Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
The lobby was eerily quiet after Noah dropped me off, the eyes of the mounted elk heads following me as I made my way through.
The other guests were still out at the festival or tucked away in their rooms. After saying goodbye to Brie, the walk back to his Jeep had stretched longer than it had earlier, the comfortable silence replaced by something heavy and awkward.
The elevator hummed softly as it carried me to the penthouse floor, giving me exactly thirty-two seconds to contemplate the near-miss of whatever had almost happened with Noah on that dance floor.
My suite welcomed me with its perfectly curated luxury; the fireplace automatically flickered to life as I entered. It all felt hollow somehow, the Egyptian cotton sheets, the heated marble floors, the yarrow-infused night cream waiting on my bedside table.
I wrapped my arms around myself, already missing the warmth of Noah’s embrace, wondering how we’d gone from almost kissing to …
I kicked off my shoes and flopped face-first onto the bed.
My phone vibrated again. With a groan, I rolled over and pulled it out. Now seven missed calls from Marcus. Four from Parker. And one text from Victoria.
Victoria Sterling:
CALL ME! NOW!
I pulled a pillow over my head. Whatever crisis they were having could wait until morning. My brain was too full of huckleberry muffins and fiddle music and the ghost sensation of Noah’s hands on my waist.
The phone rang again, puncturing through the pillow barrier.
It was Victoria. Again. She wasn’t the kind of person who gave up.
With a resigned sigh, I reached for my phone. “Hello?”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Victoria’s voice sliced through the receiver, sharp as a stiletto. “I hired you to promote luxury travel, not turn into some goddamn wildlife rescuer. Since when are you Jane Goodall with an Instagram account?”
I sat up, confusion replacing exhaustion. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Samantha. The bird video. It’s everywhere.”
“Bird video?” I repeated, my brain struggling to connect the dots. “You mean the osprey rescue?”
“Yes, the osprey rescue.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “Very heroic. Very touching. Very much the opposite of what I’m paying you to do.”
I swung my legs over the side of the bed, fully alert now.
“How do you even know about that? It just happened this afternoon.” I thought back to earlier that day, the entire episode replaying in my brain.
“And I never filmed anything. I didn’t even pull out my phone.
Once.” It was true. The entire time I’d been so focused on saving the osprey, it had never even occurred to me to pull out my phone.
“Some tourist captured the whole thing and posted it online. Tagged Noah and the Adventure Center. Then someone recognized you and tagged you too.”
Another text message from Parker popped onto my screen. It was a link to the video.
Parker:
Over two million views in three hours!!!!
It’s gone completely viral!!!!
Victoria’s not going to be happy.
No shit, I thought to myself.
I scrambled for my laptop, pulling up Instagram while keeping the phone pressed to my ear. Sure enough, there it was, filling my notifications feed. Tags, comments, shares. Hundreds of them. No, thousands.
The video was surprisingly well-shot for an amateur, capturing the entire rescue from the moment Noah entered the lake.
The camera followed me as I climbed the tree, focused on my face as I carefully navigated the branches.
It caught my momentary fall, Noah’s panicked reaction, then the successful rescue as Noah cradled the injured osprey.
The final shot showed us walking away together, the bird safely wrapped in a towel against Noah’s bare chest.
Another person had shared it and added a soundtrack, a rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” The whole thing played like a scene from a movie.
“It’s actually really good,” I murmured, forgetting Victoria was still on the line.
“Good?” Her voice rose an octave. “GOOD? Have you read the comments? People are using this to attack LuxeLife directly.”
I scrolled down to the comment section, and my stomach dropped. Not because of the criticism, but because of how right it was.
@WildernessDefender: “Maybe if luxury resorts stopped destroying natural habitats, wildlife wouldn’t need rescuing in the first place. #SaveAsterPark”
@MountainMama42: “Big corporations like LuxeLife are why these birds are endangered. Stop building on protected land! #NoMoreResorts”
@ColoradoNative: “This is what happens when you prioritize profit over planet.”
“Oh,” I said, eloquence eluding me as I realized the uncomfortable truth.
Usually, I was the creator, curating the content, spinning illusions that made the aspirational seem real.
This time I was the content itself. Real content.
Content that exposed exactly the kind of corporate destruction I’d been hired to spin.
“Oh? That’s all you have to say?” Victoria’s voice had gone dangerously quiet. “Let me be clear, Samantha. You were hired to promote our resort, not make us look like the bad guy. FIX. THIS. NOW.”
“But how am I supposed to fix this?”
“That’s literally your job!” Victoria snapped. “You’re the influencer. Influence! Post about how LuxeLife practices eco-conscious luxury.”
“Eco-conscious luxury?”
“How we’re actually helping the environment.”
“You literally have the severed heads of innocent animals on your wall,” I said after putting the phone on mute.
“I don’t care what you say, just change the narrative,” barked Victoria.
I stared at the video, watching myself stretch toward the fishing line, determination etched on my face. For once in my social media career, I’d done something that actually mattered. Something real.
“These comments aren’t entirely wrong, you know,” I said quietly.
“Excuse me?”
“That fishing line didn’t appear by magic. It was left there by people. Tourists, probably. Just like the ones who stay at your resort.”
There was a long, dangerous silence on the other end of the line.
“Let me remind you of something, Samantha.” Victoria’s voice had dropped to a glacial whisper.
“Your contract has strict performance metrics. Metrics I expect you to meet. I hired you to produce content that portrays LuxeLife as a facilitator of extraordinary experiences, not play grab-ass with some scruffy, small-town mountain man and his pet wolf.”
“His name is Noah. And Yeti’s a dog, not a wolf.”
Victoria’s voice was softer when she spoke again, but infinitely more deadly. “I can tell that you care about him, you know. It’s obvious when you watch the video. The way you looked at him. The way he looked at you.”
“Noah and I are simply business associates,” I reassured her. “The only reason we’re even working together is because it was your idea to make authentic Colorado adventure content.”
“Mmm-hmm. If you say so, Samantha. But just in case saving your own ass isn’t enough motivation, let me be clear. If you fail to deliver, Noah’s little Adventure Center goes bye-bye forever.”
“Is that a threat?”
“A threat? No, Samantha. It’s not a threat. It’s a promise.”
The osprey’s dark eyes flashed in my memory, followed by the image of Noah’s face when he’d talked about his parents building the center from nothing.
“I expect you to get back on message starting tomorrow. No more wildlife rescues, no more local festival coverage, unless it somehow involves booking a deluxe spa package at my resort. I want authentic local content, but I want luxurious authentic.”
“Luxurious authentic?” Was that even a thing?
“Aspirational authentic,” said Victoria. “Expensive authentic.”
“Yes, Ms. Sterling.”
“You’ll send Marcus all drafts of your posts before they go live going forward.”
“But …”
“No more surprises.” The line went dead before I could respond.
I tossed my phone aside and stared at the paused video of the osprey rescue on my laptop, the freeze-frame capturing the exact moment Noah and I locked eyes after the osprey was safe.
“Grab-ass?” I watched the video again. Clearly, no asses were being grabbed. Where did Victoria even come up with that nonsense? But there was something in the look in both of our eyes. Relief. Accomplishment. A connection that no filter or caption could ever reproduce.
My laptop pinged with another notification. Parker was calling.
With a sigh, I accepted. His face appeared on the screen, hair sticking up like he’d been pulling at it for days.
“Finally!” He looked both frantic and exhilarated. “Have you seen what’s happening? The osprey video is blowing up! It’s getting picked up everywhere. News outlets, conservation groups, even National Geographic just shared it!”
“Victoria’s furious,” I said, cutting his enthusiasm off at the knees.
“She is?” Parker scrunched up his face. “But Sam, this is huge. The numbers are off the charts. And people are feeling things. Like genuine things. Like you’re actually making a difference kinds of things. Isn’t that pretty amazing?”
I glanced back at the video. “Yeah. It is. It’s just too bad the person paying my bills doesn’t think so.”
“So what’s the plan then?” asked Parker. “How are we spinning this?”
I flopped back on the bed, my mind spinning instead.
“Victoria wants me to bury this, to return to posting filtered photos of infinity pools and champagne flutes against mountain backdrops.”
The safe, sterile version of Colorado that would drive people to book rooms at LuxeLife.
But there was another Colorado. The one with huckleberry muffins and fiddle music and people who rescued ospreys without thinking of how it would play on social media.
The one where every vendor knew every other vendor by name, and Girl Scouts built wheelchair ramps so everyone could enjoy the view.
“Sam?” Parker’s voice pulled me back to reality.