I blinked back tears that threatened to fall. I had to be strong for all of them. We all had to be strong for each other.
Brom immediately pushed back, his voice urgent. “Dad, Stacy and I have savings too. There has to be new things we can try, different approaches?—”
Dad shook his head slowly. I could see how much it cost him to crush his son’s hope. “The kind of money we’d need to put our rustic little lodge back on the map isn’t attainable, son. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars for marketing, renovations, staffing, equipment replacement. Even if we had that kind of capital, there’s no guarantee it would work. We’re a dying business. The lodge might make a decent income, butthe tree farm is dead. There is no coming back. If we focused on the lodge, we might last another couple of years. I don’t see the benefit to putting off the inevitable.”
The silence that followed was deafening. I could feel everyone’s hearts breaking around the table. I could see the dreams and hopes we’d all been clinging to crumbling in real time.
Mom dabbed at the corner of her eyes with a tissue. Stacy’s lip quivered but she was keeping it together.
“When?” Stacy asked quietly. “When do we close?”
Dad delivered the final blow with the matter-of-fact tone of someone who’d already accepted the inevitable. I knew it wasn’t an easy decision. He had probably been tossing this around all year. I suspected he gave us one last year and it was clear we weren’t going to make it.
“After New Year’s Day,” he answered. “We’ll honor our existing bookings through the holidays, but no new reservations. It’s time to close the lodge, sell off sections of the land to developers, and be grateful for what we still have—each other and our homes.”
The words hit hard. They were physically painful. January. We had weeks, not months. Soon there would be bulldozers where Christmas trees now stood, strip malls where families had made memories for generations.
My throat hurt. Probably because there was a giant lump lodged in it. I took a second to collect my thoughts.
“What does this mean for the town?” I asked, thinking about all the people whose livelihoods were connected to our property. “For everyone who depends on us?”
Dad’s expression grew even more weary. “The Northwoods have done their part for this community for three hundred years. We’ve employed half the town, kept the local economy afloat, preserved traditions that most places have forgotten. Butwe can’t sacrifice our family’s entire future for a dream that’s already dead. Your mother and I put off our retirement. We drained our savings, which eliminated a lot of the plans we dreamed about for our retirement. We’ve all made sacrifices and I think it’s enough. It’s time to stop the bleeding.”
He looked around the table at all of us. “Hopefully, change will be good for everyone. New development might bring different kinds of jobs, different opportunities.”
I thought about Kent and his offer, about the possibility that still existed if he kept his word and came back. There was still a chance he could save everything. The farm, the lodge, the jobs, the community traditions that meant so much to all of us.
But would he come back? Had I ruined everything by sleeping with him and letting my emotions complicate what should have been a straightforward business discussion? The questions had been eating at me all day, and sitting here listening to Dad outline the end of everything we’d worked for, I wanted desperately to tell them about the potential lifeline.
But I held my tongue. I couldn’t give them hope based on promises from a man who’d walked out of my apartment that morning without a backward glance. I couldn’t risk raising their expectations only to have them crushed again if Kent decided our little mountain community wasn’t worth his family’s investment after all.
So I sat there holding Mom’s hand, watching my father struggle with the weight of decisions that would change all our lives. My only hope was that Kent Bancroft was a better man than his behavior this morning had suggested.
Because if he wasn’t, we were all going to lose everything that mattered most to us.
I had no idea what my future looked like. Where would Stacy and Brom go? My entire world was crashing down around me and all I could think about was Kent.
You better come back.
CHAPTER 34
KENT
Ihadn’t expected to feel anything when I came around that bend in the road and saw the Northwood Lodge spread out before me. It was just a place, just another business venture that needed handling. But when the property came into view—the twinkling lights, the snow-covered Christmas trees, and the warm glow from the lodge windows—my chest swelled with emotions I couldn’t quite name.
It felt like coming home, which was completely ridiculous since I’d been gone less than a week.
And this was definitely not my home.
I wasn’t sure I would be welcome back.
The morning after was never something I thought much about. The women I took to bed were usually aware of what was going to happen. They might want me to call, but they didn’t expect it.
I pulled up to the tree farm and was climbing out of my rental SUV. I had learned my lesson and wasn’t about to drive anything fancy. It was all about functional. I didn’t want to end up in the ditch again. I had a feeling Sylvie would leave me to freeze this time. And if her brother knew about my last night at the lodge, he would probably try and kick my ass.
I spotted Sylvie leaning against the outside of the small payment building. Even from a distance, I could tell something was wrong. Her posture was defeated, shoulders hunched, and as I got closer, I could see that she was clearly crying.
She hadn’t seen me. Or if she did, she was ignoring me.
