Page 53 of Ever After Between the Lines (Montgomery Ink Legacy)

ELI

When my morning begins with me standing ankle-deep in a basement full of water, I know I probably should have stayed in bed. Only, I was the boss, and I didn’t get that choice.

“Hold on. I’m looking for it.” East cursed underneath his breath as my younger brother bent down around the pipe, trying his best to turn off the valve. I sighed, waded through the muck in my work boots, and moved to help him. “I said I’ve got it,” East snapped, but I ignored him.

I narrowed my eyes at the evil pipe. “It’s old and rusted, and even though it passed an inspection over a year ago, we knew this was going to be a problem.”

“And I’m the fucking handyman of this company. I’ve got this.”

“And as a handyman, you need a hand.”

“You’re hilarious. Seriously. I don’t know how I could ever manage without your wit and humor.” The dryness in his tone made my lips twitch even as I did my best to ignore the smell of whatever water we stood in.

“Fuck you,” I growled.

“No thanks. I’m a little too busy for that.”

With a grunt, East shut off the water, and we both stood back, hands on our hips as we stared at the mess of this basement.

East let out a sigh. “I’m not going to have to turn the water off for the whole property, but I’m glad that we don’t have tenants in this particular cabin.”

I nodded tightly and held back a sigh. “This is probably why there aren’t basements in Texas. Because everything seems to go wrong in these things.”

“I’m pretty sure this is a storm shelter, or at least a tornado one. Not quite sure as it’s one of the only basements in the area.”

“It was probably the only one that they had the energy to make back in the day. Considering this whole place is built over clay and limestone.”

East nodded, looked around. “I’ll start the cleanup with this water, and we’ll look to see what we can do with the pipes.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I don’t want to have to replace the plumbing for this whole place.”

“At least it’s not the villa itself, or the farmhouse, or the winery. Just a single cabin.”

I glared at my younger brother, then reached out and knocked on a wooden pillar. “Shut your mouth. Don’t say things like that to me. We are just now getting our feet under us.”

East shrugged. “It’s the truth, though. However much you weigh it, it could have been worse.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Jesus Christ. You were in the military for how long? A Wilder your entire life, and you say things like that? When the hell did you lose that superstition bone?”

“About the time that my Humvee was blown up, and when Evan’s was, Everett’s too.

Hell, about the time that you almost fell out of the sky in your plane.

Or when Elliot was nearly shot to death trying to help one of his men.

So, yes, I pretty much lost all superstition when trying to toe the line ended up in near death and maiming. ”

I met my brother’s gaze, that familiar pang thinking about all that we had lost and almost lost over the past few years.

East muttered under his breath, shaking his head. “And I sound more and more like Evan these days rather than myself.”

I squeezed his shoulder and let out a breath, thinking of our brother who grunted more than spoke these days. “It’s okay. We’ve been through a lot. But we’re here.”

Somehow, we were here. I wasn’t quite sure if we had made the right decision about two years ago when we had formed this plan, or rather I had formed this plan, but there was no going back.

We were in it, and we were going to have to find a way to make it work, flooded former tornado shelters and all.

East sighed. “I’ll work on this now. Then I’ll head on over to the main house. I have a few things to work on there.”

“You know, we can hire you help. I know we had all the contractors and everything to work with us for some of the rebuilds and rehabs, but we can hire someone else for you on a day-to-day basis.”

My brother shook his head. “We may be able to afford it, but I’d rather save that for a rainy day. Because when it rains, it pours here, and flash flooding is a major threat in this part of Texas.” He winked as he said it, mixing his metaphors, and I just shook my head.

“You just let me know if you need it.”

“You’re the CEO, brother of mine, not the CFO. That’s Everett.”

“True, but we did talk about it so we can work on it.” I paused, thinking about what other expenses might show up. “And what do you need to do with the villa?”

The villa was the main house where most things happened on the property.

It contained the lobby, library, and atrium.

My apartment was also on the top floor, so I could be there for emergencies.

Our innkeeper lived on the other side of the house, but I was in the main loft because this was my project, my baby.

My other brothers, all five of them, lived in cabins on the property. We lived together, worked together, ate together, and fought together. We were the Wilder brothers. It was what we did.

I had left to join the Air Force at seventeen, having graduated early, leaving behind my kid brothers and sister.

After nearly twenty years of doing what we needed to in order to survive, we hadn’t spent as much time with one another as I would have liked.

We hadn’t been stationed together, so we hadn’t seen one another for longer than holidays or in passing.

But now we were together. At least most of us. So I was going to make this work, even if it killed me.

East finally answered my question. “I just have to fix a door that’s a little too squeaky in one of the guestrooms. Not a big deal.”

I raised a brow. “That’s it?”

“It’s one of the many things on my list. Thankfully, this place is big enough that I always have something to do.

It’s an unending list. And that the winery has its own team to work on all of that shit, because I’m not in the mood to learn to deal with any of the complicated machinery that comes with that world. ”

I snorted. “Honestly, same. I’m glad there are people that know what the fuck they’re doing when it comes to wine making so that didn’t have to be the two of us.”

I left my brother to this job, knowing he liked time on his own, just like the rest of us did, and went to dry my boots. I was working by myself for most of the day, in interviews and other “boss business,” as Elliot called it, so I had to focus and get clean.

I wasn’t in the mood to deal with interviews, but it was part of my job. We had to fill positions that hadn’t been working out over the past year, some more than others.

Wilder Retreat was a place that hadn’t been even a spark in my mind my entire life.

No, I had been too busy being a career military man—getting in my twenty, moving up the ranks, and ending up as a Lieutenant Colonel before I got out.

I had been a commander of a squadron, and yet, it felt like I didn’t know how to command where I was now.

When my sister Eliza had lost her husband when he was on deployment, it had been the last domino to fall in the Wilder brothers’ military career.

I had been ready to get out with twenty years in, knowing I needed a career outside of being a Lieutenant Colonel.

I wasn’t even forty yet, and the term retirement was a misnomer, but that’s what happened when it came to my former job.

East had been getting out around that time for reasons of his own, and then Evan had been forced to. I rubbed my hand over my chest, that familiar pain, remembering the phone call from one of Evan’s commanders when Evan had been hurt.

I thought I’d lost my baby brother then, and we nearly had. Everett had gotten hurt too, and Elijah and Elliot had needed out for their own reasons. Losing our baby sister’s husband had just pushed us forward.

Finding out that Eliza’s husband had been a cheating asshole had just cemented the fact that we needed to spend more time together as a family so we could be there for one another.

In retrospect, it would have been nice if Eliza would have been able to come down to Texas with us, to our suburb outside of San Antonio.

Only, she had fallen in love again, with a man with a big family and a good heart up in Fort Collins, Colorado.

She was still up there and traveled down enough that we actually got to get to know our sister again.

It was weird to think that, after so many years of always seeing each other in passing or through video calls, most of us were here, opening up a business. And all because I had been losing my mind.

Wilder Retreat and Winery was a villa and wedding venue outside of San Antonio. We were in hill country, at least what passed for hill country in South Texas, and the place had been owned by a former Air Force General who had wanted to retire and sell the place, since his kid didn’t want it.

It was a large spread that used to be a ranch back in the day, nearly one hundred acres that the original owners had taken from a working ranch, and instead of making it a dude ranch or something similar, like others did around here, they’d added a winery using local help.

We were close enough to Fredericksburg that it made sense in terms of the soil and weather.

They had been able to add on additions, so it wasn’t just the winery.

Someone could come for the day for a winery tour or even a retreat tour, but most people came for the weekend or for a whole week.

There were cabins and a farmhouse where we held weddings, dances, or other events.

We had some chickens and ducks that gave us eggs, and goats that seemed to have a mind of their own and provided milk for cheese.

Then there was the main annex, which housed all the equipment for the retreat villa.

The winery had its own section of buildings, and it was far bigger than anything I would have ever thought that we could handle. But, between the six of us, we did.