“Well, Simone, consider it an early wedding gift,” Grayson said, digging into his pocket for a moment before pulling out his cell phone. “But I texted Dalton and asked if he happened to see grandma last night, and sure enough.” He held out his phone to show her and Vaughn.
Grayson: Hey, did you happen to see that older lady with the knitting needles at the bonfire last night?
Dalton: Sure did man! As I was making my exit from that redhead who was puking her guts up, she stabbed me with one of those things! Fucking thing hurt like a bitch…
Dalton: Why, was there an issue?
Grayson: Nope, just wondering. Thanks man.
“YES!” Simone shouted. She did a little dance in her chair, only annoying her fiancé further.
“You paid him to say that, didn’t you?” Vaughn asked.
“How would I have done that? You can see the trail of texts!”
“You sure?”
“You want to text him to ask?”
“Damn it!” Vaughn smacked the table.
“Don’t worry, bro, I washed it for you,” Grayson said, rubbing it in.
“Sorry, Uncle Vaughn,” Drea commented.
Vaughn continued to grumble about having to wear the shirt as they all dug into breakfast. This was the most food Kyle had ever seen at breakfast. Maybe it was because of the extra body, or maybe Kyle had just never attended a full Wednesday breakfast to know how much food they started out with. The only thing that seemed to be missing was Miller’s infamous magic muffins, and Kyle would bet that if he asked, some could make an appearance.
Other than Vaughn’s protestations that the text shouldn’t count as proof, the conversation flowed easily, the uncles treating Kyle as if he’d always participated in this ritual, and no one seemed to be any the wiser to what he and Drea were hiding. It was a relief to not feel on edge about their secret, and he wondered if Drea was feeling the same way. She was much more relaxed than she had been the last time they were at this table for a family meal, which was a huge relief.
“Oh, before I forget,” Vaughn said. “The lawyer will be here Friday morning to add Simone’s name to all the Indigo Royal paperwork. Don’t worry, it’s only my portion she’ll have access to, we’re not dividing it into fifths all of a sudden. Drea, I assume you won’t have any tours Friday? So you can be here to meet with the lawyer at ten?”
“Why do I have to be there?” Drea asked, confused.
The conversation came to a halt and silence filled the table. The only noise that seemed to penetrate the silence was Grayson slowly putting his coffee mug back down on the table. The kitchen staff buzzed around them, yet nobody at the table moved. Kyle slid his gaze between each one of the men sitting at the table. All three had unreadable expressions on their faces, yet seemed to know exactly what the others were thinking.
“Miller, did you not tell her?” Vaughn asked sternly.
“May have slipped my mind.”
“How have you not told her?” Grayson asked.
“We agreed you’d tell her when she turned twenty-one,” Vaughn added.
“And I guess I forgot,” Miller responded.
“Tell me what?” Drea asked, confused, looking between each uncle for some kind of answer.
“So all this time she’s been working for me on the boats, she’s had no idea?” Grayson clarified.
“Forgot? That’s not something you just forget,” Vaughn ground out. “Five years, man. It’s been five years. You mean to tell me it hasn’t come up once?”
“Miller, you promised!” Simone interjected. “Right after we fixed up the cottage for her. That was part of the point of giving her the cottage!”
“Tell me what?!” Drea asked again.
Her question was met with more silence and uncomfortable glances between her uncles.
“Tell her,” Simone said through gritted teeth. “Or I will. And it needs to come from you three.”
“We’re all equal partners in this resort,” Vaughn said.
“Right, the three of you,” Drea said.
“No, kiddo, the ownership of the Indigo Royal Resort is in four parts,” Grayson added. There was silence for a moment, all of them letting the weight of those words sink in.
Miller finally broke the silence. “You’re the fourth owner, baby girl.”
Drea’s head was spinning. No, maybe that was the room. Either way, she suddenly felt dizzy and like everything around her was chaos. She couldn’t have heard him correctly. The Indigo Royal was divided into fourths? She was the fourth partner? The only way that could have been was if she’d inherited it when her parents passed, but they didn’t have a financial interest in the resort. She knew the story of the resort; her uncles bought it from a friend of their grandfather after their father passed away from cancer, using the money they had inherited from his estate. Her dad was just along for the ride as Miller’s best friend, helping them with the restoration.
“What? I’m what?” she sputtered out.
“You’re the fourth partner in the Indigo Royal Resort,” Vaughn said calmly.
“How? I don’t understand. It’s a Quinlan Family Resort. I’m not a Quinlan, I’m a Miller.”
“You’ll actually find that all the legal paperwork says Quinlan-Miller Investments, LLC, dba Quinlan-Miller Family Properties. But we left that off the marketing material since you were underage and we were trying to protect your interests.”
“What? How?” she sputtered again. She felt like a broken record, just repeating the same words over and over, but every one of their answers only confused her more. She reached under the table and grabbed Kyle’s hand. “You three bought the resort with your inheritance, didn’t you?”
“But how do you think we could afford to renovate it?” Grayson asked.
Drea just looked back and forth between them all. She still didn’t understand, but didn’t want to ask the same two one-word questions again. Nothing was making sense.
“Drea, look at me, baby girl,” Miller said, his voice cracking a bit. “I should have done this a long, long time ago. But I guess that I had a hard time accepting you were all grown up, and this was my way of keeping you little. Because if you didn’t know the full story, you weren’t fully grown.”
He took a long, deep breath and sighed before taking a big gulp from his coffee mug. She could tell whatever he was about to say was hard for him, but she was dying to know the truth. She squeezed Kyle’s hand underneath the table. Her heart was racing, but the little squeeze he gave her in return was a big comfort.
“Yes, the story we’ve told you since you were little is true. We used to vacation here, or well, the former version of here, when we were kids. The property had belonged to a friend of our grandfather’s. It’d been in his family for years, originally starting as a family retreat and then someone decided to turn it into a hotel-type thing. It wasn’t really successful for them as a hotel, so they shut it down and were looking to off-load it. When we were kids, we’d loved it down here and often tossed around the idea of someday running our own hotel.” He paused to take another drink of his coffee.