“Are you okay?” Chip asked.

She looked up, forcing a smile. “Yes, why?”

“You just let out a big sigh.”

Oh dear. “I did? Sorry. I just have a lot on my mind.”

He sat back, resting his hands on the desk. “Listen, I know I can be challenging.”

“You’re not challenging.”

He put up a hand. “Please, you don’t have to humor me. I know I scare the staff. I don’t intend to, but I also don’t try not to.”

Claire smiled. “Whatever you’re doing, it’s working.”

“Except it isn’t.” He rubbed his face with one hand, then spoke again. “You’ve seen the numbers. We need a huge change to keep this hotel afloat. I don’t want you to lose your investment.”

“I’m sure we can figure it out.”

He nodded. “I’m sure we can, too. I think we make a great team. I really do, and I’m sorry that I was so…myself when we first met.”

That made Claire laugh. “I wasn’t at my best, either.”

“The truth is, I’m not proud of who I used to be, and sometimes I overdo it, trying to make up for my past.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” she said.

Chip shifted in his chair, leaning forward. “You made a joke last night about me crashing the economy.”

“That wasn’t serious!” Claire needed to be careful about what she said to him.

He shook his head. “No, I know. But I’m not entirely innocent.”

“Chip –”

He continued. “I worked at an investment bank. I’d been there for seventeen years, and I knew what they were doing.”

Claire frowned. She never fully understood the economic crash. All she knew was the little pension she’d hoped to one day receive had been wiped out. She’d chalked it up to bad luck.

“I’m embarrassed to admit this,” she said, “but I don’t even know what caused the crash. Wasn’t it people buying homes they couldn’t afford?”

Sort of like what Claire was doing now, except it was a hotel and not a home. Her stomach sank at the thought.

“No, that wasn’t it.” Chip shifted again. It looked like he was in pain. “It was easy to put the blame on the average person, but that wasn’t it at all. The banks – they knew what they were doing. They preyed on people. There were teams trained to do this, to find someone who was in the market for a house and sell them a mortgage they couldn’t afford.”

This still sounded a bit too much like what Claire had done with the hotel. “They shouldn’t have gotten those homes, though, right?”