Chapter 9

Several days had passed since the awkward lunch at Peter’s condo. Timothy had done his best to try and make up with Andrew but he was making little headway. The stubborn head of restaurants and dining was unwilling to even talk to him now.

Not only that but now Derek was living with Tony in the condo directly across from Timothy’s. While logically he knew that Tony wasn’t really Derek’s type, that didn’t change the fact that a bubble of jealousy welled within him every time he saw the two of them together. Yet, there was nothing he could do about it. Derek had started going out of his way to avoid Timothy now. It was clear that the alpha wanted nothing to do with him anymore.

Timothy had debated confronting him directly about their situation but, in the end, he had decided to let it go. If Derek was willing to sacrifice their friendship then it wasn’t worth the effort to argue with him about it. Besides, Timothy had enough to worry about without bringing stubborn, stuck-up alphas into the mix.

The weather report had been predicting snow for a while now. The number of guests at Snowed Inn had doubled every day since the first predictions had shown up on the nightly news. They still weren’t at full capacity, but the sudden spike in patrons meant that it was all hands on deck for the Snow family.

Since Andrew refused to do anything other than putter around with his own restaurant, Timothy had essentially taken over executive management of the other two restaurants. While they were mostly self-sufficient there were still quite a few things that needed his direct attention.

Today, the sun wasn’t even up yet and Timothy already had no less than a dozen different things on his to-do list. The food shipments were due this morning and so was the replacement dishwasher for the diner. There were several critical upgrades that the sandwich shop wanted to make that Timothy was going to have to try to find room in the budget for.

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose as he sat at the dining room table in his condo and looked over the list of things he needed to accomplish. Most of them involved trying to cram way too many necessary purchases into way too small of a budget. All because the money that was left over after Andrew took his cut for funding Le Bleu was next to nothing.

His cell phone vibrated noisily against the table, signaling an incoming text message. Timothy picked it up and swiped over to the messages. A mass text from Peter sent to everyone in the family.

“Look outside. We’ve got a busy day ahead. Family meeting at my condo in twenty minutes.”

Timothy frowned as he rose from his chair and paced across the living room to the front door. As he pulled it open, a gust of cold air swept into the room and chilled him to the bone. It was still dark outside, the only light was the waxy yellow glow of the lamps along the sidewalk but it was enough to reveal the change that had taken place overnight. A soft, thick blanket of snow covered the ground and stuck to every horizontal surface in sight.

Large, fluffy snowflakes fell thick and fast. This was it. The first snow of the season had arrived.

***

The family meeting went off without a hitch. To be perfectly honest, it was mostly just Peter telling everyone not to panic and just focus on their jobs. The restaurants would likely see a huge uptick in guests today, but for the most part operation would continue as normal. The real strain would fall on the hospitality and transportation departments.

Eli had already reported a huge increase in the number of reservations they had received online. According to the numbers, their weekends were already booked solid for the next six weeks. He’d already put out an emergency call to the seasonal staff he had on standby. If Eli was to be believed, his department would be more than capable of dealing with the increased numbers.

As for transportation, Tony also seemed confident. He had already sent out the snowplow for an initial run down the mountain. Depending on how quickly the snow accumulated, he planned to continue sending it out to keep the roads clear. Thanks to Derek, he already had a shuttle driver that would be able to start ferrying people up and down the mountain in the van. His CDL driver would arrive later to start running the larger shuttle van.

Emily chimed in that she had booked a pretty popular comedian for that night and tickets for his performance had sold out weeks ago. The fact that the first snow of the season happened to coincide with his visit was a little bit like the perfect storm. The sheer number of visitors coming through Snowed Inn today would be well above the usual start-of-season rush.

“That’s all fine,” began Andrew, finally taking the opportunity to speak up, “but when are we going to address the real elephant in the room?”

He was sitting on the far side of Peter’s living room by the fireplace. The rest of the Snow family were either crammed onto the sofa or gathered around the table as Peter paced the room taking reports. Timothy sat near their parents, Robert and Julia, at the table.

“Do you have something relevant to add to the conversation?” Peter asked as he stopped his pacing and turned his attention towards Andrew. Judging from the tone of his voice, he seriously doubted that Andrew’s “elephant” was going to be as big of a deal as he thought it was.

“Why don’t you explain to everyone why you’ve been undermining my authority in my own department?” challenged Andrew, folding his arms across his chest. “Because I sure would like to hear what you have to say about it.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” demanded Peter.

“You altered my latest supply shipment!” countered Andrew. “My entire order was changed, without my permission. When I contacted my suppliers they all said that they filled the order according to the form they received from you.”

Timothy’s stomach churned and he fought back the bile that had begun to rise in his throat. Of course, Andrew was going to choose now, of all times, to bring this up.

“It wasn’t Peter that changed your order, Andrew,” said Timothy. He could have kept his mouth shut and avoided getting involved. He knew that Peter wouldn’t throw him under the bus, even if it would have been easier. However, he also knew that this petty argument was mostly between him and Andrew. Peter had more important things to do than bother with this.

“I told you to leave Le Bleu alone,” spat Andrew. “I told all of you to leave it alone. Why can’t you do that?”

“We can discuss this later,” said Timothy, trying to stay calm. “This really isn’t the time for this conversation.” He knew that getting into a shouting match with Andrew, here of all places, would only make him look bad and wouldn’t accomplish anything. He needed to try and redirect this back to Peter so they could finish the meeting and get on with the day.

“Really? That’s how you want to handle this? Always shoving me and my concerns off to the side just like everyone else. We can hear from all the other departments during a family meeting but screw Andrew. Screw his concerns and the problems he’s dealing with. We can deal with those later.” Andrew had risen from his seat and balled his hands up into fists.

“Andrew Jacob Snow.” Robert, patriarch of the Snow family, didn’t sound pleased as he addressed his son. “If you’ve got a problem, then you can call a special meeting for a later date in order to discuss it.”

“Dad…” Andrew’s voice trailed off and he looked as if he had been slapped across the face.

“You’ve derailed this conversation far enough. If you’ve got nothing else to add, then I suggest you go and figure out whether or not you can work with your altered supply shipment,” Robert continued.

Andrew opened his mouth to speak but ultimately thought better of it. He rose from his chair, grabbed his coat, and stormed out into the early morning twilight.

“I’m sorry you had to step in like that, Dad,” said Peter.

“I’m going to want to speak with you two,” Robert gestured to Peter and Timothy, “later today after things calm down a little. It occurs to me that there has been some serious mismanagement going on between your departments and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”

Timothy’s gaze dropped to his lap as Peter tried to resume the meeting.

It seemed that no matter what he tried, all of Timothy’s attempts to help Andrew were doomed to meet with failure.

***

There wasn’t a lot that Timothy could do to deal with the Andrew problem right now. Going to talk to him would probably only make things worse. The impending conversation with his father had also served to put him on edge. Unfortunately, it only got worse from there.

By the time the sun was fully up, the lobby of the main lodge was flooded with new arrivals. The sleepy little ski resort had burst into life and with it came the problems.

The first call came from the sandwich shop. Andrew had commandeered part of their bread order to make up for where Timothy had shorted him. It was still early in the day, but the shop manager didn’t think they had enough to make it through the lunch rush. The second call was from the diner. Their main dishwasher, the one that had been due for an upgrade for the better part of two years, had just broken down and the replacement was faulty.

Timothy was in damage control mode. He’d spent his last year of school interning at a popular restaurant in the city where he had gone to school. During that time, he’d learned to stay calm in a crisis and prioritize the issues.

A quick call to maintenance would hopefully have the dishwasher issue sorted. As for the bread, he knew he wouldn’t be able to approach Andrew to ask for it directly. He sent a text to Emily to ask her to intervene. He knew she was busy with her own department, but since Le Bleu was right upstairs from the auditorium he hoped she would be able to help.

He managed to negotiate her help in exchange for a dinner date in the near future. Emily had a sushi addiction and would routinely pester family members into taking her out for dinner in town. It would be a blow to his wallet, but he knew that having her on his side would be a definite boon in his conflict with Andrew.

No sooner had he finished arranging things with Emily then he heard back from maintenance. The washing machine was dead. It would take several weeks to get the new parts in and the whole thing was so old that it was only a matter of time before something else gave out. They’d be better off replacing it completely. Only, there was no money for something like that. Especially since they’d already spent money they didn’t have on the faulty, second-hand replacement that was currently sitting in storage.

Dishes were piling up and the chef had had to pull a few people off the line to wash dishes, which meant that orders were starting to back up as well. Timothy groaned. Why couldn’t the dishwasher have broken yesterday or the day before?

He threaded his way across the crowded lobby. This wasn’t an issue that he could solve by delegating. All he could do right now was put a band-aid on it and hope nothing else went wrong.

As he neared the crush of people by the stairs, he thought he heard someone call out to him. Timothy turned slightly and looked around. There were too many people and he kept getting bumped and jostled as he stood in place. Whoever it was, he didn’t have time to wait around and look for them. He turned and sprinted up the stairs to the second floor. He was halfway to the diner when his cell phone vibrated in his pocket.

The text was from Derek.

Timothy frowned and was tempted to ignore it. He had too much else on his plate right now to add alpha-drama to the mix.

Muttering to himself about how things, “couldn’t possibly get any worse” he opened the message.

“Is it always this insane?” Derek’s text read.

Timothy couldn’t help but scoff a little. After ignoring him for days, this was how Derek chose to reinitiate contact? Not that he was particularly surprised. It was a very Derek-like thing to do. He’d never really had a sense of what a situation called for.

“Snowfall is like crack to skiers.” Timothy typed back. He could chastise Derek later about his behavior these last few days. For now, Timothy was just glad that he had some sort of bright spot in his day. He had a feeling he was going to need it.

“Tony’s got me running back to back shuttles right now. Full load every time so far.” Derek’s response was quick.

Timothy continued towards the diner as he typed his reply. “There’s also a comedian booked at the auditorium tonight. Probably a lot of day-trippers.”

“I could have used a warning.” Derek’s exasperation was expressed through a stressed out emoji.

“Tony should have warned you. Stay safe.” Timothy hovered just outside the staff entrance to the diner as he waited for Derek’s reply.

“Will do. Leaving to go pick up another load. Text you when I get back?”

“I’ll try to reply, but I’m probably going to be up to my elbows in soap suds for the rest of the day.” Timothy sent off his message and tucked the phone into his pocket. Taking a deep breath, he charged into the kitchen.