and challenged Mac to do the craziest thing...
Help her save Hillstrand Solar.
With that interesting little carrot at the end—that if it didn’t work, and she failed, he could still buy it from her. He could be a horrible person and give her bad advice, advice sure to bring Hillstrand Solar to ruin, but a part of Mac was...intrigued by the idea of helping her. Turning a company around instead of just flipping it to the next buyer could be an interesting twist to his usual practices. A challenge of sorts.
Either way, he intended to use the week to convince her that, in the end, selling was the best strategy. If he paid a little more in a month because of the help he gave her, so be it. She’d have the satisfaction of knowing she hadn’t ruined the company, and he’d still have that last piece to the bigger puzzle he was assembling.
He had an hour until he was supposed to meet Savannah, an hour he could spend working—or he could bite the bullet and see his family. Part of him just wanted to hole up in a coffee shop and spend the sixty minutes checking email on his laptop, but a twinge of guilt told him he hadn’t come all this way just to work. He had missed his brothers and mother something fierce, and it’d be nice to see them.
His father, not so much. Especially after that conversation in Atlanta with his Uncle Tank. His real name wasn’t Tank, of course, but he’d gotten the nickname because John Barlow was a barrel-chested guy with a larger-than-life personality, and the nickname had followed him from childhood on up. The younger brother to Bobby, Mac’s father, and the one who had always been the jokester, the prankster, but who also had gotten into more trouble than a loose pig at a county fair. When he’d first told Mac the story about Bobby’s misdeeds, Mac had dismissed it as yet another joke. Then a little digging had unearthed some truth—truth that redefined everything Mac thought he knew about his family.
And about his father.
Now that trouble was threatening to catch up with the Barlows if Mac didn’t find a way to head it off. But that meant talking to his father, something Mac had learned long ago to avoid doing.
You have another brother, Uncle Tank had said, explaining that he had known the boy for some time, staying in contact by posing as a friend to the family, something he’d done as a favor to Bobby. I talked to him and he said he wants to meet the rest of his family. Soon.
Meeting them meant exposing the truth. Exposing his father as a cheater. Despite the hard feelings between himself and his dad, he didn’t relish telling the others what Uncle Tank had told him. In fact, Mac had no idea how to say the words. How to confront the man he hadn’t talked to in almost a decade. Was there ever a good time for that kind of thing?
A moment later, Mac was in the driveway of his old childhood home. He stood there a moment, taking in the long open porch, the big front door still painted the same cranberry color as always. There were new annuals in the flower beds, and a new American flag hanging from the pole, but mostly the house had stayed unchanged, like a snapshot of the past. A part of Mac liked knowing it would be the same, year after year. He gave the old homestead a nod, then walked up the front steps and into the house. In an instant, his family poured into the hall like water overflowing a dam to see him.
He took off his helmet and grinned. Damn, it was good to see them. “I heard one of you is getting married, and I’m here to talk you out of it.”
Jack was the first to clap his older brother on the back. Still trim and fit from his time in the military, Jack had the shortest haircut of the three of them. “Sorry, Mac, you’re too late. I’m already in love. Might want to talk to the other one. He just got engaged five seconds ago.” He nodded toward Luke.
Luke was engaged? Of the three Barlow boys, Mac would have listed Luke as least likely to get married. He arched a brow in Luke’s direction, and his brother started grinning like a fool.
Mac shook his head in mock regret. “I go away for a few years and this is the kind of craziness I come home to?”
“It’s the best kind of craziness, so hush up and enjoy your family,” his mother said. Della wrapped him in a hug, dragging him toward the dining room table. It was Sunday—family dinner day. Except Mac hadn’t sat at the family dinner table in years, and he wasn’t so sure he wanted to today, either. He could see his father, standing to the side of the table, his face as unreadable as a hieroglyphic.
A mixed bag of emotions ran through Mac. He’d missed his father, but at the same time, dreaded seeing him. And now the knowledge that Bobby Barlow had fathered a child with another woman had given Mac a whole new set of reasons to be angry at the man. All he knew was that he couldn’t deal with this today and definitely not at the Sunday dinner table.
Mama placed a kiss on his temple as if he was five years old again. “It’s good to have you home, Maxwell.”
Mac covered his mother’s hand with his own. He’d missed her simple touch, her ever-present love for her sons. Despite everything that had happened in the past between Bobby and Mac, Della couldn’t hold a grudge if it was glued to her palm. He loved that about his mother. “Good to be back, Mama.”
Jack gestured toward one of the seats at the table. “So, you gonna stay awhile or what?”
Mac’s gaze went to his father. Even now, even at thirty, Mac wanted that nod of approval. Ridiculous. He should be well past that need.
“Of course he’s staying,” Mama said. She pulled out a chair and practically shoved Mac into it. “Plus it’s Maddy’s birthday—”
“Who’s Maddy?”
“Stay home for more than five minutes and you’ll get caught up,” Jack said.
“Maddy is Luke’s daughter. With Susannah Reynolds,” his mother explained. “It’s a long story, one that I’ll share after dinner. And now, Luke is marrying Peyton, Susannah’s sister. So they’re going to be a family very soon.”
Mac glanced around and saw a little girl shyly holding hands with Peyton. To their right stood Meri Prescott, the former beauty queen now engaged to Jack. He remembered both Peyton and Meri from when they were kids, especially Peyton, who had vacationed sometimes at the same lake as the Barlows. And there were his two brothers, smiling like loons. “Is there some kind of marriage plague going on here that I missed?” Mac said.
His mother smiled. “You came home just in time for all the celebration.”
“Wasn’t sure you would,” his father muttered. “Haven’t heard hide nor hair from you in years.”
Mac ignored the barb. Unlike his brothers, he’d never really gotten along with his father. Maybe it was something about being the oldest, the one who set the pace, laid out all the expectations. No matter how far Mac climbed or how well he did, his father rarely had an attaboy or so much as a nod for the achievement. And when Mac had announced he was leaving home the day after he graduated high school, it had turned into a fight about Mac abandoning his responsibilities and his family.
The final torch to the feeble bridge between father and son had been one of Mac’s first business purchases, a small family-owned used car lot that Mac had turned around and sold to an investor up north, who’d taken the inventory and left the lot vacant for years, a barren spot in downtown Stone Gap. It wasn’t until a few years later that the lot was taken under new ownership and management, and saw life again. Bobby had blamed Mac for ruining the town, ruining his friend’s life and ruining pretty much the entire world.
