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“And yet you’re working here?”
“I’ve got nothing else better to do and I’m only giving the time back at the end of the year if I don’t use it.”
“Maybe you should take a vacation.”
He turned to see Cade, who’d asked that question, standing in the doorway now. “Please,” he said. “It’s no fun on your own.”
“It’s more like you don’t want to spend the money,” Cade said, snickering and moving on.
“Ignore him,” Ella said. “He has his life and you’ve got yours.”
He’d heard before he was cheap and he never denied it. He couldn’t help it.
Ivan had a degree in economics and worked full time doing risk management for an insurance company. He’d recently been promoted to overseeing the department. He was thrilled with the money but not so thrilled with managing the people.
He was getting better with the staff after adapting his job and keeping to himself. He had no problem managing the work, but petty shit got under his skin. His staff was starting to realize he was fair as long as they did their job. That was all he cared about.
“I don’t need a flashy car or big house like Cade. It’s transportation that gets me from point A to B the same as his.”
“That’s right,” Ella said. “And your house is lovely, if plain. You did a spectacular job with it and Travis still wishes that he’d been around to help knock walls down.”
Ivan grinned. He lived in a development and had a house bigger than he needed. Renting threw money away, but he wasn’t going to buy something he couldn’t put some sweat equity into. His father worked in construction for years and Ivan was handy. Just because he didn’t want to swing a hammer his whole life didn’t mean he couldn’t do the work.
His goal had been to find the ugliest most rundown house in a decent area and bring its value up. He’d done just that and was thrilled.
“I’m not all about bright colors and decorations either,” he said.
“Travis complains all the time about it, but he knows better. He has his space and I’ve got the rest of the house.”
He’d been in Ella’s massive house. It looked as if a designer had staged it, but it was homey too. Ella and Travis’s daughter, Madison, had a bedroom all little girls dreamed of, and now with baby number two on the way in four months, he was sure their son was going to have a room to match.
“What is it you need me to do?” he asked.
For the past two years or so, he’d been working for Fierce doing what he loved to do. Risk assessment. Money management. Trends and forecasting in their industry.
Things Ella did when Fierce started to expand. She just didn’t or couldn’t do it the way he did.
Fierce had gotten so big, even without having a family to care for, Ella couldn’t possibly do it all alone.
There were some things they only wanted family to be part of and he’d been thrilled when they asked him to help out.
They’d offered him a job full time, but he liked where he was. He liked the security of it and the work he did. He wasn’t positive there was enough work for him at Fierce full time and didn’t want to take advantage of the family connection.
This worked out better. He got to keep his hand in the pie. To him it was a hobby he loved that paid him well for his time. He didn’t have to work weekly but found he was always reading articles and looking for information when there wasn’t data for him to analyze and trend out.
“Mason is thinking of branching out into liquor. The brewery, as you know, is our largest percentage of revenue. Like Aiden selling his spices and sauces, this is another avenue we need to look into before we decide the scope of it. Do we start small? Do we add onto the brewery and buy the equipment needed?”
“Devin mentioned something to me about it a few months ago,” he said.
His brother, Devin, was Mason’s right-hand man at the brewery. He worked nights and managed the distribution part of the business, allowing Mason to focus more on the actual brewing.
“It has merit with a shift in drinking trends,” Ella said, “but I don’t want to jump on the bandwagon just yet. No one does. Look what happened with spiked seltzer. Everyone jumped and businesses are losing money left and right on it. It is a fad and the market is so diluted that product is sitting on the shelves.”
“Let me do my research and see what I can find. Are you looking high end or more affordable? Whiskey or vodka, maybe gin? Tequila? Devin didn’t say.”
“Mason would prefer bourbon or whiskey. You know he has a few brews that are aged in bourbon barrels. He’s thinking that makes more sense. Produce our own bourbon to mix with the brews.”
“And we know your father loves a good bourbon,” he said of his uncle Gavin.
