“Yay! Yay! YAY! DON’T BE LATE!” And she skipped out of the office.
Silence filled the room except for his dad’s two pointer fingers continuing to pound away on his keyboard.
Levi stood up and groaned. The bed sucked. Or maybe it was his life.
His dad slid him an unimpressed glance. “’Bout time you got up. I don’t know what you do in the city, but here in the mountains, our mornings start before ten.”
Levi had always operated on the assumption his dad enjoyed pushing his only son’s buttons. And he was good at it. It hadn’t been easy growing up knowing he’d been expected to stay in town, take over the family business, and live happily ever after—without following any of his own hopes and dreams.
He’d gotten past all that. Okay, so maybe he still harbored a little resentment. But since his stint in the hospital and now his stay here at the house, Levi was starting to realize that maybe it wasn’t that his dad didn’t respect or understand his son’s choices. Maybe . . . maybe the guy was just doing the best he could to get through his own day, and being a cynical ass helped him do that. “What’s going on, Dad? What’s with all the mumbling?”
“Don’t ask when you don’t really want to know.”
The family store was the only sporting goods store on North Shore, which meant it was highly trafficked and did great business. But there wasn’t a huge profit margin in it, and Levi’s family had struggled plenty—something he hadn’t appreciated growing up because his parents had never let on about any financial strain.
Knowing that they’d protected him and Tess from that stress usually gave him more patience when his dad pulled the holier-than-thou crap. But he felt pretty rough this morning, and was definitely short on patience. “Dad, just tell me what’s going on.”
His dad pushed his chair back from the desk, looking disgusted. “The store’s books are a mess.”
For the past decade, Cal—Tess’s soon-to-be-ex-husband—had been doing the accounting for the store. He’d started right after college, the first nonfamily member to ever handle the books.
But when Cal took off with the babysitter a month ago, he’d walked away from the job. If he was being honest, Levi hadn’t even given it a single thought, knowing someone else would now be handling the bookkeeping.
Apparently that someone had been his dad. This wasn’t good because, though the man knew his stuff, he was impatient as hell when it came to the business side of the store.
His dad tore off his reading glasses and tossed them onto the desk. “Cal’s a piece of shit.”
“Agreed.” Levi took a closer look at his dad and saw the tight grimness to his mouth and the stress lines around the eyes. “What’s wrong?”
His dad rubbed his eyes. “It’s not good.”
Levi’s heart sank. “I’m going to need you to be clearer. Did Cal mess up the books, or did he help himself to the kitty?”
His dad opened his eyes and looked at Levi. “I’m not sure. But I think the second thing.”
“Jesus, Dad.”
The guy shook his head. “It’s just a gut feeling. I haven’t been able to find anything.”
“The software I sent you last quarter should’ve alerted you to anything out of the norm going on.”
“Yeah, I couldn’t make heads or tails out of that program. And why change something if it’s not broke.”
“Are you kidding me—” Levi broke off and drew a deep breath because nope, not getting baited into a fight. “Mom told me it was working out great.”
“Because that’s what I told her.” His dad looked away. “It was complicated to load and I never got around to it. Obviously, not my smartest move.”