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“How much did you offer?” Kendall asks.

“I didn’t offer anything,” I say. “She told me off before I could throw out a number.”

“Why did she tell you off?” Kendall asks, her brow furrowing in confusion. “It’s just business. Throw out a number she can’t say no to.”

I sigh as I hit the button, starting the machine. “You’re too much like Dad.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Kendall asks. “Dad was a killer businessman.”

“Dad ruined a whole mountain community,” I say, crossing my arms as I shake my head. “He took that cute Hallmark movie town in the mountains and ripped the soul out of it. After he was done, all the local businesses, all the mom-and-pop stores, all the cute restaurants, everything that made that town unique was gone. What’s there now? A dead Main Street full of the same franchises as everywhere else, a highway running through the old town square, and luxury vacation condos where there used to be a thriving community of suburbs. He tore everything down, rebuilt it with a generic crap style, raised prices, and then priced all the locals out, bringing in rich outsiders who own vacant vacation properties.”

“And made tens of millions of dollars doing it,” Kendall says with a grin.

I sigh as I rub my forehead. My sister is giving me a headache.

“Ivy said no because her business and town mean more to her than money,” I say. And I respect the hell out of her for that. “It’s not just about money with these people.”

“Everything is about money,” Kendall says.

I sigh. “Not here, it’s not. Look, why did we agree to sell Dad’s business and start over here?”

“To find love,” Travis says.

Of course, that’s why he’s here. He’s a romantic and has been hung up on the same girl for the past seventeen years. Dad used to bring us on vacation to the Greene Mountains every summer and once, when Travis was thirteen, he kissed a girl at a baseball game under the bleachers. He’s been hung up on her ever since even though he doesn’t know her name, and he doesn’t even know if she’s a local or not. She could have been on vacation too and be living halfway across the country for all he knows.

“That’s why he’s here,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Why did we pick this town out of everywhere to start fresh?”

“I guess you’re going to lecture me about it now,” Kendall says. “Can we just skip this whole part and get back to work?”

“We came here because we’re trying to make amends for what Dad did,” I say, feeling like this battle is hopeless. Sins of the father type thing. His construction company devoured the Montana mountain town we grew up in. It was like a monster, expanding ruthlessly and consuming everything that made the town great. He created new subdivisions, commercial developments, cleared land, and he made a fortune doing it. It didn’t matter to him that our friends and neighbors were forced to leave, one by one. It didn’t matter that he killed the soul of the town that was our home. Nothing mattered to him but money.

The woods we played in disappeared, our beloved local shops closed, national chains moved in, and traffic increased. Dad was a powerful man with a lot of resources and instead of bettering the place we loved, he turned it into somewhere we barely recognized.

The Greene Mountains will be different. I’m determined not to make the same mistakes.

I loved it here growing up. We came here every summer and it was the rare time when Mom and Dad weren’t fighting or arguing over business. Mom laughed and Dad spent time with us. We swam in lakes, and hiked, and cooked outside, and got ice cream in town. It was the only time when it felt like we were a loving family.

Mom passed away from breast cancer when I was a teenager and Dad threw himself into work even more. We stopped going to the Greene Mountains, but the memories lived on.

He passed from a heart attack two years ago, in the courtroom, while suing a lady who refused to sell the home she lived in for the past fifty-five years. He bought up all the land around her, trying to build a golf course, but she refused to sell.

“We didn’t come here to take over,” I say. “We came here to preserve.”

“You came here to preserve,” Kendall says, her eyes on the laptop. “I came here to make money.”

“I came here to find the girl of my dreams,” Travis says, plucking away on his guitar.

“The plan is to buy independent local businesses when the owners want out, invest in them, keep the local employees, retain their character, and protect them from chains and developers. We’re going to be like bodyguards against the billionaire sharks trying to bite off a piece of this town.”

“Newsflash, Dane,” Kendall says, rolling her eyes. “You’re the billionaire shark now.”

Travis starts playing the Jaws theme song on his guitar.

“I’ll never be like that,” I say, grabbing my coat off the chair. “I’m going for a walk.”

“But the coffee is ready,” Travis says as I head to the door.

“I don’t want it,” I grumble as I head outside. I close the door and take a deep breath of the crisp mountain autumn air.