I smiled despite myself. “You’re right. We could figure things out but he’s the glue. We each have a job. Each have a purpose. We work together. We wouldn’t split up, take too much time away from each other like we’ve been doing for twenty years. Hell, I left the house to go pursue my own future when you guys were babies.”
“I wasn’t a baby. Sure, Eliza was, but I wasn’t.”
My lips twitched. “Close enough since you were like in puberty.”
Everett sighed, looked over his shoulder. “Please, say that loudly for the people on the other side of the ball ballroom.”
I looked around the vast room with the elevated ceilings and twinkling lights. “Our ballroom won’t look like this.”
“True, but ours would be in a renovated European-style farmhouse. The place is in good shape. It’s like a fucking villa.”
I snorted at the look of one of the guests at our cursing. “That was the goal for the original builders. They wanted to bring a little bit of Europe here with the architecture. So it is a villa of sorts in the middle of south Texas.”
“Well, this is a little more upper-class farm.”
I nodded. “We won’t be competing for each other, even though we’re a couple of hours away.”
“Which is a good thing because we like Roy and need his help. We don’t want to piss him off.”
“Why don’t you want to piss me off?” Roy asked as he walked over to us. Roy was a big man, mostly still muscle after all these years as a civilian, and he took care of himself. His hair was graying at the temples, and his full beard was white and gray now. He looked good, and he had been my friend for years. We had fought together, had been neighbors and even roommates for a bit in our early years. He was a couple of years older than me, so he got out before I did, but we had stayed in touch and, hopefully, he’d be able to help me figure out exactly what the hell I was going to do with the rest of my life.
“We were just thinking about taking your business,” Everett said with a grin, and Roy just threw his head back and laughed, that big deep laugh that made everyone around us smile. Nobody glared at him. He was just the good guy who people got along with wherever he went.
Maybe that’s why he was so good at this. I wasn’t that guy. Whatever it was. Everett was. As was Elijah. And Elliot. East, Evan, and I were a little more on the asshole side of the family. But half of us being assholes, the other half being decent guys wasn’t a bad mark.
“You’re welcome to try, though. I think with the winery on your side and the brewery on mine, it’s a good fit. We’ll be able to send whoever can’t fit into ours to each other. Working like a partnership, rather than adversaries.”
The way that Roy said it, it seemed like a decree, and frankly, I agreed. “Sounds good to me. And honestly, it’ll be nice having footsteps to follow in, even if we’re trying to be our own bosses.”
“I had footsteps too. The guy who owned this before I was a retired general.”
“No shit?” I asked.
“Two star. Wanted something with his life a little bit different, and this was in the family. He sold it to me, and now you’re buying from a former military man as well. It’s all in the family, even though our family’s a bit convoluted.”
“Don’t even begin on the whole convoluted family thing,” Everett added with a grin.
Roy let out a big belly laugh that drew a few gazes our way. “There are seven of you, all starting with the same letter. What the hell was your mother thinking?”
I just smiled, used to the refrain. It had been worse when we’d all been active duty and went by Wilder. “We answered to numbers mostly. I was one.”
“I don’t remember my number. I think mom forgot it too.” Everett said with a grin.
Roy leaned forward, laughing. “Well, you’re a twin. I’m sure you and East switched off often just to annoy your parents.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny.”
Roy just grinned. “Well, you’ve had a look around. You saw the books and figured out what we do. What is it that you want?”
Everett looked to me, and I swallowed hard, rolling my shoulders back. “We want something that we can work together in. The place that we’re looking at we would rename to Wilder Resorts. It has a good flow. It just needs some updating, but we can do that. Especially within the budget. We’re already in talks, and they’re not talking with anybody else right now for selling, so that’s a good thing.”
“Time is still on your side,” Roy added.
“For sure. There are twenty cabins outside of the main building. The main building is a villa, with its own atrium and dining room and breakfast room and all that. The innkeeper can live there. And then within the cabins, we can designate some of those for the family like they did, so we can live on the property and not have to pay rent or mortgages on other places.”
“That makes sense. We live in a house on the property. If you live in those cabins, are you going to cut into your bottom line?”
I shook my head. “No, this is what the other owners did before us with their teams. It makes sense. And while we all did training for other things when we were active duty, all of our degrees went towards what we thought we’d do as civilians versus what we did in the service. Oh, and we can take the cabins that need the most work for ourselves and work on them on our own.”