Lucky me.
Another truck pulled in beside me, and I lifted my chin at Wyatt.
“I guess we’re both running late,” my brother said as he jogged next to me so we could head in to the main area of the estate.
The property itself held a spa, over a dozen little cabins, a whole winery, a large barn and access building that was for the weddings and other events that the family had on hand, and countless other small buildings that helped the resort work.
There were two main buildings, though, that were at least three stories and gorgeous. When a storm had come through and destroyed part of it, it had been my job to restore it.
And it was still one of the highlights of my career.
The Wilder offices were on the top floor of the main building, away from the restaurant and guest rooms.
The fact that there was a large enough meeting space for every single Wilder and their families surprised me to this day. Although I knew that some companies rented it out for their private retreats.
“We’re not that late,” I said as I looked at my phone and cringed.
“Okay, a little late.”
“I really hope there’s coffee,” Wyatt said.
I raised a brow. “I thought you would at least have some coffee in your system with the way that you’re bouncing your toes.”
Wyatt just grinned at me, that leer that made me roll my eyes.
“Oh, that perk didn’t come from coffee.”
“I really don’t want to know what you and Ava are up to.”
“Faith was at a sleepover. It was a good morning. But I’m running late.”
I shoved him as he laughed, and we made our way up the stairs and into the main meeting room.
We were indeed the last ones there, although I knew not everybody was showing up for this meeting today.
“Oh good, you’re here. We have coffee,” Eli said, and both Wyatt and I grinned at each other before heading over to fill up two cups.
We were a large extended family of ten, with Eliza making eleven. Eliza lived up in Colorado with her family that she had married into, and she no longer had a stake in the company. Not that she wasn’t part of our family and visited often, but because she had wanted to ensure her brothers had a way to begin their lives fully. I wasn’t sure of exactly everything that had occurred, but I loved Eliza and her kids. Each of my cousins and brothers was there, although none of the spouses were. I had found that odd at first, but it was Eli’s wife, Alexa, who had explained what the meeting was about.
I was also grateful that my parents hadn’t decided to name the four of us with the same letter. The cousins each had names that started with the letter E, and sometimes I still got the names confused.
It didn’t matter that we had all grown up together and knew each other. I couldn’t keep up with it. And now that everybody was having kids, I swore we needed name tags.
“You guys need to have a meeting where you discuss the family at its core. We already had the large meeting with all forty of us. Now it’s time to make a decision,” Eli’s wife and the Wilder wedding planner had said.
So now, it was the ten of us for a meeting that I hoped would go well.
“Now that we’re all here, let’s talk expansion,” Eli said, and I let out a breath and knew it was time.
“Are we talking about on the property or somewhere else?” Ridge asked as he leaned back in his chair.
My brother was smiling more than I’d ever known him to do so, and it made me happy to see. He put his feet up on the table. Nobody told him to remove them, and I had a feeling he hadn’t even noticed he was doing it. Ridge ran security with one of the brothers-in-law, with one of the Wilder brothers-in-law, and it all was a complicated system that they seemed to figure out on their own.
“Both,” Eli answered. “We haven’t truly used the acreage that you guys have added. And we will once we decide if we’re going to add more restaurants or more places to stay or just keep it as it is. I know we have business plans and we’re ready to go with what we need there, and Brooks is going to be busy.”
I lifted up my coffee. “I’m working on plans as much as I possibly can. You’re just going to have to be patient,” I said with a shrug.
“And frankly, I don’t want to use anybody outside of our family to build,” my brother Gabriel said. Gabriel was rarely here, considering he was usually out on tour with his band. But this was an important family meeting, and so we were all here together.
