Free Wives and Champions by Tina Martin Page A

that
he’d taken Ezra with him on a few errands. Emily stayed in the
kitchen most of the morning, curled up with her laptop and coffee,
working on inventory for the boutique. He doubted if she knew he’d
even left the house.
    And since when did she start working
on Sundays? She usually made it a point not to work at home. She
was already complaining about not spending enough time with Ezra,
but that didn’t stop her from spending hours on her laptop, did it?
At least it hadn’t yesterday.
    When he heard his cell phone ring,
Dante sat straight up and picked it up from his desk. “What’s up,
Des?”
    “ Hey, I won’t be in today.
Thought I’d let you know.”
    Dante glanced at his watch. A few
minutes before nine…
    “ Is everything cool?” he
asked his brother.
    “ Yes,” Desmond replied.
“Have to take care of some things with Sherita today. I’ll probably
log in at home later to check emails.”
    “ Okay. Well, in your
absence, I’m sure Kurt can handle anything that comes
up.”
    “ Yep. Already talked to
him. Told him to call me if he had any issues.”
    “ All right, Des. See you
later, then.”
    “ Yep. Later.”
    Dante hung up the phone, watching
Dimitrius walk into his office at the same time.
    Dimitrius rolled his wrist to check
his watch. “It’s nine. Where’s Desmond?”
    “ He just called. He’s not
coming in today.”
    “ Oh. Is everything okay
with him?” Dimitrius asked, sitting down.
    “ He sounded okay. Said he
needed to take care of some errands or something.”
    “ All right, so do we need
to have this meeting or what?” Dimitrius asked with a cranky edge
to his voice.
    If a person didn’t know Dimitrius,
they’d think he was being rude. Dante knew this was his brother’s
normal temperament. Marriage had evened him out a little, but
Dimitrius hadn’t lost his astute business sense nor the stern,
let’s-get-down-to-business approach that made him who he was. He
was more relaxed at the bar Saturday night.
    “ Do you have anything to
discuss from an accounts perspective?”
    “ Ah…” Dimitrius thought for
a moment, then said, “I’m working on a few account updates with the
I.T. department this week. Nothing to discuss concerning that, but
there is one thing we’ve been putting off for a while.”
    “ Which is?”
    “ Grieving Hearts Connect.
With the rollout of eRoll in Vegas, we sort of forgot about our
previous discussions which centered around the possibility of
opening up GHC to your everyday vacationer–removing the exclusivity
for the grief-stricken.”
    “ Actually, I didn’t forget
about it.” Dante leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs with
his ankle resting on his knee. “I was hoping you all forgot about
it.”
    “ Why’s that?”
    “ I don’t think it’s a good
idea.”
    “ Reason being?”
    “ That wasn’t its original
purpose. GHC is an outlet to help people heal, not a party
destination for a bunch of rowdy, fun-seeking vacationers. That’s
not why I opened that facility.”
    “ You opened it to give
people what you didn’t have when Anita died. I get it. The retreat
gives people time to heal, reflect and retain balance after the
death of a spouse and while that’s noble of you for opening this
facility, we are spending a lot of money keeping that place
operating.”
    “ But we’re not in the red,
Dimitrius. We make a small profit from the resort.”
    Dimitrius nodded. “Even still, opening
up GHC to the general population would help offset the money we
lose in the fall and winter months.”
    Dante sighed inwardly. His brothers
didn’t have the same attachment to GHC as he had, so they didn’t
understand how important this place was to him.
    “ Now, I took the liberty of
having I.T. copy the GHC program we use for booking reservations in
which they’ve created a test environment so we could play with
different scenarios. Now, let’s say a random vacationer wanted to
stay at GHC because they love the fact that it’s a