I was torn between being worried and being touched he trusted me enough to confide in me.
“Go on.”
“It has to do with work. With Ames itself, and the franchise.”
I winced at the eff-word. I hated that word used in relation to my family’s hundred-year-old business. It made it sound cheap and duplicable.
Hudson reached for my hand. “I’m sorry. That’s partly why I was worried about telling you. This is important to you, and I’m afraid what I have to tell you is going to upset you.”
I crawled over and straddled his lap before leaning in to kiss him on the lips. “Thank you for caring. Now tell me before I beat you to death with my beer bottle.”
“Bruce is selling Ames.”
It took me a minute to parse what he was saying. I slid off his lap but stayed snug up against his side. “Truly?”
“I’m not sure he planned it this way, but a very large firm has made an acquisition offer,” he explained. “And since Bruce is over sixty now, he’s decided to retire.”
“What does that mean for Ames? For all the people there?”
“That’s the million-dollar question. The investment assets will go to the new company, but many Ames employees will lose their position,” he said. “Since I’m helping with the negotiations, I feel a responsibility to make sure they’re covered somehow. I’ve been working with Bruce to make sure Ames puts together a strong severance package.”
I was shocked. Companies were acquired all the time, but I’d never thought about what would happen if Ames was acquired once they had a share in the Fig and Bramble brand.
“What does that mean for the pub?” I asked.
I could tell by Hudson’s face he’d been dreading the question.
“I don’t know yet.”
I reached up and caressed his cheek, feeling the late stubble on his handsome face. His eyes seemed to carry the weight of the world. “You’re upset about this, aren’t you? You feel responsible for everyone.”
Hudson pulled me back onto his lap and leaned his forehead against my shoulder. I wrapped my arms around his head and ran fingers through his hair.
“Yes, but I also feel guilty because Bruce is looking out for me. He’s promoted me to vice president and is making my continued employment a condition of the agreement.”
Instead of resentment of any kind, I felt relief. I knew how much Hudson’s self-worth was based on his career success. “That’s a good thing, yeah? It’s what you’ve always wanted. He must think very highly of you.” Along with the relief came a sharp sliver of disappointment. Hudson’s promotion meant even less chance of him miraculously leaving everything behind and following an Irish barman to an old rural pub in County Clare.
“I don’t want things to change,” Hudson admitted in a rough voice. “I want them to stay exactly as they are now.”
The lump in my throat took me by surprise when it really shouldn’t have. I hugged him closer and lowered my lips to his ear. “If things never changed, we’d never have met. And I can’t wish for that.”
I kissed along his jaw to his mouth and lost myself in deep pulls of his lips. We could have stayed like that the rest of the night if the pizza timer hadn’t buzzed after a while. We shook off the melancholy and enjoyed the meal together gossiping about Hobie residents and speculating about how the pub’s launch would do.
We finished eating and got up to clean up our mess. I thought about what it would mean for my family if the Hobie Fig and Bramble wound up owned by some large restaurant holding. Did it matter? We didn’t own it, even though after all the work I’d put into it a part of me wanted to. Should we still care about what happened to it after we earned the bulk of the fees and I returned home?
I could tell Hudson was still upset about the idea of people losing their jobs after the acquisition. As we cleaned up the kitchen, I stayed quiet, assuming he was running around in mental circles attempting to solve the problem.
When we left the house to return to the bunkhouse, he finally started verbalizing his thoughts. “I wish there was a way of guaranteeing everyone a new placement before their severance package runs out.”
I made sure Mama followed us across the gravel drive. “Hudson, a strong severance package is more than most people get when they’re made redundant.”
“I know, but—”
“You can’t fix this for everyone,” I said. “You’re not Father Christmas. The economy is plenty strong in a city as big as Dallas right now for these people to find other work. It’s not like an automobile plant laying off thousands of specially trained machinists. Ames employees are standard office workers and analysts. There are plenty of finance jobs in Dallas.”