Second Chance Baby

He shook his head. “Of course it’s not too much trouble. Come on. Let’s go.”

I walked away without even glancing back toward Mason. My heart was broken all over again.20Mason“The books all look really good,” Tom said. “You’re doing a really great job keeping up with them. And I know I had heard that business and increased a tremendous amount when Ava came to work here, but just breaking it down into the sheer numbers is impressive. You really did make the right call with her.”

The statement sounded loaded, like he meant more by it than just what those words meant on their surface. I was leaned back against the counter in my office, my arms crossed over my chest and my jaw set. I was doing everything I could not to show how angry I was, but it wasn’t exactly working out for me.

Tom was pushing me closer and closer to the edge with every day he was in town. He had only been here for a week, but I was growing more irritated at him by the moment. It wasn’t that he was in my office going over the books. After all, that was kind of his place in the business. He was the one who put up the money, so he was the one who had the most at stake when it came to the finances.

And, the truth was, I was the best at numbers of the rest of the brothers, but Tom was really the one who had the best financial sense of us. He entrusted me to be the one in charge since he was in a different state and had his own business to run. But he still needed to be the one to check over everything and make sure nothing was falling through the cracks.

At any other time, I wouldn’t have minded at all. Any other time before the last two months, he could have shown up and combed through every single transaction that happened since the day The Hollow opened with a fine-toothed comb. He could have taken every receipt we’d gotten and papier-mâché’d the bar with it for all I would have cared.

I would have been perfectly happy to go over everything with him, explain every financial decision, and accept every single bit of advice he might have had to give me. But that was then. Before Ava came back into my life. And before I made him a promise I never thought I’d actually have any problem living up to.

And if I was really being honest, that was the issue that was truly at the center of all my aggravation. Not that he was there. Not even that I didn’t know when he would leave. Just the fact that I really felt like the only reason my brother was there at all was to check in on me. In all this time, he hadn’t made any effort to come from California to check on the bar or help us. But he found out Ava was working there, and in two months, he managed to figure out how to come with no set end point in sight.

My other brothers assured me they hadn’t said anything to Tom about Ava and me. All of them were just as supportive of my relationship with her as possible. They believed she was perfect for me, and that we should be putting everything into trying to be together. They also saw how well we worked together, and that the bar kept getting more successful even while we were together.

But Ava was furious with me. I couldn’t really blame her. Dumping the news of the promise I made to Tom on her wasn’t exactly the most compassionate or loving thing I could do. Especially when she only had a matter of seconds to process it before she had to go in and face him.

I hadn’t been able to speak with her alone about anything since that day. She wouldn’t get anywhere near me at the bar and wasn’t answering my calls. I should have just told Tom we were back together and that it was none of his damn business. Ava and I were adults and we could be professional. Tom should just butt out.

Instead, I didn’t stand up to him.

And while I could see exactly why Ava was angry with me, I still missed her like crazy. It made my heart ache to not have her right there with me all the time. I went to bed wishing she was there, and I woke up hating that she wasn’t the first thing I saw.

By the time Tom finally got through the books and I went back into the bar, the crowds were building up. I had barely gotten behind the bar when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out and saw it was Jordan. Going out into the parking lot behind the building was the quietest spot available, so that’s where I went.