Chapter 16
REVENGE IS HOT
Rhys
Margot’s still laughing when my radio squawks to life again. “O’Malley, how far out are you with Margie? This laundry room is a disaster.”
“On the gondola down,” I report.
“My sister would love you,” Margot says when I’ve clipped my radio back to my hip.
“Thought she already took one of your exes. You want to give me to her too?”
She cracks up again, and something cracks in my chest.
Something that I don’t want to crack. Something I’d prefer to keep hard and impenetrable around my heart.
I haven’t been able to laugh about anything related to my stepbrother stealing my bride, but here Margot is, weeks after her sister started dating her ex, light and happy about it.
I want that.
I crave that.
Maybe not the part where I’m happy for them, but the part where I can be happy for me.
And the part where I feel whole enough to enjoy being in a little gondola car on a lift with a woman who lights up every room she walks into and who’s kind to strangers.
She has secrets, but she keeps showing me sides of her that are so far from the cutthroat businesswoman heiress she’s rumored to be that I’m starting to reconsider my entire worldview.
“Apologies,” she says, eyes sparkling and smile wide. “I don’t mean to make light of the horror that is a sibling hooking up with an ex.”
I shrug like my entire world isn’t having an earthquake just below the surface of my skin. I can’t be around this woman and not want to kiss her. “If you’re fine with it…”
“At the risk of being that person who protests too much, I repeat—I’m happy for them.”
My face says a few things for me, and her joyful laughter rings through the gondola car.
I watch the trees move beneath us as we make the short trek down the mountainside, soaking in the sounds of happiness.
They’ve been in short supply for far longer than the past year.
I just hadn’t been paying enough attention to realize it was missing.
She eventually wipes her eyes and lets loose a deep, happy sigh. “You know, there are no winners if you let them make you quit living,” she says softly. “Grieving time is important, but don’t—don’t make yourself the loser in your own life.”
And there she goes, doing it again.
Slipping little bits of wisdom and perspective into my life when I least expect it but most need it.
I shift a glance at her.
She spreads her hands, palms up. “Not calling you a loser.”
“I know.”
“Someone had to tell me something similar a few years ago. It was helpful.”
“You needed to be told not to be the loser in your own life.”
Her spread hands go jazzy. “Surprise! All the money and power in the world can’t buffer you from childhood trauma, messy emotional stuff, and questioning everything you’ve ever known about the world.”
“Few years ago—before your sister stole your ex, then.”
“She didn’t—you know what? Fine. For simplicity’s sake, yes. Yes, before she stole my ex.”
I lift my brows at her, wondering if she’s going to tell me more, when the gondola screeches to a halt.
I stumble forward, still in motion when the car is not, and almost lose my balance against the front glass.
Margot sucks in a breath as she braces herself with the railing beside the door. “Are you for fucking real?” she mutters.
We’re maybe a hundred feet or so from the bottom platform, and the mountain is steep enough here that we’re dangling at least thirty feet off the ground.
I peer down at the base of the lift, and then swipe my hand over my mouth.
“What is it?” Her voice is smaller now.
“Can’t tell.”
She scoots back on the bench, putting her hands out when the gondola sways a bit, then tucks her knees up by her chin.
Her face has gone pale, and all of the amusement has left her eyes. “Think it’ll be long?”
“Shouldn’t be.” I call on my radio to ask what’s up with the gondola stopping, but don’t get an immediate answer beyond my boss saying they’ll look into it if it’s still not running in a few minutes.
It stops on occasion whenever anyone needs extra time getting in or out of one of the cars. This isn’t unusual.
Not yet anyway.
She blows out a slow breath.
“You good?” I ask her.
“Yes.”
“Liar.”
“Perception is reality.”
“So if you believe hard enough that you’re good, you’re good?”
“Yes.”
I peer down again.
No obvious movement on the platform, so it doesn’t seem to be stopped because of an issue with anyone getting on or off on this end.
Margot’s staring straight ahead, breathing slowly.
As if I wasn’t already fucked with thinking about her as a human being. A vulnerable human being whom I’m realizing might be lonely in her own way.
I move slowly across the short distance to sit beside her, the instinctive need to protect taking priority over the need to shield my own exposed heart. “Tight spaces or heights?”
“Being trapped without an exit plan.”
Relatable. “Ever go skiing?”
“Not for a few years.”
“Too cold, or you got stuck on a lift?”
“It didn’t come naturally to me, so I got frustrated and quit.”
“Ah.” I settle farther back on the bench. The gondola sways slightly.
She sucks in a shallow breath through her nose and keeps staring straight ahead. “I don’t usually give up when it’s hard.”
“Sure.”
“I don’t.”
“Can’t be a badass boss lady if you give up when it’s hard. Gotta know when to pick your battles against your own nature.”
“So it wasn’t a lift incident.”
Her knee brushes my arm as she shifts, then she temporarily freezes as the car sways a bit.
But she still draws a deep breath and answers me.
“No. Not a lift. I got stuck on a stalled subway train during a power outage once. Close to two hours in a dark space with dozens of strangers squished all around me. I was trying to understand how our normal guests lived and what kind of experiences they had when they stayed at our hotel.”
I jerk a glance at her. “That’s what you’re doing here too.”
Her lips twist in a wry smile. “Busted.”
“You do stuff like this often? Get a different view of how your hotels run?”
“As often as I can, but not as much as I used to. Especially after the subway incident. My security thought taking the train was overkill for the experience, but they went along with it, and then the train stopped, and…yeah. They were right. I didn’t need that to understand more about what someone wanted in our hotels. ”
“You get recognized?”
“No, it was just—just highly uncomfortable. Being so far from control. Unable to fix it in a high-risk situation.”
“You think you’re in control pretending to be a housekeeper?”
“I can walk out of here anytime I want.” She grimaces as her eyes flit about the enclosed car. “Except for right now.”
Distractions tend to help in these situations, so I change the subject instead of hugging her like I want to. “So how do you know Jonas Rutherford?”
She blows out a slow breath and keeps staring straight ahead while she answers me. “We are—were both on the board of a nonprofit that provides funding to bring humanities studies to low-income schools. Art supplies, musical instruments, instructors, things like that.”
“See him often then?”
She shakes her head. “Maybe a half dozen times in the few years before he moved here. I see his brother more now.”
“You seemed surprised to come face-to-face with him the other day.”
“He was supposed to be out of town for a family thing. When Lucky said he could get me a job here, I had Cyril look into it. I might have timed things differently if I’d known our intel was wrong.
Maybe. Other things lined up to make this excellent timing.
Things I couldn’t plan but could very easily roll with. ”
Her breathing is staying relatively steady despite her face remaining pale. Good sign.
Not that I’d expect someone like Margot to freak out over a small inconvenience.
Like she said, she can will herself into believing whatever she wants. And she has to know we won’t be here long.
I shift beside her, leaning back to plant my hand on the bench behind her, the closest I’ll let myself come to touching her.
Fuck me, she smells good. Like lemon and pine trees with that little hint of cinnamon and coffee lingering beneath it.
I clear my throat. “Speaking of Lucky and family, how’d you find out about the triplets?”
She slides me a look, but it’s not as suspicious as it probably should be.
“I assume people in your zip code aren’t doing DNA tests on ancestry and matching sites regularly,” I add. “Prefer to keep the skeletons in the closet, right?”
“You think you’re getting confessions out of me since we’re stuck in the air?”
“I think family’s complicated. The one person I told about my own family troubles went and started fucking the family member I complained about most, so whatever your reason for wanting to find more family, not my place to judge. Just curious.”
She studies me, color coming back into her cheeks. “This conversation is about seven left turns and a boat ride away from the don’t you fucking dare hurt my friend that we started at a few days ago.”
“I watch you.”
Her eyes stay focused on mine in a way that makes my heart speed up and my fingers tingle in anticipation.
We’re alone.
No one on the cars ahead of or behind us.
I could kiss her.
I could kiss her again right now.
“I’ve noticed,” she says softly.
Focus, dumbass. “You look like you want to fit in. To my very simple brain, that means either you have a natural talent for acting, or that you don’t feel like you belong in the family you have now, no matter how much you say you love your sister.
So maybe you do still have an extra secret agenda or two, but life’s complicated. ”
She’s completely lost track of the fact that we’re trapped in a gondola thirty feet off the ground, or if she hasn’t, she’s clearly not uncomfortable with it anymore.
Not with the intensity of the attention she’s aiming at me. “Life is complicated,” she agrees.
“Wish it wasn’t.”
“Will starting your own security firm really be enough for you?”