems. Problems just like this. But because he was the baby of the family, and let’s face it, different, his dad had a hard time seeing his value to the family.
“Dad, let me help.” He gestured for him to move out from behind the desk so Levi could get to the computer.
“You going to put on some pants first?”
“Yeah.” He grabbed his jeans from the floor and stepped into them. A T-shirt too. He didn’t live like a slob at home, but here all he had was the couch, so things naturally ended up on the floor around it. When he sat behind the desk, he caught the look in his dad’s eyes. Maybe relief. Maybe hope. Hard to say, as the man wasn’t in the habit of giving much away.
Guess it could be said that Levi himself, the apple, hadn’t fallen far from the tree either.
His dad put a hand to Levi’s shoulder. The Cutler equivalent to a warm, hard hug. “Thanks.”
Levi slid him a look. “You must be extra desperate.”
His dad smiled ruefully. “I was two seconds from chucking the laptop out the window before you woke up.”
Levi supposed he should be thankful for the small things. For instance, it was better to have been woken up by a dancing fairy demanding a tea party than by the sound of a laptop crashing through the window and falling to its death two stories below.