Ring Me Real, Daddy

1. Maren

MAREN

The Ashford family wants their suite changed for the third time in two days, and Mrs. Ashford is tapping her acrylic nail against my desk like she's trying to drill through the marble.

"I completely understand, ma'am." I slide a fresh keycard across the counter, my smile pulled tight enough to ache in my cheeks.

"I've moved you to the Coral Suite on the seventh floor.

Champagne's already chilling, and I had housekeeping put extra of those cucumber waters you mentioned in the mini fridge. "

"The lavender ones."

"The lavender ones. Yes, ma'am."

She pockets the keycard without thanks, and her husband mumbles something about the bellhop being slow as they walk away.

My phone buzzes against my thigh through the pocket of my linen uniform skirt.

I don't have to look to know who it is. The buzz comes in threes when it's my mother.

Like she's training me with an electric collar.

I look anyway.

Owen made partner. Just thought you should know.

Sienna hit 200K followers this morning. Are you even doing anything with that account I set up for you?

Don't be late tonight. We're at the chef's table. Wear something that isn't a uniform for once.

I lock the screen. Then I unlock it. Then I lock it again, because if I read it a fourth time I'll cry, and I'm not allowed to cry behind the concierge desk.

There's a small placard near my elbow that says We're Here to Make Your Stay Unforgettable, and my coworker Tomas drew a little cartoon sun on it last summer because, in his words, I am one.

The marker's faded now. I keep meaning to redraw it.

"Maren, honey, you look murderous." Livian leans her hip against the counter, clipboard clutched to her chest, curls escaping the loose knot at her nape. Her eyeliner is sharper than my mother's tongue, which is saying something. "Who do I have to fight?"

"My mother, my siblings, the Ashfords, the bride in 308 who wants live butterflies released indoors, and possibly God."

"Tall order. I can do three of those before lunch."

"I love you."

"I know." She squeezes my wrist. "Family dinner tonight?"

"Chef's table."

"Lord, have mercy."

"Pray for me, Li."

"I'll light a candle. Maybe two."

She drifts off toward the ballroom, calling something over her shoulder about a vendor who's late with the orchids, and I'm left with the slow, cold drip of dread in my stomach that's been building since I woke up at five.

By seven I've changed twice in the staff bathroom.

The first dress made me look like I was trying.

The second made me look like I wasn't trying enough.

I land somewhere in between — pale yellow, knee-length, the kind of soft cotton that wrinkles if you breathe wrong — and I twist my hair up because Delilah hates when it's down at the table.

The chef's table sits in a glass alcove off the main restaurant, candlelight throwing soft gold across the linen. My family is already seated. Of course they are. I'm two minutes early and somehow late.

"Ren." My father, Graham, half-stands and kisses the top of my head. He smells like the same cologne he's worn since I was eight. "You look tired."

"Hi, Dad."

"Sit, sit." Delilah gestures with her wine glass, eyes already cataloging the dress, the shoes, the tiny chip in my pedicure I tried to hide with a topcoat this morning. "We ordered for you. I told them no bread."

"I like bread."

"You don't need bread, darling."

Sienna snorts into her sparkling water without looking up from her phone. Her nails are done in a chrome that catches the candlelight every time she scrolls. Owen is across from her, white shirt crisp, tie still on at this hour, because Owen sleeps in a tie probably.

"How's the front desk treating you, Maren?" he asks, and it's not unkind, exactly. It's just the way he asks about a hobby he doesn't understand. Like I'm crocheting.

"I'm a concierge, Owen."

"Sure."

"It's actually been a really good year. We had record?—"

"Sienna's column got picked up by Coastal Monthly," Delilah cuts in. "Did I tell you that, Graham? Coastal Monthly, with that gorgeous photo of her on the cliffs."

"You told me," Graham says.

"It's wonderful exposure."

"I'm thrilled for her."

I reach for my water. Sienna finally looks up. "Are you seeing anyone, Mar? Or still doing the whole solo concierge thing."

"It's not a thing, it's a job?—"

"That's what I mean. Like, the lifestyle. The whole lifestyle."

"I don't have a lifestyle."

"That's also what I mean."

Delilah laughs, the brittle one she uses at charity galas. "Maren, sweetheart, no one's attacking you. We just worry. You're twenty-six. Owen had his apartment by twenty-six. Sienna's already building her brand. We just want to know there's a plan."

"There's a plan."

"What plan?"

"I—"

"Because we love you, but we cannot keep watching you fold towels at this place forever."

"I don't fold towels, Mom."

"You know what I mean."

I do know what she means. That's the problem.

The waiter sets a plate of something delicate and microgreen-y in front of me, and I can't see it because my vision is doing that hot, swimmy thing it does right before I say something I'll regret.

"Actually." It comes out louder than I want. "I'm engaged."

The candle flickers. Sienna's fork stops mid-air.

"You're what," Delilah says.

"Engaged."

"To whom."

"To—"

And here's where the universe decides to humiliate me with cinematic precision, because past my mother's perfectly highlighted shoulder, through the glass wall of the alcove, I see him.

Crossing the lobby with his head bent toward a man in a gray suit.

Tall. Charcoal jacket. The walk of someone who has never, in his life, waited in a line.

Cassian Rourke.

My boss. The man who owns the building I'm standing in, the chair I'm sitting in, the chef's table itself.

"To Cassian," I hear myself say. "Cassian Rourke."

The silence at the table is so complete I can hear the ice crack in Sienna's glass.

"The resort Cassian Rourke?" Delilah breathes.

"Mm-hm."

Owen sets down his fork with a quiet, lawyerly click. Sienna's mouth has fallen open in a way I would frame if I had a camera. My father blinks at me twice, slow, like a man recalibrating.

"Maren." Delilah reaches across the table and grips my wrist, and her smile — God, her smile — has fully rearranged itself. Soft. Warm. Proud. I don't recognize her. "Sweetheart. Why didn't you say something."

"It's — it's new?—"

"How new?"

"A few weeks. A month. It's still?—"

"And you weren't going to tell us?"

"I'm telling you now."

"At dinner. At a restaurant." She presses a hand to her chest like I've personally wounded her, but she's still smiling, which is the most disorienting thing I've ever witnessed. "Graham, are you hearing this? Our daughter is engaged to Cassian Rourke."

"I heard her, Del."

"Sienna, put the phone down."

"I am, I am, oh my God, Mar—" Sienna leans forward, and the chrome nails scrabble for my hand across the table. "Why aren't you wearing a ring? Where's the ring? I need to see the ring."

"It's being resized."

The lie comes out so smooth I scare myself.

"Resized." Delilah nods like this is the most reasonable thing she's ever heard. "Of course. Of course it is. He'd want it perfect."

"He would."

Owen's still watching me. He hasn't moved. "How'd you meet?"

"I work for him, Owen."

"Right. But how'd you meet him? He's not exactly walking in the lobby."

"He—" I reach for the bread. Delilah doesn't stop me. That alone tells me how upside-down the world has gone. "He came down once when there was an issue with a guest. We talked. It went from there."

"Mm."

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing. Just mm."

"Owen, leave her alone." Delilah's hand tightens on mine. The candlelight catches in her eyes and she looks, for one bewildering second, almost wet around the edges. "Maren. Darling. We're at his villa next week. The whole family. The whole week."

"I know, Mom, I?—"

"He'll be there, won't he?"

"I—"

"Of course he'll be there, it's his villa." She turns to my father, gripping his forearm now too, two-handed, anchoring herself between us. "Graham. We'll have the whole week with him. The whole week to get to know our son-in-law."

"Mom, slow down?—"

"I'm not slowing down, sweetheart, I've waited years for this."

"It might not even?—"

"You'll set it up. Dinner the first night. A proper one, not — not this." She waves a hand at the chef's table like it's a hot dog cart. "Something at the villa. He hosts, doesn't he? Of course he hosts."

"Mom, he's busy, he might?—"

"He is not too busy to meet his fiancée's family, Maren. Don't be ridiculous."

The word fiancée scrapes down my spine like a bad fingernail. Sienna's already typing on her phone, and I lunge for it across the table.

"What are you doing?"

"Telling Pia."

"Don't tell Pia, Sienna, I swear to God?—"

"Relax, I'm being vague."

"There is no version of this where you are vague."

Delilah is still talking. Delilah hasn't stopped talking. "I'll need to get a dress, of course. Graham, we'll need to do the gift, what do you give a man who owns a coastal resort, oh my God?—"

"Mom."

"—and the photographs, sweetheart, please tell me you have photographs?—"

"Mom."

She finally looks at me. Really looks. And under the joy and the heat and the manic gleam there's something I haven't seen on her face since I was small enough to fit on her hip. Something like finally.

"You'll set it up," she says. Not a question. "First night. Dinner. The whole family. Promise me."

I look at my untouched plate. My sister's phone, already lit with Pia's reply. My brother, who has not stopped studying me. At my father, who is, for once, not the quiet one — who is looking at me with something almost like worry.

"Promise me, Maren."

"I promise," I say.

The candle flickers. Somewhere across the lobby, on the other side of the glass, Cassian Rourke is signing something on a clipboard and has no idea his life just got a fiancée.

I reach for the bread. My hand is shaking.