Page 7 of On Thin Ice (Calgary Mounties #1)

Chapter Seven

TAKING A STEP BACK

Adele

“Okay. So, I’ve got you and Jordan down for the Okanagan Wine Tour weekends in June and July. I’ve given you both two each to spread it out. And it will be your turn for the Stampede day tours next year as well,” Dad says, reading through the notes he made in his notebook.

We’re gathered together for a planning meeting in the small office out the back of my parents’ house.

I raise an eyebrow. “Wait, I thought Jordan was handling the tour groups for Stampede next year and I was volunteering for the pancake breakfasts? We spoke about this.”

Dad looks back at his notes again, shaking his head. “No. I know you volunteer every year and wanted to keep doing that, but now that you’ve finished studying, we figured you didn’t need the experience anymore?”

I frown, glancing across the table at Kylie, who shrugs. “Don’t look at me, I’m going to be in Australia for Stampede next year.”

Kylie spends three or four weeks every July in Australia once the hockey off-season starts.

For her, working for the family tour business is just a passion project, and I try not to resent the fact that she gets to pick and choose the trips and events she does during the off-season, so that she can spend as much time with Seth as possible.

The joys of being married to a millionaire, I guess.

Work is a choice, not a necessity. Given how hard she works the rest of the year, I suppose I can handle the three months of carrying the load.

But now I don’t even get to do the one thing I enjoy in July, which is volunteering for the company that runs all the free pancake breakfasts throughout the city during the Stampede.

“It’s not just the experience, Dad. I love doing it every year. Why can’t Jordan handle the day tours, like he’s done every other year?”

My brother pulls a face at me from where he’s making his coffee on the other side of the room. “Because it’s your turn.”

“Well, what are you doing, then?” I ask, glaring at him.

I might be nearly thirty, but any time spent around my brother turns me into a whiney teenager once again. He has that effect on many people.

“I’m handling the Rocky Mountaineers over those two weeks.”

I gape at Dad. “How come you’re not doing that?”

Dad loves the train tours. Most of the attendees are over sixty and he’s always been in his element amongst the older groups.

Dad sighs. “Because I’m taking a step back.”

Kylie sits up straighter. “What do you mean, you’re stepping back?”

I’m glad to see that this isn’t news to only me. Although Jordan seems to be avoiding making eye contact all of a sudden.

Dad looks over at Mom before returning his gaze to mine. “We’ve decided to hand more of the tours over to you kids starting from January. We’re getting closer to retirement and we’re ready to slow down. ”

“Um… Are you hiring more people?” I ask, not loving the way this conversation is going.

“We’d discussed it, but… Well, now that you’ve finished studying and are staying in Calgary, we assumed you’d be taking more on. That was the whole point of you doing your degree in the first place, after all,” Mom says, taking over the talking after Dad shoots her another desperate look.

“And were either of you planning on talking to me about this? I mean, you clearly talked to Jordan about it, cause he’s doing his best ostrich impersonation over there,” I say, nodding towards where Jordan is pretending to be very interested in the label on the back of the bag of coffee grounds.

“This can’t be a surprise to you. We always aimed to step back once we entered our sixties.”

Leaning back in my chair, I study Mom’s face closely, noticing for the first time just how tired she looks.

I’ve been so busy the past few years juggling work, study and a long-distance relationship that I’ve kind of taken my parents for granted.

They’ve always taken care of everything my whole life, providing me with a stable job from the minute I was old enough to work in the office.

But I’d never thought about what would happen once they got older.

When I’d started studying, it had been with the intention of learning more to be able to take on more responsibilities, sure.

But I’ve learned I don’t handle responsibility well.

I’d nearly cracked under the pressure of planning Kylie and Seth’s wedding, which led to me giving up on the idea of event planning. Not to mention the simple idea of marriage and children caused me to run away from the first adult relationship I’d ever had.

I’m basically a mess and have been so caught up in my own issues since we got back from Tahiti that I hadn’t realized my parents were making all these plans .

“It’s time to be a grown up, Adele,” Jordan says, putting down the bag of coffee grounds to look at me finally.

Jordan has always been the dependable one.

Married with two kids, he’s been helping our parents run the place since he left school, and I’d just always assumed that he’d be the one taking on most of the responsibilities.

Learning that they want me to step up and do more…

It fills me with a ridiculous amount of dread.

“I am a grown up, asshole.”

Jordan raises an eyebrow and crosses his arms. “Spoken like a true grown up.”

“Okay. That’s enough, the pair of you. We can talk about this more later, but with Kylie away for Stampede next year, it’s down to you Adele, I’m sorry.” Dad’s tone tells me he’s done talking about this.

I don’t know what it is about Jordan that turns me into a petulant teenager.

We’ve never been close, as he’s five years older than me and always acted like I was a giant pain in the ass.

I’m surprised he’s not jumping at the chance to run everything on his own and be able to boss me around.

I’m not sure how well things will go if we’re expected to run the place together.

Needing a moment to process this turn of events, I head towards the alcove where we keep our tea and coffee ingredients, and make myself a London Fog, stirring the caramel syrup through the earl grey tea and frothed milk.

I’ve always preferred it with caramel syrup, rather than the traditional vanilla, and I’ve converted my entire family.

We all move back to our desks and get back to work.

I’m currently confirming the bookings for this weekend’s tours, which means hours of having a phone pressed to my ear, but things have been fairly quiet the last month.

We usually take the first two weeks in September off after the summer months and before the snow related tours start, so this is normally a fairly busy week for us.

But we’d taken our break in July this year, shuffling all the tours around so the entire family could go to the wedding, and it feels strange not to be neck deep in paperwork right now.

I’d give anything to be busy, though. I’ve been craving a distraction after the implosion of my relationship.

Normally hanging out with Kylie is a good enough way to pass my time, but Lincoln is pretty much always there, and that’s just a reminder of how badly I screwed up.

Even now, three months later, the memories of our night together keep sneaking up on me, and seeing his stupid, hot face constantly is just making everything worse.

It also doesn’t help that the majority of the times I see him, he’s shirtless after working out in Seth’s home gym.

Would it kill the guy to put on a shirt?

“So, Seth gets in at six. Are you coming for dinner?” Kylie asks once I hang up the phone.

“As much as I want to say I have other plans, I do not, because I am lame and my social life is pretty non-existent these days,” I reply, pulling a face.

Kylie laughs. “So that’s a yes for dinner, then?”

“Who are we kidding, Kylie? I basically live with you these days. Of course I’ll be there for dinner.”

While I have my own one-bedroom apartment a few blocks from my parents’ house, since Kylie moved to Canada four years ago, I’m rarely there except to sleep. And half the time, I end up crashing in one of their spare rooms.

“Good,” she replies, turning back to her computer.

Milo wanders in through the open door at that moment, heading straight for me with a hockey puck in his mouth.

I’m not entirely sure when I became the primary dog carer for Lincoln, but my heart always does a stupid little skip when his giant golden retriever makes it obvious that I’m his other favourite person .

When the guys are on the road, Milo hangs out with us at the office during the day, before returning home with Kylie or me each night.

We’ve started taking turns with out-of-town trips so that one of us is always around to take care of him, and I have to be honest and admit that the dog is a large part of the reason I’m there so often, cause he’s always a little sad when he’s cooped up in my apartment.

“Hey, buddy.” I reach down to scratch behind his ear when he places his soft head on my lap and looks up at me with his chocolate brown eyes.

“Oh… Seth mentioned that they ended up meeting up with Ben last night, too.”

I raise my head sharply to meet Kylie’s apologetic gaze. “Oh…”

I don’t really know how to feel about that.

While I’m relieved to no longer be pretending to want the whole marriage and family package, it still hurts knowing that Ben isn’t in my life anymore.

Before he’d proposed, we’d had a lot of fun together.

He is a good guy… I’m just not the right woman for him.

“Yeah…”

I narrow my eyes as I study Kylie’s face. “What aren’t you telling me?”

She shifts in her seat, looking down at her keyboard for a moment before meeting my gaze again, a guilty expression crossing her features.

“So… I don’t know if this means anything was happening before you guys broke up, but… Seth said he brought a date with him to drinks… and it was that lady he works with.”

I stare at her for a moment, trying to process her words. “You mean Melissa?”

For the last eighteen months of our relationship, Ben had been spending time with Melissa, a busty blonde who had started working in his office not long after him.

He’d always assured me they were just friends, though.

And because I was always eager not to be the jealous long-distance girlfriend, I’d believed him.

Kylie winces. “Yeah. He didn’t really want to tell me that, but we don’t do secrets.”

An admirable quality in a relationship. One that it appears mine may not have had, because I find it awfully hard to believe that they were just friends before now if they are now dating.

I must be quiet for far too long, because Kylie starts wringing her hands while she watches me. “Did I do the wrong thing? Should I not have told you?”

We both have a pretty poor history with opening our mouths at the wrong time, but in this instance, I’m glad she told me, and I tell her as much.

She lets out a long breath. “Phew. Like I said, I really don’t know if anything was happening with them before the breakup. I mean, you were the one who ended things, right?”

I nod. “Yeah… Although he was acting really weird in the lead up to things ending. Possessive and a bit clingy… Maybe he had a guilty conscience…”

“No good can come from speculating, Addie,” Mum pipes up.

I’d forgotten that everyone else could hear us while we were talking, and it’s just an extra level of humiliation to know that my entire family now knows that my ex-fiancé might have been cheating on me.

The guilt I’ve been feeling about how things ended between us morphs into anger while I wonder if he manipulated that break-up conversation to make me look like the bad guy.

How dare he make me feel like an asshole when it looks like he was doing something way worse than just questioning whether marriage and children was what he really wanted. At least I was faithful!

We’ll just ignore the fact that I jumped into bed with one of his oldest friends hours after we broke up… Which wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t left me with nowhere to sleep after forcing an awkward conversation at the wedding.

Okay, so maybe I’m still an asshole… But at least I’m not the only one anymore.