‘But itismaking a profit,’ he pointed out.
‘There would be abiggerprofit with some adjusting.’
‘We are not losing the in-house processing.’
‘We’ll decide after I’ve been for a tour of the place tomorrow,’ she said with an annoying finality that made him feel like a ten-year-old being scolded by an adult.
‘Our agreement was you were to be a silent partner,’ he reminded her.
‘I can be a silent partner, but I can also withdraw any of the extra capital I laid out, which you and I both know you’re depending on at the moment.’
Nick clenched his jaw and forced himself to rein in his growing temper.
‘Oh, come on, Nicky,’ she chastised, ‘this is business. You need to learn to dissociate your heart from your head or you’ll never make it.’
‘Not everyone is out to make a fortune. I just want to build a life.’
‘You won’t be building anything if you go broke, though, will you? Do you have any idea how many businesses go bankrupt within the first few years of opening?’
‘I’m sure you’ll be happy to tell me,’ Nick said, pressing two fingers to the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes. How many times would he have to hear this same doom and gloom lecture?
‘Do you truly believe I want you to fail?’ she demanded.
‘I honestly don’t know, Susie,’ he said, dropping his hand and looking up. ‘Sometimes I think maybe you do. Just so you can gloat and say, “I told you so.” We both know what you really want me doing—and it’s not running a pub in a place like this.’
‘Of course it isn’t,’ Susie snapped, throwing her hands in the air. ‘You could have any place in the world if you accepted the job I offered you—but instead you come to this run-down place in the middle of nowhere.’
‘And that’s the problem, isn’t it? You’re never going to accept that this is the choice I made—that this is what I want.’
‘How can I, when I know you’re making a huge mistake? Who in their right mind turns their back on making a fortune and instead takes on a … a pub?’ she shot back, practically spitting out the word.
‘This is what I want. This has been my dream for years. This is what got me through some of the darkest times in my life—why can’t you just let me be happy?’ he asked, trying to find the words to get through to her.
She looked taken aback as his meaning sank in, but then she lifted her chin. ‘Because I don’t believe this is where you belong. Is it such a crime to want you working with me? To see you succeeding in life—earning ten times the amount you’d earn doing this and without the worry and stress?’
‘The fact you think doing what you do comes without stress or worry is exactly why I don’t want any part of it. You might be able to switch off your humanity while you’re dissecting businesses and making people unemployed all in the name of rebranding and selling companies off like scrap metal, but that isn’t for me.’ He’d had a brief taste of that life shortly after leaving the army, and being even remotely connected to any of it had made him feel like crap.
‘If you’d stuck with the job long enough to give it a chance, you’d have realised that sometimes making those decisions actually saved those businesses in the long run. That maybe the directors of those companies had been avoiding doing exactly the same thing, which would have saved them from getting into the position where someone like myself had to step in and make those kinds of drastic changes. It’s easy to make someone look like a monster just because they can see thingspractically, instead of through a pair of rose-coloured glasses. Not everything in life is clean-cut—you should understand that better than anyone. You were sent into places to do things so the rest of us didn’t have to. It’s no different from business.’
‘And I gotoutof that to live a quieter life.’
For a second he thought her expression had softened slightly, but then it was gone and a flash of sadness moved across her face. ‘I’ve only ever wanted what was best for you, Nick. Even when you haven’t understood it.’
Nick hesitated at his sister’s tone. For a moment, it sounded almost … vulnerable, which was absurd, seeing she was one of the toughest people he knew. Which wasn’t really a compliment—not when tough could often be mistaken for cold or even callous.
‘I know you believe that,’ he said slowly, as he held her gaze, ‘but it’s not about whatyouconsider to be the best.’
‘Then for your sake, I hope that I’m impressed by what I see tomorrow with this beef-farming idea.’
Nick stared at the empty doorway for a long while after his sister had left, feeling a prickle of unease. He wished he’d never signed on with her as a business partner. He’d known it was going to come back and bite him on the arse—he just hadn’t realised it would be so soon.
He couldn’t lose his pub—not now. Not after everything he’d already poured into it.
