Home to Laura - By Mary Sullivan Page 0,1

I was here making money for you and this company. How else do you think I did it? By twiddling my thumbs? By taking vacations with my wife and child? I made you a fortune.” Nick struggled for control. Where was his precious cool head?

“As far as Marsha goes, we divorced as friends,” Nick said, forcing a reasonable tone. “She knew who I was when we married, but wanted someone who could give her more attention. She wanted the money and the big house and me home evenings and weekends.”

That was why she’d had an affair with Harry Fuller and why she’d divorced Nick and married him. Harry came from money—had never had to work and scrape for every penny as Nick had—and gave her the attention she craved. Yes, he’d understood, but it had hurt, which was strange considering it hadn’t been a love match for either of them. Was he more of a dreamer, a romantic, than he’d thought? Had he been fonder of Marsha than he’d realized?

“Marsha wanted too much, just like her mother.” Mort’s voice came out as a growl. “I shouldn’t have spoiled her.”

“You didn’t,” Nick conceded. “She’s a good person and she was right. I never paid her enough attention. I probably never gave Emily enough, either.” He knew in his heart he hadn’t. Now he was making her cry. He’d never figured out why Emily had opted to stay with him in the home she’d grown up in rather than follow her mother to Europe with her new husband four years ago. Maybe to keep her friends?

Had any of her decision been based on wanting to be near her father? He hoped so. Again, he reached for the phone. He needed to talk to her. Again, he remembered she wasn’t home.

“Fix it,” Mort said. “Whatever is wrong with her, take care of it now.”

He planned to. Tonight. There wasn’t a person on earth who mattered more to him than his daughter.

Nick winced. “I honestly never meant to hurt her. I’ll talk to her tonight.”

“That girl means the world to me.”

Nick’s anger softened. Mort had always treated Emily like gold. She was a shining light in his life.

“I’m not sure what can change,” Nick said, but the fight had left him. Emily was his shining light, too. She kept the darkness at bay. “I have to work as hard now on this project as I ever have.”

“Stop it now. Cancel it.”

The Accord Ski and Golf Resort? He couldn’t, and there was no way to explain to Mort why. Mort had been born with money. He would never in a million years understand how Nick had grown up, how poverty had shaped him, how important it was to build the new resort in his old town.

“Make Emily happy,” Mort said, his eyes narrowing. “That’s an order. Do it, or I’ll pull the plug on the resort.”

Nick stilled. Accord Resort was his dream, his baby, part homage to Mom and part revenge against his older brother Gabe—and partly to prove to the town that had barely noticed him when he was growing up that Nick Jordan had become a success and was a force to be reckoned with. His reasons were so confusing and convoluted even he didn’t understand fully what drove him. He only knew that he had to annihilate that old house and build something bigger and grander than the Jordan family had ever owned in the past.

Why he worried about his name, and the family, was anybody’s guess. He wasn’t part of the family anymore, was he? In thirteen years, he’d gone back only twice, four years ago for Mom’s funeral and in January to a town meeting concerning the resort. He spoke to Tyler occasionally on the phone. To Gabe? Never.

Mort couldn’t possibly pull out now. They were about to break ground. Before Nick had even sent his former assistant, Callie, to Accord to work on getting his brothers to sell, he’d been working behind the scenes to have permits pushed through, greasing more palms than he cared to admit to Mort. Once Gabe and Ty had sold their shares to him, he’d increased his efforts. This resort had already cost him a bundle.

“You can’t be serious about pulling the plug,” Nick said.

“Look at me.” Something in Mort changed, as though a crack opened in that gruff exterior he painted on like shellac. “Take a good look at me. Do you like what you see?”

Nick stared for a long moment at things