Boy in the Club a boy & billionaire novel - Rachel Kane Page 0,56

caused. Finn is smiling, and he’s not blushing, but I can see the hurt in his eyes.

Damn it, the whole point was to rescue him from his past, not remind him of it.

Brusquely I say, “When is everyone getting here? I don’t have all day.”

“I was telling Colbs here that the two of them should stay down here at the resort for a night,” says Dalton to Noah, whose face lights up.

Noah turns to Finn. “You totally should. There’s so much to see, and you have not lived until you’ve had a mud bath.”

“Is that a euphemism?” asks Finn, and the whole room cracks up, except for me.

“I like him,” says Noah. “I’ll leave you boys to your business. But do consider staying, all right? We’ve got the room. Clearly.”

“I want to hear, in your own words, how we somehow missed a fucking underground river in our environmental impact studies.” My voice fills the room, just the way I like it. This is my territory—not the room itself, but the situation. Putting the fear of god into people.

The engineer gulps and tries to speak, but Bill gets in there first. “Mr. Raines, you know this place is…well, it’s geologically interesting. All that spring water, where do you think it comes from? There’s water under pressure, right beneath our feet.”

“Yes, and the site we picked for the factory was supposed to be away from that. It’s supposed to be stable, because we’re trying to build a goddamn building on that ground! Now, I have a ton of money in this project, so fucking heads are gonna roll if I don’t get some answers!”

The engineer is practically shaking as he rolls his plans out on the table. “It’s fixable. It’s definitely fixable. We’ll need drainage here, and here. We can do something over here, a retention pond, or even—”

“A lake,” says Finn.

I look over at him. “What?”

I hadn’t expected him to talk during this meeting. His job was to sit there and take notes and make me feel guilty.

“Isn’t this where we came into town?” he asks, pointing at the plans. “The highway, here?”

“Yeah.”

“So you’ve got this forest, right? And then this clearing…why not put in an artificial lake? You know, instead of making it utilitarian, make it pretty. Make it fit with the landscape.”

I jab my thumb in Finn’s direction. “See?” I tell the engineer. “That’s the kind of idea I need. What am I paying you guys for? Can you do a lake here?”

The engineer glances up at the ceiling like he’s doing calculations. “Yeah…yeah. That would work. It’d get rid of all the water. We’d introduce some pilings beneath the construction here and here, lead the drainage out through here…”

What I like is when you can sink into a project. There’s this mindset, you’re not even thinking, you’re not conscious exactly, but it’s all flowing. Ideas, money, objections, counters, they’re all flying back and forth. I love it.

I find myself grinning over at Finn. I can’t believe he solved this problem in thirty seconds. Just looked at the map and solved it.

“We ought to build a conference center,” I say. “Dalton, think about it. We attract businesses to meet at the center. They stay here at Superbia Springs, at the resort, then it’s a two-minute drive to the meetings, and they can visit the lake or whatever for retreats.”

“I love it,” Dalton says, and for a minute it’s like old times, before he moved, before he got attached to Noah. Back when we were partners in the business, seeing each other every day.

I miss these times so much, I miss my brother, and I don’t understand how something as pointless as love can keep him away from the company. It’s nothing against Noah, I like him fine as a future brother-in-law, although he certainly isn’t my type.

Who is?

Dalton’s turning to Finn. “You’re a genius. I hope he’s paying you well.”

Finn blinks. “I get paid?”

More laughter. Then more talking, and now it becomes urgent, because we’re talking about cost overruns and new lines of credit for the construction and how to plan for anything else going wrong. The engineer’s ready to agree to practically anything at this point to get himself off the hook, glad to no longer be the focus of my scalding attention. Within half an hour, we’ve wrapped up, and hands are shaken, and money has been promised.

“Now I need that scotch,” I say.

“I’ll get it,” says Finn, starting to get up, but I wave him back