Chapter One
“Rock, paper, scissors?”
Axel knew he was exhausted, but was he hearing things now too? Looking up, he spotted his buddy Connor grinning at him from across the room. “What?”
“Rock, paper, scissors,” Connor repeated. “To see who stays and waits for the last decorator.”
Oh. That.
Yeah, the two of them were in charge of meeting with the three potential decorators for the resort. How they had drawn the short straw on this task, he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that everyone else was conveniently out of town, leaving him and Connor responsible for making the decision.
Right now, he was sitting at the large table they had set up in the lobby of the lodge. It had become their universal space for meetings, eating, and just hanging out and talking about the work going on at the resort. They were six months in and coming down to some of the final stages, but it might be another four to six months before they were officially open for business.
If anyone would have told him a year ago that he’d be one of the owners of the Lakeview Harbor Resort—one of the few highlights of his messed up childhood—he would have said they were crazy. After all, how would a kid who was thrown into foster care and stayed there until he aged out have the means to be one of the investors?
Well, technically he didn’t have the means, at least not cash or money. What he did have was the skills to be hands-on with the reconstruction of the resort. His investment was in actual physical labor. All the guys were doing it to some extent, but Axel was working one-on-one with all the contractors and getting dirty on a daily basis.
It was a labor of love. Yeah, it was a corny way to look at it, but it was the truth. When life had been miserable when he was growing up, he got to spend part of his summers here at the resort. This was where he met his best friends—Walker, Connor, Milo, and Slater. And now they were all owners here. Talk about a dream come true.
“How late is he?”
“She,” Connor corrected. “And she’s an hour late. I was planning on catching a flight out to Boston to see Annabeth. This was the last thing we needed to do, and there’s a storm coming in tonight, so I’m hoping to fly out before it hits. Slater’s got a pilot buddy who says he’ll take me. So…?”
“I get it. You wanted to get out of here, and you wanted to do rock, paper, scissors to make it fair.”
“Well, we both know it wasn’t really going to be fair. You always choose rock,” he laughed. “All I had to do was choose paper and I would have won. But it gave the impression of being a choice.”
“Yeah, well…rock should win. It’s the heaviest. I mean…why paper? In real life, a rock would crush paper,” Axel reasoned. “It’s just science.”
“Um…”
“Oh, shut up,” he murmured. “Just go. I’ll hang out here and wait. Although I really wanted to go into town and pick up a few things.”
“Honestly, I don’t see why you can’t. She’s an hour late. To me, that means she really doesn’t want the job. If she shows up and no one’s here, then that’s on her.”
“Okay, then which of the other two do you want to hire?”
But Connor was already backing toward the door. “Why don’t we take the weekend to think about it? If I’m going to make this flight, I need to head out now.”
Axel waved him off. “Just go. I’ll see you…Monday?”
“Monday night. And I’m flying back with Slater so you’ve got the entire resort to yourself this weekend. All the other contractors are off because we’re waiting on some permits. Take a little time for yourself and relax. See ya Monday!”
Once he was gone, Axel stood and stretched. He’d been sitting and staring at blueprints and looking over the decorating proposals the two designers had left for them earlier today. He wasn’t overly impressed with either of them, but what the hell did he know about fabrics and color schemes? He was just a carpenter. He worked with his hands and was good at it. He left all the other nonsense to the professionals.
But…he had agreed to handle this selection, and he was going to.
Maybe.
Neither of their plans appealed to him so he wasn’t sure what to tell the guys when they asked. It could just be that his tastes were different, but he didn’t feel good about playing eeny-meeny-miny-moe with such an important decision.
If only the third designer had shown up!
“I hate people who don’t do what they’re supposed to,” he mumbled, walking into the kitchen for a snack.
What he wanted was a nice steak cooked on the grill and maybe some sweet potato casserole and apple pie a la mode for dessert. It was wildly specific, but it was just something he’d been craving this last week.
And he fully blamed Connor for it.
