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one and only,” Louise said, before chasing down the corridor after the children.
     

     
    Dillon found Troy in the big Sheenan barn feeding the horses. “You’re going to be late,” Dillon said, closing the barn door behind him. “Doesn’t the meeting start at seven thirty?”
    “Yeah.”
    “It’s after seven now.”
    “I know.” Troy brushed feed off his hands, and then wiped his hands on the back of his butt, feeling the stiff denim. “I don’t want to do this. Dreading this meeting.”
    “It was your idea,” Dillon said.
    “The Ball wasn’t.”
    “But saving the hotel was.”
    True, Troy thought, adding water to the trough inside one stall.
    And what a terrible mistake that had been.
    But Troy wouldn’t say that out loud, not even to his brother. It’d kill him to admit that restoring the Graff Hotel to its former splendor was on its way to bankrupting him. Everything he had—over twelve million--was tied up in the hotel. He should have never invested so much of his own money in one project. He should have pulled back from the renovation when he realized it was a money pit. But he’d been too proud, too stupid, to do the smart thing when he could.
    But he was a fighter and nowhere ready to give up on the hotel.
    The hotel had only been reopened for six months, after the two and a half year restoration. It’d been a huge job restoring the hotel because it’d been abandoned, boarded up, for over forty years before that. But you wouldn’t know it looking at the hotel today. The Graff’s grand lobby glowed with rich paneled wood, marble, and gleaming light fixtures, while the grand ballroom and smaller reception rooms sparkled with glittering chandeliers.
    And yes, the hotel had virtually zero occupancy since early January, but December had been a good month, with the introduction of festive afternoon tea and company holiday parties on the weekends. But what they needed to do was fill the rooms all the time, because even empty, there were still salaries and bills to pay.
    But the hotel was special. She was one of a kind. And while he regretted that restoring her might cost him his company and financial security, he was glad he’d saved her.
    Someone had to.
    Now he just needed to turn things around, and he could. It was a matter of increasing tourism to Marietta, and getting some publicity for the hotel, the kind of publicity that would make the Graff appealing to meeting planners and wedding planners, making the Graff the destination of choice for conferences and special events.
    “You’re in pretty deep, aren’t you?” Dillon said, as Troy left the stall and latched the door closed behind him.
    “Yeah.”
    Dillon sat down on a stack of hay bales against the wall, extending his legs. “So just how deep?”
    Troy reached for his coat hanging on a peg about Dillon’s head. “Deep enough that if things go south, I’d be the one living here, working the ranch, leaving you free to return to Austin.”
    “That’d be a relief for me, but hell for you.” Dillon folded his arms across his chest. “You hate the ranch.”
    Troy’s lips compressed. He wasn’t going to even dignify that with a response because yes, he did hate the ranch. He hated everything about it, and always had, which is why whenever he came home he stayed in town at a hotel.
    “But then, you don’t like Marietta, either,” Dillon continued, watching Troy button his heavy sheepskin coat. “Which is why none of us can figure out why you’d hitch yourself, and your future, to that damn hotel. You’re the smart, successful Sheenan—”
    “You and Cormac haven’t done too badly for yourselves.”
    “Because you invested in us.”
    “I believe in you.”
    “And the hotel?”
    “Not ready to throw in the towel. I’ve spent ten years investing in startups. I believe we can still turn things around.”
    “But why The Graff, when you know it kills you to come back to this town?”
    Troy had started walking to the barn