She began to work the top off the box, lifting her head, proud.
She froze with the box top above the cake while her gaze dropped to Sterling's boots. Her smile faded.
Sterling looked down, expecting her frown had been prompted by a fleck of mud or a loose shoelace.
The check Paige had torn up lay in pieces at his feet.
"Walter." His mother's voice cooled. She set aside the box lid with more annoyance than ceremony. "And look. The wrong cake. It was supposed to be black forest, but this is carrot. I can't seem to count on anyone today."
Here. We. Go.
"What happened?"
"They're not ready to sell," Sterling said.
"She's holding out for more money? No." She shot a look at her husband that made his mouth shrink to the size of a pinhole.
"Actually-" Sterling began, but his father spoke over him.
"We could lease the lake house. Or sell some stocks. Maybe sell your mother's house." He raised his brows at his wife, a request for her to give serious consideration to the last suggestion. "That's what we ought to do. Sell that house."
Her hand fisted where it rested on the desktop. "You know my feelings on that."
"Granny's house isn't saleable," Sterling said, trying to forestall what he could see was a rising power struggle. "I saw it yesterday. I doubt you'd recover the property taxes you've paid to hold onto it. What happened to it?"
"It's perfectly sound, but your father refuses to take care of it."
"If you'd let me rent it so there'd be some cash-"
"You find the worst people! Rosalee Bodnar was the last and look how that turned out."
"The house isn't the issue." Sterling diverted their attention since the house was making things worse. He hated when they fought. Hated it. "Paige asked for an audit. Which is a reasonable request." He gave his father a pointed look. "Seriously? Seven years since the last one?"
"That's an excuse. Lyle showed up. They were scrapping like gulls," his father said in an aside to his wife.
Evelyn lifted her pearl necklace off her collarbone. "They didn't talk about the option clause, did they?" She darted her gaze between them.
"Not seriously." Walter glanced at Sterling, silently urging him to back him up. "And it doesn't matter. The arrangement set up for Sterling-"
"Well, of course Sterling can step in." She tucked in her chin so she gazed over her glasses at her son, expectant. "The Fogartys aren't supposed to be able to take advantage of the option, though."
"Actually..." Sterling picked up the partnership agreement Paige had reviewed. "Okay, yeah, this is what I thought it said," Sterling said as he found what he'd skimmed past the first time, as he'd stood over Paige's shoulder trying to read through a haze of uncomfortable male awareness. "It allows for transfer of the partnership to a child with the proviso that the candidate be suitably trained and educated. So Lyle can forget it. Paige, however, is a CPA."
"Since when?" His father's cheeks went loose. "I thought she was a bookkeeper." He glanced at his wife.
She shrugged. "So did I."
"It surprised me, too," Sterling admitted. He was even more impressed now that he'd stalked her current employer online.
"Shit, is that why Grady was always yammering at me to let her at the books? That's why we haven't had an audit. He wanted her in here and wouldn't hear of anyone else. Having Lyle on the payroll was enough. It doesn't matter anyway. Aside from one summer, she's never worked here. She knows squat about the industry." His father sat, making his chair squeak.
"Not true," Sterling said. "As far as accounting firms go, you could do a lot worse. The firm she works for has lumber accounts all over the Pacific Northwest."
"How the hell do you know that?"
"It's called the internet." He held up his phone. Paige kept her privacy settings locked down tight, but he'd found enough to know she'd been certified for five years, worked for the same firm where she'd trained, and had won a couple of industry awards.
"Jesus, Sterling." His father's gaze sharpened. "You're saying she's capable, eligible even, of taking an executive role here?"
"I don't think she intends to." Her very lucrative career back in Seattle reassured him she was serious about not moving back to Liebe Falls.
Although he didn't feel reassured so much as...remorseful. The more he'd thought about what she'd told him yesterday, the guiltier he felt for letting it happen.
"Well, if it comes up, we'd rather have Lyle," his dad grumbled, dragging Sterling's attention back to the conversation.
"We don't have to resort to anything like that," his mother muttered, fiddling with the cake, but sending a hard glance at her husband.
Sterling barely tracked it, too floored by what his father had just said.
"Are you insane? I don't understand how that waste of skin still works here. There are better millwrights, Dad. It's time to get one."
"Lyle and I have an understanding."
"He stank like booze. Did you notice that? You can barely trust him to show up and grease parts and you're talking about handing him the reins to the company?"
"He was a partier in the early years. A lot of young men are," his father argued. "He's not as bad as he used to be."
"He's worse!" Sterling insisted. "At least Paige has the smarts to do the job properly. No. Lyle isn't even eligible. Forget it."
"Walter, you should talk to Lyle. I think he would understand and be a lot more practical about this than his sister," his mother said.
"No, he wouldn't! He's a loose freaking cannon."
"Sterling, I didn't know there was still so much animosity between you two. Are you hungry? Have some cake." His mother shifted the box on the desktop.
"I'm not hungry, Mom. Or tired. I genuinely think suggesting a derelict run the company is a lousy idea." She wants you to be the one. That boy was going to pay, one day, some way.
"One of these corner pieces, I think, with the sugar carrots."
"Dad. Be serious. Promise me you won't let Lyle in here."
"I don't want either of them. I want my damned company back. But they want more money and I don't know where it will come from."
"Mind your blood pressure, Walt. It won't come to that. Sterling will fix it. We need a knife."
"Sterling's not going to be here," his father reminded.
"What was I thinking, not bringing a knife?" Evelyn mused. "Hmm? Of course he'll be here."
"No, Mom, I won't. Texas. Remember? I'm leaving Sunday night."
"Let's have some cake and talk about it. Perhaps there's a knife in the break room?" She wrestled the cake out of the bottom of the box.
His Good Son reflexes urged Sterling to step up and take the cake from his mother, to take the wheel from his dad. He did neither. He had Texas and his own company that might have been built on babysitting money, but it was his and he wasn't about to sacrifice it so he could stay here playing second string to his father.
"There's nothing to talk about," he said. "Paige isn't holding out for more money. She wants an audit. Do that and all the pieces will fall into place."
"No." His mother could have carved the cake with the look she sent to her husband. "Do I have to address this myself?"
His father's eyes widened in panic. "No." It would have been comical if it wasn't so tragically real.
Sterling got the rolling apprehension in his gut that he always got when he was jammed in the middle of their disagreements. He skimmed a hand over the stiff spikes of his hair-caught a flash of censure as his mother noticed she hadn't complained about his hair yet this trip.
"Look, Mom, I'd talk to Paige, but she's already on the road to Seattle- No, wait. She was going to see Grady. He still in the hospital?" he asked his dad. "I'll go talk to them."
He got a nod that waggled his father's jowls and felt for his keys.
Still time for a Hail Mary.
Chapter Six
If the definition of crazy was repeating the same useless behaviors expecting a different result, then Paige was certifiable. Although she was sensible enough not to bother checking her father's room without swinging by the smoking area outside the entrance first.
And look at that. There he was, sitting behind the windbreak, sneaking a couple of puffs off of Rosie's cigarette, hair combed, cheeks shaved, color not too bad even though hospital green made everyone look like they had jaundice.
"Hi Paige," Rosie said, voice pitched somewhere between surprised and sheepish. She surreptitiously took back her smoke. "Your dad and I were just, um, talking about Palm Springs. I didn't know you have a condo there."
"It belongs to my ex-husband's family." She shook her head at her father. It was both admonishment for smoking and a refusal to what she could already hear coming.