Page 19 of Billionaire's Coastal Haven

“Not anymore,” he mumbles.

“We need a restaurant. Even if it only serves breakfast.”

“The space over the garage has better views,” Archer says.

“That’s not near the kitchen. It will be exhausting for the staff to climb the stairs.”

“We can install a food elevator.” Collin runs his hand over the wall.

“They still have to climb stairs. What about guests with limited mobility?” I walk past them into the oversized living room. “How about here? It’s central and opens onto the deck. When the weather’s nice, you can have tables outside.”

“The main bedroom is right there.” Landon points to the broken door frame next to the fireplace.

“You plan on living here?” Collin asks.

He shrugs and walks toward the kitchen, but the heavy cadence to his gait is discordant.

Hedoeswant to live here. He wants to make it a home.

And we crushed that.

Icrushed that.

I chew the inside of my cheek. I should have given Landon more time to come to terms with the new plan instead of springing it on him this afternoon.

“What was your original plan?” I tug on his sleeve. “Where’s your napkin?”

The corner of his mouth twitches. “What makes you think I have it with me?”

“Don’t you?”

He shrugs again. A favorite response to my questions. The non-answer answer.

If I were brave, I’d reach into his pockets and search for it, but that’s not an impulse I should follow. I’m not sure where it came from.

I pause at the edge of the living room and give Landon space, let him wander.

Calling it a living room is a misnomer. It’s almost forty feet across, with a person-sized fireplace on the wall between the floor-to-ceiling picture windows that overlook the forest and the entry to the primary suite.

I’ve always thought it was strange that the back of the house with the windows captures views of the forest and the front of the house with its little windows face the ocean. Most designers would want the ocean to be the focal point but not the Reeves. “Do you know why your grandfather didn’t have the back deck overlooking the ocean?” I ask Archer.

“Great-grandma Harriette didn’t want to see the ocean when Grandpa Thomas was gone on one of his runs up the coast. She didn’t want to think about him in danger.”

“That makes sense.” Prophetic, even, considering Thomas died when his ship sank during a storm.

Siren’s Callis legendary. Infamous to the point of becoming an urban legend. My mom told stories passed down from Collin and Archer’s grandmother about Thomas evading federal inspectors to run alcohol across the border during prohibition. She made it seem dangerous and romantic.

But who knows what the truth was.

Collin nods. “Once we decide what needs to be gutted for safety, the first thing we need to do is decide what spaces will be public and which will be private. Landon?”

“The north wing will be private. Everything else will be open to the public.”

Collin taps out a note on his phone. “Even the kitchens and staff spaces?”

“Yeah. I want people to feel like they can grab a glass of milk from the fridge at two a.m. if they need to.”

“What about food safety? Guests can’t just riffle through the food they plan to serve to everyone else. What if someone’s sick and contaminates everything?”