Chapter 6 #2
So yeah, revenge is in the back of my mind.
As is my memory of her knowing exactly what to do and not hesitating during a medical emergency for a member of the staff at that dinner that first night I noticed her, and then how quickly she leaped into action to help the kid at the coffee shop who’d dropped his tray last weekend.
I spent far more time in the Marines than I did doing private security for the company my mom built that my stepfather now runs, but the time I spent in private security was working for celebrities and CEOs who didn’t jump in with assistance while wearing a cocktail dress.
“If I do something to offend you—something else, I mean, besides accidentally giving you a makeover—please just tell me,” she says. “I can handle it, and I dislike when people don’t communicate. Especially people who live together. Even accidentally and unwantedly.”
I make a noncommittal noise.
“Such a guy,” she mutters.
I shift my gaze her way as she stops the cart and locks the wheels.
It’s honestly astonishing how good she is at this housekeeping thing. Those little details, like locking the cart wheels—I’d expect them to trip her up.
Though I still want more details on her incident with a spray bottle.
“The occupant in this room is a seventy-year-old woman who came here because she wanted to write her first novel, and I’ll break the rules for her to put her towels into her bathroom because the thinner oxygen at this elevation has been giving her a little trouble,” Margot-Margie tells me.
“If you could stay right here as a witness that I’m not behaving inappropriately, I’d be grateful. ”
“Sure.”
She smiles at me. “Thank you.”
It’s a pity she’s actually a hotel chain heiress that I hear makes sport of making grown men cry in board meetings.
As Margie Johnson, she’s pretty likable.
As a person.
Not as a woman.
I stifle a growl.
Fine.
She’s honestly fucking gorgeous. She came home wearing jeans late last night, and I couldn’t stop staring at her ass.
Then she offered me half of the cinnamon-sugar soft pretzel she picked up at a store downtown.
Said she saved it for me because it was so good that she wanted to share it with someone else who might enjoy it.
Like I’m not leftovers.
Or a problem.
But someone she actively thought about including.
She’s putting a human face on her reputation, and it’s made her undeniably likable.
Which I’m actively trying to ignore.
After what happened with the last woman in my life, I’m fucking over them and have entered into a committed relationship with my fist instead.
No matter how much the part of me that craves a place to belong is lapping up every bit of her thoughtfulness this week.
She knocks on the cabin door, calls, “Housekeeping. I have your towels, Mrs. Pinsley,” and waits.
And waits.
And waits.
And waits some more.
“You can knock again,” I tell her as I start to wonder if I need to be prepared for a medical emergency here too.
But at that moment, the door cracks open, and a weathered old face peeks out.
“Hello, dear,” the grandmotherly woman says. She’s roughly the same height as Margie-Margot, a little plump, a little wrinkly, and a lot smiley in her purple T-shirt and baggy sweatpants. “You brought company.”
“Afternoon, Mrs. Pinsley. I have your towels. Would you like me to bring them inside?”
“Oh, yes, please. That’s so sweet of you.”
“My pleasure.” Margie-Margot steps into the room, sliding a doorstop beneath the door to keep it from shutting her inside without a witness.
I know the rules here are for the protection of the staff more than for the protection of the guests, and I’d assess Mrs. Pinsley as low threat, but rules are rules, and while Margie-Margot’s breaking them, she’s doing it smartly.
And kindly.
“How’s the novel coming?” Margot-Margie asks Mrs. Pinsley while she disappears deeper into the chalet.
“Good. I wrote three hundred words yesterday.”
“That’s amazing! Good for you.”
“But then I got to a scene where I needed a strong man to arrive, and I wasn’t sure what he looked like, so I got stuck.”
“That’s the story of my dating life.”
Mrs. Pinsley giggles. “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen a handsome man.”
“I’m ridiculously picky.”
“What about him?” The older woman points at me as Margot-Margie comes back into view inside the cabin with an armload of used towels that make me wonder how many showers this old lady takes in a day. “It takes a confident man to wear my favorite color in his beard.”
Margot-Margie smiles in my general direction. “He doesn’t talk enough for me to know if he’s handsome or not.”
“Ooooh, that’s so smart to not decide if he’s handsome until you’ve heard him talk.
My Peter was a talker. A talker. You couldn’t get him to shut up, and he had opinions on everything from baseball to tampons.
As if the man ever used a tampon in his life.
But oh, he had opinions. And no idea how much he talked.
He used to talk nonstop about how much I talked, and if that doesn’t say it all, I don’t know what does. ”
“They never really know how much they talk,” Margot murmurs.
“But you found one who doesn’t talk enough?”
“He’s not mine. The retreat center loaned him to me for the day.”
“Because of the handsy guy in chalet three?”
I straighten. Chalet three—that was the guy who was throwing a fit about Margie not putting his towels in his room. “Is one of the other guests being inappropriate toward you, ma’am?”
Both of the women look at me, then at each other.
“Well, if he’s saving his words for sentences like that, you might want to look into the loan-to-own program,” Mrs. Pinsley says.
Margie-Margot smiles at her. “You should use that phrase in your book. Did one of the other guests make you uncomfortable?”
“No, no, all’s fine. I just see things, you know? It’s easy to notice things when no one notices you.”
My heart tugs.
My mom used to say the same thing, first about how not being noticed was an asset when it came to private security, but later about how my stepfather took her for granted.
I didn’t realize her meaning had shifted until she was gone.
That he didn’t really notice her.
That he didn’t pay attention.
That he just wanted to take over the business she started with her father while getting a mother for his two sons, and she did a kick-ass job.
The younger of my two stepbrothers graduated high school a few months after she passed.
It sometimes feels like they got her longer than I did, even if I had her first. I was seven when she married Xavier, so a lot of those years are years I don’t have clear memories of her.
“If you do see anything, or if anyone makes you uncomfortable, please tell me,” Margot-Margie says. “Or you can tell Rhys. As you can see, he’s a vault. But he’s also obligated to keep things safe here. That’s what he’s paid for.”
“There’s a lot of security here,” Mrs. Pinsley says, dropping her voice. “Are they doing mobster stuff? Is that why?”
There’s not a lot of security here.
Just the right amount. Possibly a man or two more than necessary, in fact.
For this week.
Next week’s another story.
I watch Margie-Margot closer as she answers because I suspect she knows it too.
“No, ma’am,” she says. “Apparently this much security is normal at luxury resorts and retreat centers.”
“Do celebrities come here?”
“I have no idea, ma’am. I just started.”
“I’ll keep watching even more then. Just in case.”
“Don’t neglect your book though. And you should take advantage of the spa while you’re here too. Anything else I can get for you today, Mrs. Pinsley? Coffee or tea supplies? Would you like your trash taken out?”
“No, no, dear. I don’t need to hold you up.”
“If you need anything, you know the number for housekeeping.”
Margot-Margie steps back off the porch and joins me again at her cart, where she dumps the dirty towels into a bin. “Either someone’s bothering her or she saw someone bothering someone else,” she murmurs.
“Picked up on that.”
She pinches her lips together and doesn’t say anything else as she unlocks her cart wheels and continues down the sidewalk.
Doesn’t ask me to look into what’s happening with Mrs. Pinsley.
Doesn’t ask me not to either.
Probably because she’s been at this hotel-retreat-hospitality thing her entire life. She knows you can’t fix a problem if you don’t know exactly what it is, and a vague I see things isn’t concrete enough.
But she’d have to out herself for us to have that conversation.
“Last stop of the day?” I ask her two chalets later after she’s dropped off fresh towels for one more guest, this time without incident or chatting.
“Just vacuuming the dining room before dinner, and then I’m off.”
She says it like she’s looking forward to vacuuming.
So. Fucking. Weird.
“Huh,” I say for lack of any other appropriate statement.
She squints up at me. “Are you sure I haven’t offended you in some way?”
I squint back at her.
I’m not ready to let her know I know who she is yet.
Drop hints and see if she’ll squirm?
Yes.
Outright tell her?
No.
So I can have some fun.
And fun’s been distinctly lacking lately. Partially my own fault, partially not.
“I don’t like women,” I tell her.
Her brows lift. “Did women do something to you?”
“My fiancée left me a week before our wedding to run away with my stepbrother.”
She gasps.
But she doesn’t just gasp.
Her eyes almost fall out of their sockets, her mouth gapes so far open that I could probably see her tonsils if I looked at the right angle, and she hunches in on herself as if I’ve punched her.
Finally—finally—she’s cracked.
Not just a little. Not in a way that makes me question if I’m imagining things.
But fully, completely cracked.
“Oh my god,” she whispers.
I shrug one shoulder. “So I don’t like women.”
“I—” She stops herself, staring at me like she’s debating what to say next.
I know what I’d say if I were her because her personal life has been in some corners of the news lately.
“It’s not you,” I tell her, even though it is, in fact, partially her. She’s lying to a guy who did one of the coolest things anyone’s ever done for me, and I do take that personally.
“No, I know. It’s just—I have—had—a friend who just hooked up with my ex, so this is…weird. That we both…have that.”
Her friend is her sister. And the news is reporting that Margie—Margot is taking a sabbatical for personal reasons, which is being covered by gossip sites as Margot Merriweather-Brown is having a breakdown over her sister and ex-fiancé betraying her.
A few gossip sites.
Not many.
Liv Daniels apparently had a bigger scandal this week, and she’s actual Hollywood royalty, so no one really cares much about a hotel chain heiress who’s had relatively little reason to ever have press coverage.
They’re more excited about her wild-child sister—Daphne—who went on some road trip with Oliver—the ex, who just fucked over his own family after saving the family’s convenience store corporation—and how the two of them apparently got arrested together after giving away millions in the Midwest.
The details were more than I cared to know.
“I’m not saying we have to be besties over it,” Margie-Margot says, recovering her composure. “But you’re…not alone.”
I grunt.
She sucks in a breath through her nose. “Right. Sure. You don’t want to talk about it. I get that. I’m having dinner with the triplets at some secret place tonight, so I won’t be home until late.”
I grunt again and nod.
I’m invited tonight too, which I don’t tell her.
“Just didn’t want you to be startled if you hear the door late.”
Right. So I don’t booby-trap the house back on her.
It’d serve her right.
But probably also get me a personal visit from the security guy that I spot again lingering in the rock garden down the path from the chalets.
Margot-Margie notices him too.
I almost miss the subtle nod she gives him, so subtle that I could be imagining it.
“I’m sorry they did that to you,” she says. “My situation wasn’t quite the same, but I still know how much it hurts to be dumped and betrayed.”
I study her.
That feels like possibly the most honest thing she’s said to me.
I look back at her security guy, planning to ask if she knows which cabin he’s staying in just to watch her squirm, since I don’t like feeling this connection with her, but he’s disappeared.
My radio squawks to life. “O’Malley, Fornier, and Gustav, front desk please.”
I nod to Margie-Margot, answer the radio call, and turn down the path leading to the main lodge.
“See you tomorrow,” she calls after me. “And I’m not calling it a secret place because I want to keep it a secret from you specifically. I honestly don’t know what it is. Lucky said they might have to blindfold me to take me there.”
I lift a hand in acknowledgment and keep going.
Soon—very soon—I’m going to figure out her goal here.
And then I’ll decide what comes next.