knew with Jonas? He kept everything bottled up inside. And Gabe—well, they’d have to wait to see how he reacted. Maybe he’d bury himself in business again. Get right on the next plane out. It was impossible to say, and the wait till Christmas seemed interminable.
Chase didn’t have much stake in the resort, but the thought of his grandmother not being here in her office anymore made his heart ache. “We will. We’ll face it.” He squeezed her hands, the words scratching at his throat and making his eyes burn.
His grandmother gave him a stern look. “Don’t get all choked up on me, Chase. We’ve got things to talk about.”
“I’m fine.” His tears were reflected in his grandmother’s eyes, but to her credit, she simply laughed.
For a moment, Chase sensed everything would be all right. His grandmother might be getting on in her golden years, but her laugh was still the same. He found himself trying to memorize the sound. No matter what was going on, it would be okay.
She took a deep breath. “Chase, it’s time to start figuring out what your next steps are in life.”
Too late. It’s too late for me, and everything I’ve worked for has come to nothing. It’s pointless to even discuss this. Chase choked back the instinctive, negative response. What could he say? How could he communicate this hopelessness to her without making her feel worse? “Is that a question, Grandmother?” He tried and failed to put on his most winning smile. “We don’t really have to discuss this. I’ll be just fine figuring things out for myself.”
She patted his hands and sat back. “Chase, you’ll always have a place here.” He caught a flash of tears in her eyes again, which almost killed him. He wanted to put a hand to his chest and hold his own heart in. His grandmother looked down at her ledger and pressed her hand to the paper. When she looked back up, her eyes were bright. “Which brings me to my second request. As part of that place, your first task is to help your brother wrangle a replacement for the ski-program director.”
Anger made his skin flush at the mention of the previous ski director. Hal had been promptly fired when his grandmother discovered what the man had done—had been doing for far too long. The Elk Lodge was a favorite resort of celebrities and wealthy visitors, and unfortunately, Hal thought they wouldn’t notice if he lifted a piece of jewelry here or some money there. The man had set up a whole system around it, creating pockets of time in the schedule where he could go through the guests’ belongings while they were out on the slopes.
The local news station had a field day with the story. His grandmother had gone into damage control mode to protect the reputation of the resort.
“Jonas doesn’t need my help,” he said automatically. “He’s the one who’s great at the resort stuff. I’d be in his way. Besides, I’ve got physical therapy appointments in Salt Lake City.”
“I disagree, and we have physical therapists here in Colorado.” His grandmother picked up her pen and ran it through her fingers. “We got more external applications than I expected. Many more. Jonas needs help weeding through them, and you’re the man with all the experience.”
With being an athlete, he wanted to say. With going through the motions. But how could he say that? She could be dying. He pasted a smile on his face, the way he always had when he got to the bottom of the slopes and met the press. “Fine. I won’t let you down.”
“It would be nice to hire a replacement before the lawsuits wrap up,” she said dryly, a smile playing over her lips. “I’m glad you’re going to help.”
She pulled the ledger back in front of her, and Chase got to his feet. He’d been dismissed from her office a million times in his life. Most of those times, he’d wanted to stay and talk to her, but he knew it was better to hide his storm of emotions behind a smile.
He kept it together until he was out of sight of her office, then dropped down on an overstuffed sofa in one of the less-traveled hallways of the lodge. God, he was a wreck. The past year had really roughed him up. And now he had a brand-new goal that he didn’t want—to work at the lodge and help his brother fix the mess Hal