A Little Too Late (Madigan Mountain)

REED

Halley gives me a piercing stare from behind the bar, and I wait to learn my fate. “Fine,” she says eventually. “I’ll sell you a bottle of the Russian River Cabernet. But I’m charging you full price.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less of you.” I plunk down my credit card. And then I sort out another room-service order—pizza, of course—while she uncorks the wine for me and provides me with two glasses.

“You’re an angel,” I tell her, just because I think it will piss her off. “Pure sweetness and light.”

She scowls. “If you break Ava’s heart, I will end you.”

“Yeah, yeah. Friend of the year. I get it. Night, sweetness.”

I head upstairs to find Sheila still perched in my suite, laptop open, a spreadsheet in front of her. “Hey, boss!” she crows. “Did you find out what the bad guys are up to?”

“Yeah, and it’s even worse than I thought.”

I show her the photos on my phone, and she makes all the appropriate horror-filled gasps. “You and I could make a classier design out of Lego bricks. This shall not stand!”

“That was pretty much my opinion, too. It’s like the evil, awful version of the plan my parents had for that piece of land twenty years ago.”

“Ooh!” She sits up straighter. “What did they want to do?”

I flip to a free page in my notebook and start to sketch. “If you went to the top of Madigan peak, and then skied in the wrong direction, you could get to town. Main Street basically dead ends into the foothills. But Block owns a big tract of land right here…” I draw a shape just to the east of Main Street. “It’s pastureland, even though Block had moved his herd out of town by the time I was in high school. My parents wanted to buy this land and put another ski lift right here.” I draw an arrow up the mountain. “And maybe develop some condos at the edges to pay for it. The other hotels in the area would love this plan. And townies would be walking distance to the lift.”

“Sort of like Park City, Utah?” Sheila asks. “The lift goes right downtown.”

“Yeah, pretty much,” I agree. “The town of Penny Ridge has better highway access than the ski resort, and more buildable land.”

Still doodling, I sketch Main Street into the drawing, picturing its Western-style low-slung buildings. When we’d driven through Penny Ridge tonight, I’d noticed how nice all those antique buildings still look. As a teenager, I hadn’t appreciated how rare that is. How picturesque.

In the right hands, this would be a really cool expansion.

There’s a tap on the door. And when I answer it, both Ava and our pizza have arrived. “Happy to see the both of you,” I say cheerfully.

Ava’s smile is a little tight, but she squeezes my arm as she passes into the living room. “Sheila, thank you for lending me the boots. You’re a lifesaver.”

“No problem.”

I collect the pizza, and then get down to the business of pouring the wine. “Who wants a glass of red?”

“Not me,” Sheila says, standing up. “Kids, I’m out of here. Enjoy your wine and pizza.”

“Oh, we always enjoy our pizza.” I give Ava a silly look, and she cracks a smile.

“Hey, boss?” Sheila says as she’s zipping her laptop away. “Prashant is in a mood. I’m supposed to make sure you call him back tonight or first thing tomorrow.”

“Tonight?” I echo as I do the math. It’s Friday night, and VCs are pretty notorious for working like dogs. Even the billionaires.

But a Friday night call from the boss is still a little extreme. Uh-oh.

“He didn’t say exactly why he was calling,” she says softly. “But I fear the worst.”

Shit. “You think Deevers didn’t sign the paperwork? Fuck—is he going to back out?”

Her expression is tense. “I don’t know. Maybe Prashant only wanted a Netflix recommendation. But my mind ran to the worst-case scenario.”

“Fuck.” I slide down on the sofa like a slouching schoolboy. “Thank you for coming to Colorado with me, Sheila. I know you probably have better things to do on a Friday night.”

“The hours of this job suck, Reed, but the entertainment value is high. Besides, the skiing is going to be awesome tomorrow.”

I smile up at the ceiling. “I used to skip school on powder days. My mother would call us in sick, and the secretary at the middle school would joke with her. ‘It’s altitude sickness again, Mrs. Madigan?’ And she’d say, ‘Yeah, it’s really bad this time of year.’”

“And now you don’t miss work even when you are sick,” she points out. “You work most weekends. You only go out for business dinners.”

“Enough, Sheila. You’re making me look bad in front of Ava.”

Sheila just grins. “Call Prashant. Eat some dinner. I’m going to go down to the bar to meet Harper.”

I lift my head. Hell, I’d forgotten Harper was here. “Is she doing okay?”

“Totally!” Sheila beams. “She had a massage and a snowboarding lesson today.”

“Snowboarding, not skiing? I knew she and I were incompatible.”

Ava rolls her eyes at me, and Sheila lets herself out.

That leaves Ava and me alone together. I pass her a glass of wine. “How do you feel about cabernet?”

“I feel great about it.” She takes a sip and watches me. “Is this your go-to? I don’t really even know what adult Reed likes now that we’re not drinking from a warm keg at somebody’s off-campus house party.”

“I like lots of things,” I say quietly. “Like you, for example.”

Ava flushes and then looks away.

“Are you okay?” I ask her, flipping up the top of the pizza box and offering it to her.

“Thanks.” She takes a slice and then bites it, chewing thoughtfully. “I’m okay. But it’s just sinking in that the Sharpe deal is going to be dead in the water.”

“And you feel…?”

“Conflicted. I worked hard on that deal. Weeks of preparation. I wasn’t looking forward to working with the Sharpes, but…” She sets her wine and her food down in order to rub her temples.

“You were getting a promotion,” I say softly. “That will probably still happen, don’t you think?”

“Will it? Your father has to start from scratch now. Not that he’s gotten his head around it. He…” She sighs.

I wait for her to eat a little more before I press for details. “What did he say?”

“Nothing good. He behaved like it’s our fault the Sharpes are assholes.”

“Huh.” I take a fortifying sip of wine. “You mean he acted like it was my fault.”

She looks guilty. “He implied that you must be happy to be right. As if being right was all you cared about.”

Ouch. I let that sink in. “Honestly, it’s not even the worst thing he ever said to me, Ava. When I left here, he was blaming everyone for his own unhappiness. I’m glad you mostly haven’t seen that side of him.”

She lifts troubled eyes to mine. “I’m sorry. That sounds awful. He was pulling himself together by the time I arrived. The hotel was in rough shape, though. I thought maybe the recession had been a factor.”

“I’m glad he’s been good to you. And if he’ll let me, I’ll help him. See? I’ve been brainstorming.” I point to my sketch of Penny Ridge.

“An in-town development could be so cool,” Ava says, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Think of all that new terrain.”

“Oh, I am.” I wrap an arm around her. “It would be good for the town, too. More street traffic for the shops. Locals’ access to skiing would improve. Hell, the kids could walk to the lift after school. That was basically my dream when I was a kid.”

“I bet.” She smiles at me.

I glance down at my sketch, feeling a flare of excitement. Maybe Block doesn’t like my dad. But he might talk to me…

Ava’s phone bleats loudly. “Hang on,” she says, leaning over to fish it out of her bag. “I have to check this.” She frowns at the screen and then answers the call. “Yeah, Bert? What’s up?” She listens to him, then closes her eyes. “Okay, sure. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Did you call… Okay, good.”

“Problem?” I ask after she hangs up. “How big?”

“Bigger than a cat, smaller than a dog,” she says with a wry smile. “And there’s two of them.”

“Wait, what?”

She stands up. “Bert took a crew of ski-patrol members up for their mandatory nighttime training. They found two raccoons in the warming hut, because somebody left the door open.”

“And why is this your problem?” I have to ask, standing up, too. I’m already mourning my pizza date.

“Because it’s nine o’clock, and I’m the associate manager,” she says. “I’ll get someone on the maintenance staff to help me. But nobody’s officially on duty at this hour, and I can’t have the warming hut closed on opening weekend.”

“Huh,” I say slowly. “How about I come, too? And aren’t raccoons rabid?”

She grins. “You look nervous, Reed. But this is no big deal. It’s worse in the spring, because then we get bears.” She is already pulling on a sharp-looking Madigan Mountain Staff jacket. “Bert called the animal-control service already. Mostly I’m going up there to assess the damage.”

“I’m still going,” I say, unwilling to spare any of our precious time together. “I guess we can’t send my dad?”

“Your father and I used to trade off the burden of being on call in the evenings. But when he got married, I told him I would handle it for a while. It was my wedding gift to him.”

That doesn’t sound fair. I put on my ski jacket—the same one Ava had borrowed earlier tonight. And she’s zipping up hers. The subtle mountain goat logo she drew looks slick on it, too.

It almost makes me want one.