she answered, “I hope so. I guess I could have just redecorated and reopened, but I really think the café needed a change. It was outdated in more than just the décor. The menu was stale and old. This is a beach town. People are looking for something unique, something that stands out.”
“You needed to make it into something that was really you. I know it’s been in the family for a while, but there’s no reason why it can’t change to be something you want.”
She nodded. “It’s stayed the same for way too long. How are things going for you?”
“Great,” I said. “Construction will start on time. And I already have some boats purchased. They’ll be delivered next week. I’ll have to work on getting some sources for the stuff I can’t get here. But I have time. I’m not expecting this to get built up overnight. When Eli gets back, I’ll pick his brain for some advice.”
“They’ll be back on Saturday,” she reminded me. “It seems like Jade has been gone forever.”
I nodded. “I agree. I’ll be happy to see Eli, too. Maybe he can help me out a little with the business side of this new venture. I know the operational part of it, but not the details of the actual business side.”
“It’s got to feel crazy sometimes, right?” she asked. “I mean, you used to fish for other people, and now you’re doing a start-up yourself.”
Honestly, it was unreal. Had somebody told me a few years ago that I’d end up a billionaire who was trying to build my own giant seafood company, I would have told them that they were out of their mind.
But it was happening. “Sometimes, I still don’t believe it,” I shared with her. “How does a poor guy like me end up with a life like this?”
“But you’ve worked hard your entire life, Aiden. If anybody deserves this life, it’s you.”
“Plenty of people work hard, and they don’t become this rich,” I grumbled. “In fact, there’s very few people in the entire world as rich as we are. And the vast majority of them were born into some money.”
“They didn’t work like you did. You sacrificed everything to keep your family together.”
“So did the rest of my family.”
She smiled at me. “I rest my case. They’re all loaded now, too.”
I grinned back at her. “Smartass.”
I reluctantly let her go as she went to pick up Maya’s backpack and school stuff to put away.
I went back to sifting through mail while she left the room to put things away in Maya’s bedroom.
I tossed most of the stuff I’d gotten into the trash. Since I’d purchased an expensive house, I got offers for everything from mortgages to credit cards.
Why did it seem like the entire world knew I was now incredibly rich?
One interesting thing about being wealthy was that I sure as hell got a lot of mail.
A year or two ago, I was worrying about having enough money to buy groceries.
And now I got preapproved offers for an endless amount of high-limit credit cards, mortgages, and lines of credit—like I needed that.
Pretty crazy for a guy who only knew how to fish for a living.
I kept trashing things until I got to the bottom of the pile.
The last piece of mail caught my attention because it was about something I’d pretty much forgotten about.
Maya and I had taken a paternity test soon after Skye had informed me that Maya was mine.
Now, it seemed like we’d done that ages ago.
It had become so unimportant that I hadn’t even thought about the test until I saw the reminder just now.
I went to toss it into the trash, unopened.
Maya was my daughter.
I had no doubt about that, and neither did any of my family. She looked just like Brooke and Jade when they were little.
And she looked like . . . me.
My offspring had me tied around her little finger, but I was pretty sure she didn’t know that she did, because she was such a good kid. I’d been blessed with the best child ever. Hell, she even had manners, but that was something I could thank Skye for. She hadn’t learned those from me.
I wasn’t sure how it had happened, but I’d gotten so accustomed to being her father that I couldn’t imagine a life without Maya and Skye anymore. So many little things had made us all close.
The family dinners with just the three of us.
Getting Harry Potter read to me and