Aidan closed his eyes. Lenny’d had it rough. He’d grown up with a distant great-uncle who’d preferred the assholery technique of parenting. He’d recently been dumped by his girlfriend. Lenny needed this resort job, and he needed Aidan’s friendship. Which wasn’t so hard to give when Aidan could still remember all the times Lenny had stood at his back. When they’d been accused of cheating on a math test in seventh grade. When he’d gotten in a fender bender with a local cop. When he’d found out he had two younger brothers and a sister, and that his dad was a spineless bag of dicks. “A DUI for you has consequences,” he said reluctantly. “Your job requires you to have a license.”

“Shit.” Lenny blew out a breath. “I was barely over the legal limit—”

“This isn’t up to me,” Aidan said. “It’s a done deal.”

There was a long silence. “You firing me?”

“No,” Aidan said. “But you have to be suspended until you get your license back, and it can’t happen again.”

“I know. I’ll get this straightened out and be done with it.”

Aidan only hoped that was true. They disconnected, and he eyed the time. He’d hoped for something big to stall him so he couldn’t hit the board meeting, but since that hadn’t happened, he got into his truck to make the drive up Pine Pass Road to the lodge at Cedar Ridge Resort. In winter this could take twenty minutes or more, but today, in early summer with no weather to slow him down, it took five.

Gray handled the day-to-day running of the resort, one of the last family-owned mountain resorts in Colorado. Though “owned” wasn’t exactly accurate. Thanks to their dear old dad, they had a very large balloon payment due next year and it was breathing down their necks.

If they went under, they’d lose the only place they’d ever called home, not to mention the fact that they seasonally employed half the town of Cedar Ridge. A mass unemployment would hurt more than just the Kincaids.

Not that they’d get any help from town. Cedar Ridge wasn’t that big, but the people in it had long memories, and over the years Aidan had heard it all.

Those Kincaids will never amount to anything.

Those Kincaids, they’d hustle their own mama.

Those Kincaids run with the devil.