Page 70 of If I Didn’t Have You

“Do you know how many times I took you out on the horse with me because you wouldn’t stop terrorizing your mother?”

“Papa!” Duke shouted, snagging my attention.

“You never told me that.”

Come to think of it, I didn’t do much of the storytelling in the house. I always left that up to Clara.

“The first time I took you on a ride, it was because your mother had been up all night with you. She was dead on her feet because you wouldn’t go to sleep. So, I took you out to see the horses, but you wanted a ride.”

I chuckled at the memory, how eager he was to get on the damn horse.

“John was over. He held you while I climbed up in the saddle, and then he held the reins as we trotted around the yard. I was so terrified you were gonna squirm right out of my arms and get trampled by the horse.”

Odd, since I had put my granddaughter on a horse not that long ago. I could have used that memory then. The terror might have prevented me from doing such a stupid thing.

“John was there?”

Liam wouldn’t remember any of the times John was over here back then. Before the boys could be put to work, we actually spent a lot of time together, bringing our kids out to the barn to get them out of the house.

“Anyway, I thought I’d come out and see how the rentals are doing.”

Surprise shot across his face at my words. It wasn’t often I got involved, but it was high time I stopped leaving everything to him. I wasn’t even sixty yet. I was way too damn young for retirement.

“Uh…what did you want to know?”

“Everything.”

“That could take a while.”

Shrugging, I prepared myself for one long-ass day. “I’ve got nowhere to be.”

And so I spent the better part of the morning listening to Liam as he laid out what he had been doing with the rentals, about advertising and the rising cost of bringing in customers. He’d told me about some of Bailey’s ideas to attract a crowd in the summer, and what issues we faced with our winter lodgings.

“If we had more cabins, we could really pack people in over the winter. We have so much land, but we don’t want to crowd people in. They want the experience of being in Big Sky country. Not crammed together at a lodge.”

“So, we need more land.”

“We need a compromise,” he sighed. “We’ve got the interest in the lodgings, and we’ve been keeping up with bookings, but unless we start charging more, we’re never gonna get to where we need to be.”

I grunted in acknowledgment. “What’s wrong with charging more?”

“Raise the rates, and it’s gonna be awfully hard to keep drawing in a crowd. Most of the people who come out here are families. They want the peace and quiet on vacation. They want the experience.”

“Don’t you get irritated by having vacationers so close to your house?” I muttered. I didn’t understand how he could be smack dab in the middle of it all.

“They don’t actually come up to me and cause trouble,” he smirked. “Most of them stick to themselves. Every once in a while, someone will ask me the best time to go to the falls, but that’s about it.”

Nodding, I looked out at the landscape, across the river to where Lily resided. “And they leave her alone?” I asked, jerking my head in the direction of the cabin.

“Pop, no one’s coming out here to cause trouble. We haven’t had any problems yet.”

I wanted to find an issue so I had something to complain about, but it seemed Liam had it all under control. There wasn’t a damn thing I could say or do to convince him that this was the wrong move.

“You’re looking for trouble, Pop. You want this to fail.”

“Excuse me?” I snapped, glaring at my son.

“You want this to fail so you don’t feel like it was just you who let down the ranch.”