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Because as tough as my dad believed I was, I was over this.
I was tired.
Tired of having to fight all the time.
All I wanted was to live my life on my family’s farm and be able to do it peacefully while I waited for the man of my dreams to stroll through the door of my ice cream shop and ask for a vanilla cone.
Was that really so much to ask?
2
WYATT
“We’ve got a problem. Can you come to my office?”
“I’ll be right there.”
Without waiting for a response, I disconnected the call and returned my office phone to its cradle. Then I got up, rounded my desk, and made my way through the building toward my father’s office.
It wasn’t often he called to tell me about a problem, but with a company of this size, it certainly wasn’t unheard of. And when a situation arose, my dad knew he could count on me to help rectify it.
Ever since I could remember, I wanted nothing more than to be able to follow in my father’s footsteps as president and CEO of The Westwood Company. This business was all I knew, and I’d been working from the moment I was old enough to have a summer job.
Being the boss’s son should have come with some perks that landed me in one of the high-paying office positions from the start.
It didn’t.
But that didn’t stop me from putting forth the effort to get to where I wanted to be.
I’d initially worked in our museum, greeting guests, handing out maps, and guiding folks where they needed to go to start their tour. Once I was old enough, I moved to working in the factory—first packaging the chocolate and other sweet treats before being able to actually make the products. Two years later, I had the opportunity to work directly with our guests who came from all over the country—and various parts of the world—for the complete Westwood’s experience. One of those experiences was allowing guests to make their very own chocolate. I’d enjoyed having the chance to interact directly with our guests, but that experience was a short-lived one. I only did that for one summer before I moved into the offices.
Over the course of the next several years, from the time I turned eighteen and graduated from high school until now, I’d fulfilled several roles within the company. At twenty-eight years old, I was now sitting just one notch shy of being the guy in charge, a position currently held by my father, Malcolm Westwood.
Though we regularly handled different tasks within the company in our day-to-day responsibilities, we were often coming together to work on a variety of projects. And given this was a global company with a number of different departments and projects happening all at the same time, I couldn’t say I had the slightest idea what could have been the problem now.
But as was the case whenever an issue arose, I was more than prepared to do my part to get it resolved. That was who I’d been from the start. Or, at least, considering my humble beginnings within the company, that was who I’d always strived to be.
I made it to my father’s office, stepped inside, and found he wasn’t alone.
Cooper and Liam were both there, too.
I was the oldest of six children—four boys and two girls. Cooper was next in line, arriving nearly two years after me. Then it was Tate, Ivy, Liam, and Jules, joining the family in that order and with roughly two years separating each of them.
Each of the Westwood siblings had been eager to work for our family’s company and had done so since we were teenagers—or younger, in some cases.
Being the oldest of the bunch, Cooper, Tate, and I had already solidified our current roles within the company and had been working in those positions for several years now. Liam had recently stepped into what would likely be his permanent role in the official capacity.
Cooper was the operations and maintenance manager, handling anything and everything that came up within the offices, the museum, the factory, and the hotel. Of course, he didn’t work alone, having a team of guys who worked to address anything necessary in any building on Westwood’s 115-acre campus.
Tate was the head of our marketing and product development. He worked closely with our mom, Evelyn, over the years, recognizing he had the same knack for understanding what it was that people wanted and a talent for delivering it to them.
Ivy was set to graduate from college this spring, and when she did, she was going to officially take over the operation of The Westwood Hotel. That had been her dream for as long as I could remember.
Liam was a lot like Cooper when it came to work. He opted not to go to college, and instead started working at Westwood’s full-time immediately upon his graduation from high school. He liked working with his hands and always liked to be kept busy—something that became almost necessary for him over the last two years. So, he fulfilled a similar role to Cooper, but his responsibility was anything and everything in the theme park.
And finally, there was Jules. My baby sister was just a few months away from turning eighteen and graduating high school. I was protective of all my siblings, especially my sisters. But with nearly ten years separating Jules and me and Ivy being the more headstrong of my sisters, I worried just a bit more about Jules. Unsurprisingly, like every other Westwood kid, Jules knew exactly what she wanted to do with her future and was set to start an accelerated pastry and baking arts program upon her graduation from high school.
Stepping into my father’s office and seeing both Cooper and Liam there, it didn’t take me long to narrow down the list of potential problems.
