It made no sense, then. Maybe she thought owning the business would be an easy stream of passive income.
“This isn’t some hands-off job, okay?” Silas said. “Being the boss means being responsible for expenses. Dealing with town ordinances. It means making sure that everyone out there has a check to take back to their families. Keeping Chuck’s legacy alive.”
With every responsibility he added, he saw the assuredness in her face slip a little more.
Good.
He needed her to smell the pine forest and wake the hell up.
“Okay, I hear you,” she said. “And I’m not committing to selling or staying. I’m only asking for some time to weigh my options and make an informed decision.”
Silas rubbed his neck roughly, trying not to get frustrated with a dead man for all this confusion. “How much time do you need?”
“Let’s say… the summer.”
“The summer?” he bellowed, almost tipping himself backward off the chair. “You want to take the whole summer to make a decision?”
“Yeah, I can spend it observing and learning how things work around here. Get a sense if this is a business I want to run.”
“You don’t have a life somewhere else? A job to get back to?” he asked.
“No, actually. My schedule’s free until September.”
He blinked as his mind raced in search of a solution, but his efforts proved futile. There was no convincing someone this impulsive of anything right now.
“All right, you’ll stay the summer,” he said.
“Perfect,” she said, rising to her feet. “I’ll see you tomorrow, and I hope we can work well together.”
Silas ignored the part of him that wanted to roll his eyes in response to her words and offered a simple nod of acknowledgment instead.
“Also, do you have any places you’d recommend I get breakfast?” she asked as he walked her to the front.
“Try the Yodeling Loon,” he said flatly.
After she left the cabin, Silas turned to see the Mountaintop team pop up from behind the reception desk with a sheet cake and big smiles. As they opened their mouths to sing or shout something, Silas cut them off by saying, “She didn’t sign the papers.”
“What?” Halo asked, casting a look at the door Raven had left through. “Is she coming back?”
“Yup, tomorrow,” Silas said, moving to straighten a chair that had been upturned. “And the next. And the next. For the entire summer.”
He explained what had gone down, their faces falling before settling into expressions Silas thought likely reflected his own.
“Chuck wanted you to own this place. Literally everyone in town knows that,” Doc, the baby of the group, said. His youthful face belied the fact that he was the smartest person Silas knew.
“Not according to his Last Will and Testament,” Silas said.
“This is bullshit,” Halo said. “What can we do?”
“Absolutely nothing. We’ll have to wait till the end of summer to see what she wants to do.”
“God,” Halo said, rolling her eyes. “A woman like that, in a town like this? She’ll get bored in a month.”
“More like a week,” Silas said, but he wasn’t so sure that was true; he’d seen the stubborn glint in Raven’s eye. But he was trying to assure them all would work itself out. They didn’t need to worry.
“You want to make that an official bet, dude?” Halo asked, lifting a brow.
A petty bet as a bluff of confidence couldn’t hurt, so he said, “Drinks on me at Blue’s for a month if she doesn’t bail by the end of this week.”
