Book Boyfriends Wanted 10: His Curvy Genius

Xavier

I looked at the long list of things I needed to accomplish and groaned. I wasn’t sure it was ever going to get done. I was already working six or seven days a week, and it felt like zero progress was being made.

I needed to take a step back. I hadn’t done that since we arrived. Six weeks working sixty plus hours was taking a toll on me. Life had been nothing but work and think about Karissa. Since I wasn’t making progress on either front, it was time to regroup.

David and his crew were already gone for the day, so the theater was quiet. Genevieve was finishing up, and she wouldn’t be far behind them. If I was going to take a day off, I needed to talk to her before she left.

“Hey,” I said when I found her packing up her computer behind the old snack counter.

“Hey. I was going to come find you in a sec. Anything else you need from me today?”

I nodded and hated that her smile slipped. “I’m sorry. I know. I need a day off. And this is shitty for me to say because I know you do, too. Neither of us can work like we have been. There are a lot of decisions that need to be made, and I need to take a step back for a day and get a separation from here. Can you handle things tomorrow?”

“Of course,” she said, her voice and face tight.

“From here on out, you are taking all your weekends off entirely. And I want you to schedule one weekday off every other week. We’ll alternate weeks.”

She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at me. “I don’t have a lot of vacation.”

“Let me worry about that. You will not lose pay. All the hours you’ve already worked are enough that you should be taking time off. That’s another thing. I want you to start working eight-hour days.”

“Are you almost out of money?”

“No. This has nothing to do with the money and everything to do with us needing to function. I know I’m useless to my kid when I get home. She’s not adjusting to life here. I need to spend some time with her, and I need to get away from here for a little while. And if I’m feeling that, I’m guessing you are, too. I’m going to talk to Trent about paying you a salary for the rest of the project and creating a job description that works for both of us once this place is up and running.”

“Salaried? That means I won’t get paid for my overtime.” Genevieve didn’t look too thrilled with that idea.

“Yes, but I don’t want you working so much overtime.”

“I need the money to pay my bills. Teddy doesn’t have insurance with his job, so we have our own. It’s not cheap, and we’re saving up so one of us can be off work when we start having kids.”

I took in the panicked tone of her voice and nodded. “I get it. I promise, I do. I’m not going to have this hurt you. Let me talk to Trent, since he’s the one with the money, and we’ll come back to this on Friday. If what we come up with isn’t going to work for you, we’ll keep things how they are. Okay?”

She hesitated, then nodded. Her brown eyes were leery of me, but she didn’t argue.

“Is there anything else you need tonight?”

“Nope. All set. Have a good night. And let me know if you need me tomorrow. I will still be available, if necessary.”

“I will. Thanks, boss. Night.”

Genevieve walked away with a tightness to her shoulders that wasn’t usually there. I really did understand her concerns. I was learning a lot about living in a small town with Finley around all the time. She had her own health insurance, too. She paid all her own medical expenses out of pocket. And she paid her own taxes and everything else. She worked hard, but she made it clear she’d been worried about how she was going to pay for George before Trent stopped being an ass and stepped up to help.

When McJenna was born, I had a job with health benefits. It wasn’t cheap, but it wasn’t impossible. Taking care of her was so much easier without that one thing to worry about. And if I’d had to worry about it, or worry about my hours or my pay getting cut, it wouldn’t have been possible to care for my kid.

I would do everything in my power to make sure Trent knew how invaluable Genevieve was to the theater, and to me. I wanted to bring her on as a full-time, permanent, salaried employee with full benefits. Hopefully, he would go for it.

I walked through the theater one more time, starting to see it coming together even as I wondered how it would. I turned off all the lights and locked up, heading home for the night to see how McJenna’s day was.

The house was unusually quiet. After a minute, I heard the soft murmur of voices on the patio. Finley loved it out there. I couldn’t blame her. The view was spectacular, and the overall feel of it made everything else melt away. It was the only place in the estate I felt comfortable.

The four of them were sitting around the table with McJenna holding George. She was smiling at him, cooing at the baby. Fuck, it hit me hard. McJenna was the reason I never looked Karissa up. Wishing my past with Karissa had turned out differently felt like I was saying I wish I hadn’t had my daughter. I loved McJenna. She was my world. I wouldn’t trade our life for anything.

But I would be lying if I said there weren’t times I wished Karissa was her mother instead of Denise. That Karissa and I had built a life together. A life with more kids and the two of us.

For whatever reason, that wasn’t meant to be. When I met Trent and found out who he was, I couldn’t tell him about Karissa. I wasn’t sure if they knew each other, and if they did, I wasn’t sure I wanted him to invade those memories of her. I didn’t want to know who she was before we met, or who she was after. She was frozen in time for me, forever twenty-one and happy and mine.

Watching my kid with her ‘cousin’ broke my heart a little. J would have been a great big sister. She would have loved any kids I had after her. She still would, but she was going to college soon. She was going to find her own path, and I could only watch as she walked down it, away from me.

I wanted to give her the world and be there as she claimed all of it, but she was going to have to find her own way. And it hurt.

“Hey, you’re home,” Finley said, noticing me in the doorway.

I moved outside, my gaze locked on McJenna and George. “Yeah, long day.”

“They all seem to be long,” Trent said. “How are things going?”

“We’re making progress,” I lied. No, it wasn’t a lie. It just felt like it because the plan I put together was unreasonable to begin with, but I wasn’t willing to let the construction go longer than necessary. Not when I was only a drain on Trent’s bank account until the theater started bringing in something.

“That’s great news. Are we going to be able to open as planned?”

“Of course. I won’t let you down. But I need to talk to you about something else.”

Trent glanced at Finley and McJenna and nodded toward the house. Finley owned her own business and McJenna had been a part of enough of our conversations about money over the years that it didn’t bother me to talk in front of them, but I wasn’t going to argue.

Trent walked behind the island in the kitchen and pulled out a bottle of water from the fridge. He offered me one, then nodded for me to say what I needed to say.

“I want to bring Genevieve on full time. I know it’s going to change things, but I can see that she’s feeling the same way I am.”

Trent tilted his head. “And how is that?”

I drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. Admitting I couldn’t do everything wasn’t easy. Especially when I saw myself as someone who could do anything. But I had to be honest with Trent. He was my boss. And I wasn’t going to hide everything from him.

“I’m burned out. I need a break. Not a long one, just a day, but I can’t keep working like I have been.”

“Thank God. Why have you been killing yourself?”

I shook my head and ran a hand through my hair. I really needed to get it cut. One day. “I want to get it all done. I’m just siphoning money from you, and it’s not okay.”

“This is my business. I decided to buy the old theater. You’re not siphoning anything. You’re making it possible to earn money from it.”

“But my salary—”

“Is probably not even close to what you deserve for the work you’re taking on. Listen, I get that it’s different. And it’s going to be hard to transition from what you were doing to this. But I always loved that theater. My mom took me there when I was a kid, and I hung out there in high school. When I moved back, I wanted to take Finley there, but she told me it was closed. It’s one of those things I always thought about when I thought about MacKellar Cove. Pushing you to take on the project—”

“You didn’t push me.”

Trent breathed a laugh and shook his head. “We both know I did. I should have gotten my hands dirty and managed it, but with George…”

“I needed something to do. You created a job for me. And I appreciate it, but—”

“Whoa, is that really what you think? That I created that job? That I didn’t really need you?”

I shrugged. “I mean, yeah. I know you trust me, so I was an easy choice, but I also know I didn’t have an income when we moved here. I have my savings, which I only have because you let us live with you forever, but it wouldn’t last that long, even though I’m still living off of you.”

“Shit,” Trent breathed. He shook his head and closed his eyes. “I never meant to make you feel like you had to do this. Or that you were anything other than family to me. If I had a brother, I’d be doing the same for him. You’re my family. You and J. Yes, I have Finley and George now, too, but that doesn’t mean you and J are any less important to me.”

“But—”

“No. Listen, I need to know if you want to be doing that job. You’re working yourself to death, and if you want me to hire someone else, I will. I asked you to do it because I knew you could and I knew you’d make it amazing, but you don’t owe me anything. Ever.”

Trent stared at me for a long moment, waiting for me to answer. His gaze didn’t drift, not even when George whimpered outside, then started crying.

“I don’t know if I can meet the original deadline,” I confessed.

“I never thought it was reasonable.”

“I wanted to get everything done ASAP so it would start making money.”

“The theater is going to be something for locals more than tourists. It’s not going to be a big draw. I don’t care if it’s done before summer is over. As long as it’s done right.”

“It will be,” I assured him.

“Does that mean you want to stay on and finish it?”

I nodded slowly. “I do. I’m enjoying it. And Genevieve is amazing. She’s smart and creative, and her ideas are going to make it even better than I ever thought it could be.”

“Good. What will it take to bring her on full time?”

“Money. She works a lot of overtime to earn the money. Her time is always well spent, but if we’re going to rework the timeline and slow down a little so we can breathe, I’d like to move her to salaried so she doesn’t have to worry about the overtime.”

“Do you have a number in mind?”

I nodded and told him what I wanted to pay her. It was more than she was making weekly with her overtime, not by much, though.

“How does that compare to what she’s making?”

“A slight increase.”

“Offer her fifty percent more than her highest week. As a salary with full benefits. When the theater is up and running, is she going to stay on?”

“I hope so. I want to come up with a job for her.”

“She sounds like someone we should have on the team. I’m okay with that. Get an idea of what schedule she’d like to work. If you want her as an assistant still, that’s fine, but if you think there’s something else she should do, get her input and let me know. I want to be involved with this project, but I know I’m still going to be traveling and managing the hotels. I won’t be able to handle the day-to-day stuff. That’s why I wanted you there.”

I nodded, finally feeling like my place wasn’t destroying him. “I appreciate it. Really.”

“If that changes, let me know. We’ve always been honest with each other. At least, mostly.” He leveled me with a look that said he wished I’d told him about Karissa.

“You know why I couldn’t.”

He nodded. He said he understood, but I wasn’t sure he really did. I wasn’t sure I really did sometimes.

“Are you okay with me taking tomorrow off?”

“I’m not your keeper. You are salaried and you make your own hours. You don’t have to answer to me.”

I nodded. “Thanks.”

He clapped me on the shoulder and nodded to the patio. “Let’s eat. We waited for you, and we’re all hungry. Maybe Finley has some ideas of things you and J can do tomorrow on your day off. Unless you’re planning to spend it with someone else?”

I shook my head. “My one and only girl.”

Trent grinned. “For now.”

I pressed my lips up into a smile. Karissa was never going to give me another chance.

Finley handed George over to Trent when we walked outside. He snuggled the baby against his chest and took his seat next to her. I took the seat next to McJenna.

“Want to do something tomorrow?” I asked her.

“Go to work with you? No thanks,” McJenna grumbled.

“Actually, I’m taking the day off. See the town a little and have some fun.”

“Is there anything fun to do around here?”

“There’s a lot to do,” Finley said. “My brother makes wooden boats and has a few he lets family and friends borrow if you want to go out on the water. My friend is a tour boat guide. There are restaurants and places to eat. We have Catherine Park. MacKellar Cove Inn has a lot of events. And another friend of mine is the director of tourism in the area. I can check with her and see if anything is happening.”

“All that in this tiny little place?” McJenna asked skeptically.

“Yep. There are kids your age, too. I know you don’t know any of them, but they wander around town during the summer. I usually have to chase them out of my shop a few times because they want to find the good stuff.”

“Can I read the good stuff?” McJenna asked.

“No,” Trent and I said together.

“You’re not dating until you’re my age,” Trent added.

“If then.”

McJenna sighed and rolled her eyes at us.

“I’d recommend going to Cove Bakery for breakfast tomorrow. After that, get on a tour to see some of the stuff around here, especially the castle, then go through the shops around Catherine Park. You can grab lunch from Cracked and eat in the park. That’s fun to do. Oh, and you have to go on the Riverwalk. O’Kelley’s is right there. They have food for lunch if you want to eat there instead. But it’s fun to eat outside. Then again, we do almost every night.”

“Breathe, babe,” Trent said, putting his hand on Finley’s arm. “They don’t have to do everything in one day.”

“I know, but Xavier’s been working so many hours that he really hasn’t seen the town, and McJenna hasn’t done much either, and I—”

“We’ll have more days. I’m not going to work as many hours as I have been. I need downtime, too. We moved here to slow down, and I’ve been running around a little crazy.” I caught McJenna’s gaze, hoping she was willing to trust me that things would get better.

“We’ll see,” McJenna said instead.

“J,” Trent warned.

“She’s right,” I said. “We agreed things would be better, and I haven’t let them be. You haven’t met anyone, and I haven’t been around. But I’m going to change that. Tomorrow, we’ll get breakfast and go on a tour, and whatever else you want to do. Maybe we’ll meet some kids your age.”

“Ooh, yay, just what I want. To meet new kids with my daddy hanging around.”

“Well, you’re going to have to get over that one because tomorrow is for us.” I cocked my head with the same attitude she was giving me.

She fought her smile, but I pursed my lips and bobbed my head at her until she lost the battle and laughed. “You’re so crazy.”

“Yes, I am. And you’re stuck with me, kid.”

She shook her head and smiled. The first one I’d seen in far too long. It was definitely time for a day off. And time for some fun with my kid. We were going to make our new life a good one.