by SJ McCoy
Cassidy shook her head adamantly. “No, it wouldn’t. I thought it might, but that was before I knew how you felt about the work you were doing. You don’t need to find another logical progression. This is a chance for a whole new start in life. You need to find something you can really enjoy, something you’re passionate about—and that will make you decent amounts of money.” She smiled. “I know you don’t need it, but if you’re anything like me, you still feel you have to make it, just because it’s a quantifier of success.”
Hope smiled. “I am like you. Having the money isn’t important, but being able to make it is.”
Cassidy nodded. “So, what else do you enjoy?”
Hope shrugged. “Is it sad to admit that I don’t really do much? I work, and I work out, but other than that, I go to social events I don’t really enjoy and hide out at my house.”
Cassidy rolled her eyes. “Girlfriend, you need to make this move. We need to find you a career you can love and get you out and about. There’s no fancy social life here, dinners like the one you came to the other night are about as social as it gets, but you can ride, you can hike, you can explore the park. You might find you like painting or photography, or you could try writing.”
Hope laughed. “Gina wasn’t kidding that you’re a fount of ideas.”
Cassidy shrugged. “I see possibilities everywhere. Most people can’t come up with any ideas; my problem is that I can’t narrow them down to the best ones.”
Hope shook her head. “I just can’t see any, and I’m too good at shooting them down when I do.”
“Well, let’s cast around. I’m guessing you’re creative, given your design skills?”
“I suppose, but I think I’m really more comfortable with the business side of things.”
“Wow! Okay. Do you like the people side of the business or the numbers?”
Hope thought about that. “I think I’m better with numbers; they’re more predictable and reliable.”
Cassidy laughed. “Good to know.” Her smile faded. “Your dad’s here, isn’t he?”
“Yes.” Hope wondered what that had to do with anything.
“Well, he’s like the biggest numbers guy on earth,” Cassidy explained, seeing her puzzled look. “Didn’t he start out day trading? And he got so good at it, he set up his own brokerage? And now he runs some of the largest hedge funds on the planet?”
Hope nodded.
“And he’s here right now. And you’re looking for a way to make a living with a career that doesn’t have to be tied to any location. And you like numbers. And forgive me, but from what I hear the two of you are trying to rebuild your relationship.”
“Yeah.” Hope still didn’t get where Cassidy was going.
“So, you ask him to teach you. Not his whole business, you don’t want to get into something that’s going to take over your life, but you could ask him to teach you day trading. I have plenty of friends back East who live pretty lavish lives from day trading. They love what they do, they’re engaged and happy and have as much or as little free time as they want.” She grinned. “What do you think?”
Hope nodded slowly. She wasn’t sure what to think. Why had it never occurred to her before to follow in her father’s footsteps? It had never been a question when she was small. She was a girl. No, that wasn’t it. Her mom had died, and from that point on, her dad had withdrawn from her. She’d been determined to make her own way in the world, and, of course, he hadn’t approved of her modeling career—which had made her all the more determined to pursue it. She looked up at Cassidy. “It would be a way to spend some time with him, to get him to teach me.”
“Yeah! And I’ll bet he’d love it. It’s obviously important to him, and to be able to share that with you would be pretty awesome for both of you.”
Hope smiled. “I could ask him to stay here for a while, to help me find my feet. He’d like that.”
Cassidy grinned. “Do you know anything about trading at all?”
Hope shrugged. “A little, I’m not completely ignorant. I’ve always been kind of interested in the markets.”
“There you go then.”
Hope smiled. “I think you might be onto something.”
Cassidy raised her mug in a toast. “Let’s hope so.”
Hope headed straight to the house when she left Cassidy. She’d planned to spend some time in town, partly to get to know the place again and partly to give her dad time to be finished with his work before she went to see him. Now, she didn’t want to wait. She wanted to talk to him straight away, to see what he’d think of the idea. Maybe he’d think it was stupid, that she wouldn’t be suited to it, and, if that was the case, she’d rather find out straight away, before the excitement she was feeling had the time to get hold of her completely.
She stopped in front of Uncle Johnny’s. He was kneeling in the shrubs by the front steps and looked up with a smile. “Hi, Hopey. Your dad’s up at the house.”
“Thanks. I’ll go straight up there.”
“Do you want to wait here a while till he’s done with work?”
She shook her head. “No, I really don’t.” She hoped that for once he might put his work aside for her sake.
She pulled up in the circular driveway and ran up the steps to the grand entrance. Flinging the doors opened she called for him. “Dad? Where are you?”
He appeared at the top of the stairs. “Up here. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I just want to talk to you.” She grinned and ran up the stairs, greeting him with a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
He beamed. “Whatever’s going on, it’s worth ending my conference call for. Let me go tell them to carry on without me. I put them on hold.”
She followed him into his office and waited while he dismissed the people he’d been talking to. When he turned back to her, he smiled. “I probably shouldn’t have done that. It was important. But something about this visit, being here with you, seeing you happy with your Chance, it’s making me realize what’s truly important, and it isn’t that meeting we were in the middle of. So, tell me. What’s going on?”
She smiled nervously. Maybe he’d think she was crazy? Maybe he’d think her idea wasn’t worth missing his meeting for.
He sat down on the big leather sofa by the window and gestured for her to join him. “Come on; it looks like you’re excited about something and I’d like to know what.”
“Okay. You know I want to figure out what I can do with myself when I move here?”
He nodded.
“And you know I’m about done with Davenport Athleticwear.”
He nodded again. “And now that you are, can I say that I’m glad?”
She raised an eyebrow at him.
“I’m sorry, Hopey, but I always thought you could do so much more than that.”
She nodded. “I want to be offended by that, but I agree with you, so I can’t.” She smiled. “And if I choose to turn it around and look on the bright side, then I’m happy that you never told me how you felt before.”
“I know you think I’m an ogre, but I tried to respect what you were doing.”
“I don’t think you’re an ogre and thank you. I hope you’re going to like the idea of what I want to do now.”
He smiled. “We won’t know till you tell me, will we? So, spit it out. What do you want to do?”
“I’d need your help.”
He nodded, but she couldn’t read his expression. “I don’t mean financially; I mean I’d like you to teach me.”
“Teach you what?” he asked with an exasperated smile. “What do you want to do that I could teach you anything about?”
“Day trading. I want to learn. I think I’d be good at it, and I like the idea of following in your footsteps.”
For a moment, he looked shocked. Hope grew nervous as the silence drew on. Was he about to say no?
He reached over and squeezed her hand. “I love that idea, Hopey. You have no idea how happy that would mak
e me.”
She leaned against him and hugged him. “Thank you! I love the idea, just of day trading, but to think that you could teach me, that you might stay here and help me find my feet. That would be the best.”
His eyes were shining when he looked down at her. “You want me to stay?”
She nodded. “Please? If you can? I know you could teach me from anywhere, but I’d love it if you were right here, if I could see you every day, if we could work together.”
He nodded. “I’d love that, too.”
Hope sat up and looked around at his office and out onto the landing leading to the grand staircase. It was all so familiar; this house had been her only home. Her eyes filled with tears, but she smiled.
“What is it?” asked her dad.
She squeezed his hand. “I think this really is a new beginning. We’re back here, in this house, and we’re both smiling and excited about the future.”
His eyes filled with tears, but he, too, smiled through them and nodded. “I think it’s about time.”
Chapter Twenty
Chance didn’t normally take the whole weekend off, but he’d organized the guys to cover everything so that he shouldn’t be needed until Monday. He’d taken Hope out riding this morning, and they’d had a great time. He was thinking about buying her a horse of her own. That was something he could do for her. He’d given a lot of thought to his conversation with Dave the other morning. It was true that his only problem with the financial differences between him and Hope was his pride. Knowing that made it a little easier to accept, but it still bothered him.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
He smiled. “I’m thinking I’m a lucky son of a gun to have found you.”
“I think I’m the lucky one.” She checked her watch. “What time do you think we need to get ready?”
“Not for ages yet.” They were going over to the cottage to have dinner with Dave and Monique this evening, but right now they were sitting out on the porch, enjoying the late afternoon sun. “Are you nervous?”
“Yes, of course, I am. They’re your parents.” She frowned. “But they’re not really, are they? You’ve still got your dad and Alice. I loved them when I met them in Oregon.”
Chance nodded. “I’m lucky. I get two sets of parents.”
“You’re very lucky indeed.” Hope stared out into the distance. Chance had a feeling she was thinking about her mom, but he didn’t want to bring it up in case she wasn’t. “Will you take me to see them sometime soon?”
He chuckled. “I’m going to have to. Otherwise Missy will be coming up demanding to meet you.”
“I can’t wait to meet her. She sounds wonderful.”
“She is, I think the two of you will get along well, and I’ll have to watch myself.”
She laughed. “When can we go?”
“I don’t know, when do you think you’ll be back from LA?”
Her smile faded. “I shouldn’t be too long. I’ll need a couple of days to sort things out at the office. They have everything covered, but the way things are right now, they still need my input on some things. I want to set it up so that I’m not part of the system at all. I’ll still have to go back sometimes, but not too often.”
“Maybe we can go to Summer Lake for a long weekend after you get back.”
“I hope so. I can’t wait.”
Chance nodded. In a way, he was looking forward to taking her. He knew his dad and Alice wanted to see her again, and Missy was starting to get impatient with him now. Part of him wasn’t so sure. He didn’t know how he felt about taking her there. Summer Lake was Chloe’s home. He sighed. Chloe’s home was in his heart.
“You don’t have to take me if you don’t want to.” Hope seemed to have read his mind again.
“I do want to, but it’s going to be weird the first time.”
“I know, just like being back in the house here with Dad is weird for me. It gets easier, though.”
“You’re going to lay down a whole bunch of new memories there over the next couple of months. Hopefully good memories of the two of you working together.”
“We are. I’m excited to get started. Dad’s going to stay here while I go back to LA. He said he’s going to set things up so that he can be here most of the time now. I never thought I’d see the day he’d call this place home again.”
Chance smiled. “It seems as though all three of us are coming to terms with the past and setting up the future.”
“We are, and I love that my future is with you, here.”
“I do too. I love you, honey.”
“And I love you, my Chancey bear.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, but she shrugged. “You may as well get used to it; I’m not going to stop calling you that.”
“I know, but I can hope.”
She laughed. “You can hope all you like, but you’d still better get used it.”
“I’m getting used to having Hope in my life.”
“And I’m getting used to having a Chance.”
He smiled. “How corny are we?”
“Totally, but it’s hard to not play on our names, isn’t it?”
“It is. I feel hopeful about our chance at a future.”
She met his gaze. “I do, too. We’re working our way past everything that stands in the way, though I still see one big issue that we haven’t talked about yet.”
“What’s that?” Chance hadn’t mentioned his feelings about money to her yet; he was hoping he could get some perspective on it himself first. Maybe she felt it, too?
She sighed. “It hasn’t mattered while we’ve been up here, but I think that might change once I move here, especially since Dad’s going to be here, too.”
“What are you talking about?” It didn’t sound like she was referring to the fact that she was rich and he wasn’t.
“Sorry, I thought it had been on your mind too. I mean the press.”
“Oh.” Chance had conveniently forgotten about the public scrutiny that was such a big part of her life. “Do you think they’ll follow you up here?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. They tend to show up everywhere I go, but this is so out of the way, maybe they won’t. At least not until something newsworthy happens.”
“Like you getting a new boyfriend?”
She nodded. “Or like Seymour Davenport moving back into the house he left twenty years ago. The press loves it when something about mom comes up. Dad’s noticeable lack of female company since she died has always intrigued them. For a long time, they wanted to paint him as the world’s most eligible widower. Now I think they’re convinced he has a companion but keeps her hidden. They’d love to uncover his secret, but he really doesn’t have one.”
Chance shook his head. “I don’t understand the whole media thing. I don’t understand why anyone would want to intrude on others’ privacy and write stories about them for a living, and I don’t understand why people would ever want to read those stories. Don’t they have enough going on in their own lives? Why do they care about yours?”
“I don’t know; I don’t get it myself. It’s just one of those things that have always been that way. I grew up with it. I’m used to it.” She met his gaze. “But you’re not, and I know you don’t like it.”
“I don’t, but I accept that it’s one of the costs of being with you.”
She smiled. “Can I remind you of that next time you see a camera pointed at us and you want to smash the guy?”
He sighed. “You can. I’ll just need to learn to control my temper.”
“That’d be nice.”
“I’ll try.” He knew he’d have to deal with the press if he was going to have a future with her, and he was certain now that he was.
His phone rang, and he fished it out of his back pocket, hoping there wasn’t a problem with the herd that he’d have to go deal with. It was Monique.
“Hi,” he answered.
“Hello, darling. We can’t wait to see
you both.”
He smiled. She was probably checking that he wasn’t going to back out. “We’re looking forward to it, too. Don’t worry; we’ll be over at six-thirty.”
She laughed. “Good, but I wasn’t calling to check on you. I have a question for you both.”
“Oh, yeah, what’s that?”
“We ran into Seymour today, and we’d like to invite him to join us. Would that be all right with you and with Hope?”
“Hang on.” He covered the mouthpiece carefully with his hand and looked at Hope. “It’s Monique. How would you feel if your dad joined us?”
“They invited him?” She looked surprised.
“Apparently.”
She nodded, looking puzzled. “It’s fine by me; it’d be nice to see him.”
“Okay.” He brought the phone back up to his ear. “It’s fine by us if that’s what you want.”
“It is.” He could hear the smile in her voice.
“I didn’t know you guys were that friendly with him.”
She laughed. “We’ve known him for years, though we don’t normally socialize. It seems we’ll have reason to get to know each other better in the future and this seemed a good opportunity to get reacquainted. Plus, we may have an idea we want to run by you.”
“Okay. We’ll see the three of you in a little while.”
“Bye, darling.”
He shook his head as he hung up wondering what she and Dave might be cooking up with Seymour.
“Does it seem odd to you?” asked Hope.
“Very. She said the three of them might have an idea they want to run by us.”
Hope frowned. “Did it sound like something good?”
He laughed. “I have no idea. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
“I guess so. I should probably start getting ready. Do you mind if I take the first shower?”
“No, you go ahead. I think I’m going to give my dad a quick call. I feel like I’m leaving him out. I know it’s dumb, but we’re having dinner with your dad and my other parents. I want to feel like I’m including him, too.”
She smiled. “So sweet.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Weren’t you going for a shower?”
