engrossed I didn’t hear her leave.
There weren’t many changes since I’d submitted my résumé to Lakeside Ice Arena more than a year ago.
Except now I could list Jaxson Lund, former NHL player with the Chicago Blackhawks, three-time winner of the Stanley Cup, as my boss and mentor.
I just hoped they’d keep the application confidential. While I doubted Jax would fire me over applying for another job, I didn’t want to put either of us in the awkward position of admitting I needed to explore other career options, even when technically, I hadn’t signed an employment contract with him.
After I finished the résumé, I tackled the actual online application. That took several hours but I managed to submit everything by nine P.M.
I’d just settled in to watch an ESPN sports highlights show when my phone buzzed. I glanced down at it to see a message from my sister.
DW: Can we talk?
What was I supposed to say? I didn’t intend to let this silence go on forever, but she could give me longer than five damn days to deal with my thoughts and feelings.
So I simply responded: Not yet.
Four
NOLAN
Did I see Gabi flip you off?” my brother Jax asked after he plopped beside me in the spectator seats at Lakeside Ice Arena.
“You win our conversation starter contest this week,” I said dryly.
Jax shoved me with his shoulder. “Not everything has to be a competition. Anyway. What’s up? Surprised to see you here.”
“For some reason I thought Mimi’s game was tonight. I got here and realized I had the wrong day. Meems saw me so I can’t bail until she’s done with practice or she’ll text me a dozen times to ask if I’m mad at her.” As if I could ever be mad at my crazy-sweet niece.
“True.” Jax propped his elbows on his knees. “You’ve been scarce.”
I shrugged. “Happens when I’m working seven days a week.”
“That much? Why?”
“Acquisitions, potential acquisitions, oh and more potential acquisitions.”
“In other words . . . just another day at the office for you LI bigwigs.”
“I am so not a bigwig at LI.”
Down on the ice, Mimi volunteered to go first for skill training and I actually saw Coach Welk send her an amused smile.
Had Gabriella ever given me anything close to a smile like that?
Have you ever deserved it from her?
“Nolan?” Jax prompted.
I looked at him. “Sorry. What did you say?”
“Is everything all right at LI? I thought the eighty-hour, seven-day workweeks were in the past for all the top executives.”
“Ash and Brady both did their time getting up to speed in their departments, so I’m just following their lead. Wouldn’t want LI employees to think ‘the Prince’ is a slacker.” The Prince. I hated that nickname.
“Speaking of our cousins . . . do they know how much you’re working?”
“Doubtful.”
“Does Dad know?”
“It’s because of Dad that I’m in the office so damn much.”
The coach blew her whistle and all her little charges gathered around her, attention rapt on her, which was a feat for a dozen nine-year-olds.
“That didn’t answer my question, bro.”
I blew out a slow breath. “No. Dad doesn’t know. During office hours I’m dealing with a million day-to-day things. It’s only when everyone is gone that I can take a deeper look at proposed acquisitions.” I kept my gaze on Mimi lining up for a skating race. “I absolutely don’t need another monumental fuckup, Jax.”
He sighed. “No one blames you.”
“I blame me. My half-assed research into Digi-Dong cost Lund Industries five million in legal fees and settlement costs. If I would’ve taken the time to dig deeper, I would’ve discovered that Digi-Dong didn’t own the tech they were pitching.” Still burned my ass every time I thought about it. Our subsidiary, LuTek, was set up to be a software manufacturing arm of LI, so we could’ve just bought out the other partner and taken the product to market ourselves, but it was cost prohibitive.
“From my understanding, it could’ve happened to any investment group. A partnership goes bad and partner one files for a patent before partner two. Partner two was out to punish anyone who did business with Digi-Dong.” Jax laughed and nudged me with his shoulder again. “Come on. Admit part of the reason you recommended investing in Digi-Dong was because you snickered every time you heard dong in that stupid name.”
“Yes, I believed that people in the market for security-based doorbells would get a kick out of the name, especially if our amazing marketing department put the right spin on it. We