“Let’s get my dad on the same page.”
“DAD, I NEED five minutes,” Aaron said for the third time. Once he confronted his dad, he was leaving. The sooner the better. His heart couldn’t handle watching Bonnie and Mitch whisper to one another or seeing her laugh at something he said. He didn’t want to be here when Lauren’s hyenas attacked.
“There’s something I wanted to talk to you about as well. Come out here.” His dad took him through some doors and into a room with books in sealed boxes. Rare Books was written on the label on the shelf.
“What did you want to talk about?” Aaron asked, figuring after his dad made his come-back-and-work-for-me speech, Aaron would question if it was possible that he’d hired someone to vandalize the house.
“Your house.”
“My house? What about my house?” Aaron couldn’t believe he was going to admit it without Aaron having to trick it out of him.
“I know who vandalized it.”
Of course he did. Why was he being honest about it? Aaron suddenly had a sinking feeling that he was going to use it as a warning. Come work for him or he would destroy every house he tried to flip.
“Dad, I’m never going to come back to Cole Industries. Nothing you do can stop me from fixing up houses. You could wreck them and I would simply rebuild. That’s my life’s work now.”
The lines on his father’s forehead creased deeper. “Why would I wreck your houses?”
“You said you know who vandalized the one on Greenbriar.”
“I do. I’ve had a PI following Mitch around since he landed in Paris. I wanted to make sure he didn’t do anything else that would get back to your sister and cause her any more pain. When he came back to Blue Springs, I wanted to make sure he stayed away from Lauren and see if Bonnie had anything to do with him.”
Aaron couldn’t breathe. Mitch. Bonnie wouldn’t believe it. Not without more proof.
“She didn’t, by the way.” His dad pulled an envelope out of his inside jacket pocket and handed it to Aaron. “The investigator didn’t realize you owned the house when he took these pictures. We only meet once a week to go over what he sees, so I didn’t find out until yesterday. I wanted to give you a chance to decide how you want to handle this. If you want to turn it over to the police, you can. If you want to use it to perhaps make a deal, you could do that, too.”
Aaron opened the envelope and unfolded the small stack of photos. Photo after photo of Mitch buying the spray paint, throwing landscaping bricks through the front windows, kicking down the door, destroying all of Aaron’s hard work.
It all made sense now. He had heard Sasha say Bonnie and Aaron were meant to be and got jealous. He’d wrecked the house, making it look very Lauren-esque. Then, he’d showed up at the house first thing in the morning to “help” clean up and offer Bonnie a shoulder to cry on and stoke her anger at Lauren, knowing that could drive a wedge between Bonnie and Aaron.
It was actually a well-thought-out plan. Aaron needed to be sure never to underestimate Mitch’s ability to be cutthroat again.
He put the pictures back in the envelope. “Thank you for giving me these. I need to think about how I want to handle this.”
“I trust you’ll make the right decision.” He started to leave, but Aaron stopped him.
“Dad, I have to apologize. I wanted to talk to you tonight because I thought maybe you had something to do with the vandalism. I’d convinced myself that you didn’t want me to be successful.”
His father tipped his chin down to his chest. “Why wouldn’t I want you to be successful?”
“Because you want me to work for you instead.”
“I do want that, but I also want you to be the best at whatever you do. Once you hired David, I knew you’d be fine. And according to your mother, you are very good at what you’re doing. She’s been so inspired by you, she wants to do some renovations around town.”
The ton of bricks Aaron had been carrying around since quitting his job lifted off his shoulders. To hear his dad accept his decision gave him a peace he’d thought was impossible.
“I’m not going to have to compete with Mom, am I?”
“Your mom isn’t going to do residential stuff. Don’t worry.”
“Oh my goodness, you two are hard to find.” Lauren came barreling in, dragging Bonnie by the hand. “We need to talk to you guys.”
Aaron wasn’t sure what was happening, and it wasn’t clear if Bonnie was here willingly or under duress. He was stressed for her either way.
“Dad, Bonnie is my best friend. I was wrong to attack her because Mitch was a jerk with bad timing. We need to change the narrative in this town. I don’t want Bonnie to ever feel unwelcome again.”
“Okay.” Their dad threw his hands up. “Whatever you want, princess.”
“Don’t say that,” she said, looking a bit flustered. “I want you to tell me no sometimes. If you and Mom always do what I say, I don’t know if I’m making the right decision or not. You let me make a lot of bad decisions this summer.”
“I want you to be happy.”
“Being hateful didn’t make me happy, Daddy.”
“Should I be recording this so we have proof that you said it when Dad tells you you can’t have something or do something?” Aaron asked.
“No, but you’re all my witnesses.”
“Okay, I’ll tell you no sometimes. Anything else?”
“We’re done with you. You can go back to the party,” she said, shooing the older man out of the room.
Bonnie pressed her lips together to hold back her laughter. It made Aaron happy to see her smiling. Although he was curious how they’d gotten to this point.
“Aaron, if you break Bonnie’s heart, I’ll forgive you, but I’ll be super mad. Don’t break her heart. Tell
