worth his effort. He looks for profit, not the golden glow of having been generous.”
She stared at her brother, hoping he wasn’t speaking from experience. “I just have to make him care. It takes devotion to make a business work. And determination. I have both.”
Van got a dustpan and held it for her. “When did you start believing in fairy tales?”
“Since my banker let me down. I need a fairy godmother, and don’t try to talk me out of it. If he’s not here to work with you, you’re too late and I’m too desperate.”
“He had a heart attack, Beth.” Van dumped the dustpan into the wastebasket and took the broom from her. “Aidan came here to recuperate. Do you want to kill him?”
CHAPTER TWO
“KILL HIM? He’s in his early forties.” Returning to the kitchen, she glanced toward the cottage. “Although he was coughing when I ran into him.”
“Coughing?” Van picked up newspapers from the counter and put them in the recycling box. “I never heard of that as a heart attack symptom.”
She went to the fridge and took out a bottled water, which she offered her brother. He shook his head so she opened it herself. “No problem, then. I’ll call him in the morning and make an appointment to present my business plan.”
“No, you won’t. He doesn’t want his shareholders to know what’s happened until he’s ready to tell them. He doesn’t want the press telling them so I offered him the cottage.”
“Are you saying you think I’d call the papers?”
“Beth, listen to me. Don’t bother Aidan Nikolas. You are not a woman who can risk another person’s health and be okay with it later.”
Damn him. “I want to be that woman.” She leaned into the back stairs and took a deep breath, using it to make her voice seem normal. “Eli?”
“Okay, Mom—I’ll take a shower,” he promised in the snarl of a stranger. Uneasily, Beth let his temper pass.
Van gestured toward the second floor. “Is that why you’re desperate?”
“He’s not himself. He ran away to live with Campbell after the fire, and he’s smart enough to sense Campbell was glad when I brought him home.”
“You really are scared.” With both hands on her shoulders, Van steered her into the family room, switching to big-brother mode. “Tell me exactly what Jonathan Barr said today.”
Beth sat on the sofa. In front of her, on a tufted, square ottoman, a pile of towels and linens she’d washed after dinner waited. She picked up a towel, her hands actually shaking.
“I’ve told you before, you don’t have to do laundry.”
“And I’m telling you again, I don’t love housework, but Mrs. Carleton has enough to do without cleaning up after Eli and me.”
Van shook his head. “Why won’t you let anyone help you?”
“You mean you? You’ve helped me all my life. I can do this myself, if someone will just take a chance that I’ve done my projections correctly.”
“But that won’t be Jonathan Barr?”
“He said I want too much money and I’m not a good risk.”
“His reasoning?”
When he was upset, Van tended to talk to people as if he were querying computer files.
“I should have known Campbell hadn’t paid the insurance, and I can’t argue with him there. I thought the divorce decree required him to pay it.” She took out her anger on the towel, slamming it into folds. “What made me think he’d meet one responsibility?”
“Let me give you the money,” Van said. “Eli will never have to know unless you tell him.”
“No,” she said so sharply Van noticed. She couldn’t let him know what Jonathan Barr had divulged. “I can’t.”
“You won’t, and you want me to let you and Eli suffer because you’re too proud to take a loan from someone who loves you.”
She shook her head, ruefully, to prove it didn’t matter when it most definitely did. “Oh, I’m hot for a handout.” She folded another towel. “But for Eli, I have to do this the responsible way.”
“Pride won’t feed you.”
“Or clothe us, but you’re my brother, not my guardian angel.”
She almost asked him if Jonathan Barr had been right, but she stopped herself in time. Van wouldn’t tell her the truth. To him, he was still eighteen, and she was ten, and their parents had just died, leaving her his responsibility.
“I’d expect you to pay me back,” he said.
“It’s not going to happen.” Avoiding his gaze, she went for a sheet. There was Eli’s father—refusing to take part in raising his own child—and her brother—trying to help when helping might hurt him. She had to consider asking Aidan Nikolas. “What burns me is Barr, talking at me as if I were still in kindergarten. Eight years of making the lodge pay counts for nothing.”
“With him. I know you’re good for the money.”
“Then why do you care if I ask Aidan Nikolas to help?”
“I told you he’s here to rest.”
“The entrepreneur who runs small businesses with a single thought, chases new opportunities with steel will? The guy who manages to hide his personal life from twenty-first-century paparazzi?” She stood to finish the sheet. “Don’t you think he can protect himself?”
Van looked troubled. She tried to remember him before he’d taken the world on his shoulders. First, he’d had to protect her long enough for her to reach adulthood. Then his marriage had ended because of his guilt after his wife had been attacked while he’d been away on a business trip. She’d like to relieve Van of his sense of duty toward her and her son.
“I don’t intend to chase the man around his desk—just present my business plan.”
“You won’t, because it might hurt him.”
“I’m not sure I can afford to be noble.”
Van’s eyes, green like their father’s, were so serious she couldn’t look away. “Who are you? And what have you done with my sister?”
She smoothed the edges of one towel. “I’m divorced and a single mom.” She started folding another. “I own a lodge that barely qualifies as rubble, and I’m on the edge of bankruptcy. My son is acting odd, and a guy who has money to invest just landed on your doorstep.”
Van took a pillowcase off the pile of linens and started to fold it. His silence troubled her more than his warnings.
“Are you sure he’s sick?
