10. Hallie
CHAPTER 10
HALLIE
I wish I had more time to prepare for the retreat and feel confident in pretending James is my boyfriend, but only two days after going over the relationship questionnaire, it’s already time to start packing for the trip. Now I’m not only worried about remembering what kind of car James drove in high school (a Jeep) and the names of his niece and nephew (Abby and Connor), but I’m also panicking that I’m either over packing or that I don’t have nearly enough options.
After I’ve meticulously laid out potential outfits on my bed, I go through the retreat itinerary day by day, trying to plan for different activities, levels of formality at meals, and the erratic weather in the mountains, making sure I am prepared for anything. I’ve picked out everything from shorts and a light blouse to jeans and a wool sweater, not only for my own comfort, but to show the Winter brothers that I’m the kind of person who thinks ahead and is always ready for whatever is thrown at me. My career—and my family’s future—hinges on this trip going perfectly.
Once I’ve narrowed down my options, I pack each outfit one at a time, doing my best to avoid wrinkles. I didn’t see an iron listed on the room amenities and I don’t want to show up to dinner the first night looking unkempt, not when I’m trying to make a good impression. I’m trying to zip my suitcase shut and considering repacking in a bigger bag when the alarm on my phone goes off, indicating it’s time to leave.
“This will have to do,” I sigh, using all my strength to pull the zipper closed.
I grunt as I lift my suitcase off the bed and then wheel it into the living room.
“Bye Fred!” I call, heading for the door. “Trevor and his mom are going to pop by to take care of you once a day. He’s just a kid; please don’t swear at him.”
“No promises!” Fred squawks at me.
“You’re a little devil,” I laugh, making a note to text Sheryl to warn her about my parrot’s potty mouth. “Be good!”
Leaving my giant suitcase outside my door I hurry to James’s apartment, knocking loudly. After a minute, I knock again, already annoyed that he’s not answering. I’m trying to keep a positive outlook on the trip, but it’s hard when James seems so determined to drive me crazy. When he finally opens the door, his hair is tousled and his shirt is creased as if he just got out of bed. I stare for a moment, my mouth hanging open.
“You’re not ready yet?”
“For what?” James yawns.
“Are you kidding me?” I gasp, feeling like I’m about to have a heart attack.
James smiles and winks. “Yes, I am. Of course I’m ready. I just have to throw on my clothes. You’re five minutes early.”
“I don’t want to miss our flight!” I call into the apartment as he slowly makes his way to his bedroom.
“Are you always this uptight?” he asks, stopping at the bedroom doorway.
“Are you always this annoying?”
James smiles again, clearly enjoying himself.
“Only with you.”
The ride to the airport is quiet as James puts in his ear buds while I go through my emails, replying to my east coast accounts before turning on my out of office alert. Of course, I’ll likely still be working from Wyoming, but I hate the idea of not getting back to someone in a timely manner. I’m also enjoying the last moments of not having to pretend James is my boyfriend—the Uber driver certainly doesn’t care. She’s been singing along to the music the whole time, lost in her own world as she drives.
When we get to the airport, James jumps out of the car, telling the driver that he’ll get the luggage. The woman turns down the music and gives me a knowing smile.
“You got a good one there, honey,” she says appreciatively.
Fighting the urge to roll my eyes, I have to stop myself from correcting her. Even though it doesn’t matter if the Uber driver knows we’re a couple or not, I might as well get into the habit of pretending we are.
“Yeah,” I agree, forcing a smile. “He’s one of a kind.”
Checking my luggage goes smoothly, except that I have to ignore James’s raised eyebrows when I pull out the checked baggage confirmation page I printed out at home, proof that the suitcases are paid for.
“You know that all the information is stored electronically,” James mutters. “All you have to do is print the baggage sticker at the kiosk.”
“What if the system goes down?” I shrug. “You never know.”
James shakes his head and stands off to the side with his one small carry on while I put my suitcase up on the scale.
It’s not until we get to the gate that we run into the first of my coworkers who are going on the trip. Since Clay’s office made all the arrangements, everyone is on the same flight out. Even though I anticipated this, I still feel unprepared for this moment. Stopping a couple of gates away, I take a deep breath and try to bolster my confidence. We’ve gotten this far, but the ruse starts now. I have no idea if we’re going to be able to pull this off. Will anyone actually believe that James and I are a couple? It feels like such an unlikely pairing.
“Are you ready for this?” I ask James, glancing over at him.
He looks up from his phone and slings an arm around my shoulders, grinning down at me.
“Oh, I’m ready, babe,” he says.
It takes two more very deep breaths before I can respond.
“Can you please stop with the babe stuff?” I ask politely, keeping my voice down.
James gives my shoulder a squeeze, enjoying the hell out of himself.
“Anything you say, pumpkin.”
As much as I want to shrug his hand off of my shoulder, I know that from now until the end of the trip, any time we’re in public we need to act the part. I give him a nod and start to head towards the gate, ready to get the introductions over with.
“Okay, let’s do this,” I sigh.
The first people we come across are a group of four marketing interns, their eyes buried in their phones, dressed in baggy sweats and furry slippers. They look like they just rolled out of bed in their college dorms and even though the generational divide between us is glaring, I feel comforted knowing that none of them care about me or who I’m dating.
“Hey ladies,” I say casually. They all glance up, but no one replies. “Ready for the retreat?”
“Is there WIFI at the ranch?” one woman asks.
“Yeah, it was listed in the amenities,” I assure her. “Um, this is my boyfriend, James.”
“Our boyfriends are at the bar,” a second woman says, doing a double take at James and raising her eyebrows in surprise before turning her attention back to her phone.
I steer James away from the interns to a group sitting near the windows.
“Hallie!” Reina from IT waves, her eyes immediately looking James up and down. “I heard you were bringing a guest this year. I’m glad to see the rumors are true.”
“This is my boyfriend, James,” I say, introducing him to the group.
“Nice to meet you all,” James replies. “I promise to learn your names soon.”
“You can call me whatever you want,” Kelly Dempsey replies, right in front of her husband, who doesn’t look up from his book.
“I’m Matt Robinson,” our community relations manager says, stepping forward to shake James’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
The group quickly brings James into the fold, introducing themselves, asking about him and his work. I’m relieved that there aren’t a lot of questions about our relationship yet; mostly it seems like everyone is just intrigued by James as a person. It gives me a moment to stand back and watch as he charms the entire group, noticing how he has a way about him that draws people closer. He’s captivating and smart, even funny when his jokes aren’t aimed at me. I can easily picture him schmoozing at corporate parties instead of making tables alone in the back room of a shop. I had been worried that we wouldn’t be able to pull this off, but maybe it will work after all.
It’s not until the flight is boarding that my head shoots up at the sound of Chase’s loud, obnoxious laugh. I spot him coming from the bar, accompanied by four college-aged guys, likely the interns’ boyfriends. None of the young guys are paying any attention to Chase, but that doesn’t stop him from continuing his story, laughing at his own jokes. I glance around the gate until I spot Chase’s wife, Annette, sitting off to the side flipping through a magazine. She stands up when Chase approaches, tucking the magazine in her purse as they get in line to board.
“Here comes trouble,” I whisper under my breath to James.
“I’ve got this,” he says, sounding reassuringly confident.
“Look who it is,” Chase says with a grin when he sees me and James, already lined up and ready to board.
Chase and Annette jump in line with us, cutting off about thirty people who have already been waiting.
“Great to see you again,” Chase says to James, holding out his hand. “So glad you could make it.”
After shaking Chase’s hand, James puts his arm around me, holding me close.
“I wouldn’t have missed it,” he says. “This will be fun.”
James smiles at me and then turns his charms on Annette.
“You must be Chase’s lovely wife,” he says pleasantly. “I’m James Cole, Hallie’s boyfriend.”
“Annette Andrews,” Annette introduces herself.
“We’ve got two kids at home,” Chase says, clearly making a point that he’s a real family man. “Olivia and Jackson.”
“Well, it’s nice the two of you will have some private time this week,” James replies. “I’m looking forward to catching a few special moments with Hallie. She’s usually so busy at work; it’s rare we get a chance to go away together.”
“I can relate,” Annette replies dryly.
“Well, work is important,” Chase says. “Once I get the promotion?—”
“I think you mean if, ” James interjects.
“Sure, sure,” Chase laughs as if James was telling a joke, “If. But my point is that work is going to be even busier, so this time with Annette is definitely important.”
“Well, perhaps you’ll get to spend more time with your family soon enough,” James says with a friendly smile. “I’m sure when Hallie is the Sales Director, she’ll promote a work-life balance among her subordinates.”
Chase’s confident grin falters, and for a moment he looks like he might snap back at James, but he quickly catches himself.
“I guess we’ll see, won’t we?” Chase says, his tone not matching his forced smile.
“I guess so,” James shrugs, taking my hand as the line starts to move.
“Thank you,” I whisper, leaning in over his shoulder as I follow behind him onto the plane.
He gives my hand a squeeze, glancing back at me with a wink.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got you,” he says. “By the time this trip is over, that promotion will be yours.”
Everyone seems a little groggy from the early morning flight as we shuffle through the airport in Wyoming, following the signs for ground transportation. Leading the pack is Chase, who pushed his way through the crowd to ensure he was on the first luxury bus to the ranch. I’m not sure leaving everyone else in your dust is the sign of a great leader, but I keep my mouth shut. I can’t worry about Chase this week; I’ve got enough on my plate with my fake relationship as it is. Besides, with Chase as the first person on the first bus, I can hang back and get on the next one so I don’t have to hear his voice for a while.
“So far so good,” James says softly as we take our seats on the bus.
I nod back at him, agreeing that it hasn’t been too bad, though we’re not even at the dude ranch yet. I spent most of the flight with my eyes closed, listening to a podcast so I wouldn’t have to talk to James. We ran into a few more coworkers at baggage claim and James helped an older couple—Stan from accounting and his wife Liz—get their suitcases off the conveyor belt.
“Only seven more days to go,” I sigh.
For half an hour, we drive up, down, and along the mountain line, the entire bus gawking at the scenery outside the window. The mountain tops are already snow-capped and the evergreens tower over the skyline, like natural skyscrapers. Seemingly out of nowhere, the entrance to the ranch eventually appears, nestled in a mountain plateau and surrounded by a canvas painted in green, blue, and white. The sky is so clear and bright that I have to shield my eyes as I get off the bus.
Cradled between the mountains, the ranch is a sprawling collection of wood buildings—barns and stables, fenced off pastures, clusters of smaller cabins, and the main lodge, a modern chalet with huge windows and a massive wrap-around deck.
“Your company rented out this entire property for the week?” James asks in awe.
“Yup,” I nod back at him. “Business was good this year.”
Chase is already at the registration desk as we make our way into the lodge, condescendingly telling the bellman to be careful with his luggage.
“Do you have any idea how expensive that suitcase is?” he hisses. “That one piece costs more than you make in a week.”
I cringe, hating that Chase is making the whole company look bad. Part of me wishes one or all of the Winter brothers were around to witness his true colors coming out.
“Don’t worry, sir,” the bellman nods. “Your belongings are in good hands.”
“They better be,” Chase snorts. “Your tip depends on it.”
“I’m sorry,” I hear Annette quietly apologize to the clerk at the front desk. She glances over at me, knowing that everyone witnessed her husband’s outburst. “He’s just very tired.”
I offer Annette a sympathetic smile, but she is already hurrying off after Chase and their expensive suitcases.
“I’m with Winter Brother Vineyards too,” I say to the clerk as James and I step forward to the desk, “but that man’s attitude doesn’t represent all of us.”
“Quite alright,” the clerk replies. “I’ve dealt with plenty of tired guests before.”
A bellman comes to help with our bags, guiding us through the maze of hallways inside the lodge.
“There weren’t enough cabins for the whole company,” I explain to James as we take the elevator upstairs.
“This is fine,” he replies. “I doubt there’s a bad room in the place.”
“While guests find the cabins to be cozier and more romantic, the rooms in the lodge offer more of a modern luxury,” the bellman comments as the elevator doors open at our floor. “I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.”
“The lodge sounds great,” I reply, thinking the less romantic, the better.
James tips the bellman outside our room while I fumble with the key card.
“Chase really is an ass,” James comments after assuring the bellman we could take it from here. “I’m sorry you have to deal with him. I can see how you let him get under your skin.”
“It was a weak moment,” I sigh, knowing he’s referring to me lying about having a boyfriend. “And look where it got me.”
“I don’t know,” James replies. “From where I stand, you’re not in such a bad spot. It could be worse.”
I glance up as I finally get the door to unlock, warmed by James’s smile until I remind myself that it’s the same smile he uses on all the women he parades through the apartment courtyard every morning. He’s the same womanizer he’s always been, and I can’t let myself get drawn into his charm. I’m stuck pretending to be in love with him for a whole week—how much worse could it get?
I push the door open and step inside, but I immediately stop short.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding!” I exclaim.