Chapter 38
THIRTY-EIGHT
Every floor gets a show
Patrick
My office feels like a war zone. Siobhan from PR juggles three phones, barking into one while two others flash on hold. Fraser’s on calls with every property manager like his life depends on it. My senior team’s in full crisis mode. Everyone’s moving, hustling, scrambling.
None of it’s enough.
My phone won’t stop buzzing. I want to throw the damn thing through the window.
It’s everywhere. Social media. The tabloids starving for a scandal despite half the world at war.
I’ve dealt with financial blows before, but this is different.
This isn’t just numbers on a balance sheet.
This is people queuing for hours at reception while staff scribble names on scraps of paper and cross-reference bank accounts.
Families staggering off long-haul flights only to be told their rooms don’t exist. Wedding parties threatening reviews that’ll live online forever.
We’ve turned ourselves into a bloody case study in how not to run a hotel.
Reputational damage is what kills me. Guest loyalty.
Word of mouth. The Forbes Five Star I’ve been grinding toward for months, the one Grandad would’ve been proud of, slipping through my fingers while the whole country watches me fail.
Craig was in my office at six a.m., shaking, showing me everything. Deployment logs with Georgie’s credentials.
I went nuclear on him. Demanded to know how the fuck this happened under his watch.
But he insisted she made the change without his authorization.
Went against direct orders. Negligence, he said.
She’d been “irritated” after her stint in Skye.
She wanted to prove something. His accusation hung there, unspoken but clear.
The Georgie I know would never sabotage a system out of spite. But anger changes people. Makes them do things they’d never normally consider. I’ve seen it before.
She’d been unreachable all weekend. Her phone off. Almost like she knew what was coming and didn’t want to face it.
All of it traces back to one feature push on Friday night.
That’s the part I can’t stomach. Did she fuck this up by accident? Or did she do it to make a point?
I want to believe it was a mistake. That this wasn’t done maliciously in the heat of her annoyance with me.
“Patrick, we need a holding statement by noon,” Siobhan says, tapping her pen so hard I want to snap it in half. “If we don’t get ahead of this, the story writes itself.”
“Guests are already posting photos of the queues,” Fraser adds, voice clipped. “It’s a fucking circus.”
I drum my fingers on the desk and force myself to focus.
The rhythm keeps me from putting my fist through something.
“Keep it neutral. Technical issue, identified and resolved. Emphasize guest care. We’re going to have to take a big financial hit here.
Give guests what they want to appease their misery and inconvenience.
” My voice sounds steady, but inside my head’s a roar.
There’s a knock on the door.
“Come in,” I call.
Sarah from HR steps in. “I’ve got Georgina Fitzgerald waiting.”
The way her eyebrows lift tells me exactly what she thinks of this situation. Can’t blame her. I disclosed the relationship to HR and senior staff this morning—had to. Whatever Georgie’s involvement in this mess, my poor judgment started it.
“Send her in. Everyone else, give us ten minutes.”
They file out, their expressions ranging from curiosity to disapproval.
She steps inside, wide-eyed and clearly trying to hold herself together. Her hand darts up to tuck a strand of dark hair behind her ear, but more hair escapes immediately.
She’s lost weight. Even in the few days since Scotland, her cheekbones are sharper. That fitted blazer hangs loosely at her shoulders now.
My chest tightens. I’ve missed her. Looking at her heart-shaped face, those green eyes that show every emotion she’s ever felt, all I want is to fix this. To make that devastated expression disappear, despite her change causing the biggest crisis in my company’s history.
“I’m being suspended?” Her voice cracks, and it lands in my gut.
“Sit down,” I order, before I do something reckless like cross the room and touch her.
She drops into the chair like her legs won’t hold her, pale and trembling.
Her fingers find that necklace, the one I climbed a bloody mountain to retrieve.
I know all her tells now. The way she bites the inside of her cheek when thinking.
The way her eyes go bright when she’s about to cry but trying not to.
That rapid pulse at the base of her throat that I’ve felt flutter under my mouth.
Even now, with my hotels in crisis mode, I notice everything about her.
“What happened, Georgie?”
“Craig forced me to deploy a change that I wasn’t comfortable with and that went against all our processes. I tested it thoroughly in dev, then handed it to him for QA. He signed off and told me to push it live.”
“Do you have proof that he told you to do it?”
“It was a phone call.”
I sigh. “That’s not his version. He said he told you to wait.”
Tears brim in those green eyes. The ones I wake up thinking about. “Because that’s what he does! He tells me one thing, then tells you the opposite, and I’m the one who gets crucified!”
“Except you can’t prove that.” I drag the folder across the desk and slap it open. Her name glares up at me in neat black text. “Look at it. Your credentials. Your name, over and over.”
She stares down at the evidence. Her face crumbles. “Because I did the technical work. But Craig told me to—”
“Stop.” My hand slices the air. I push up from the desk, needing to move, needing space.
“It’s all over social media. McLarenFail trending worldwide.
A travel blogger with two million followers checked into the Ritz-Carlton and is documenting her ‘McLaren disaster’ in real time.
Our Forbes Five Star? Completely fucking dead.
You know what that means to me. This business is my life. ”
“Maybe the business shouldn’t be your whole life, Patrick.” Her tears spill over. “Maybe there’s more to life than being king of your hotel empire or some Forbes list.”
Is that what this is? She thinks I chose the business over her, so she’s decided to take a swing at it? There’s so much evidence piling up against her that it would be irresponsible of me to not at least ask the question.
“Did you do this to get back at me?”
She flinches like I’ve struck her. “You think I’d destroy people’s weddings, ruin your business, just to punish you for ending things?”
“I don’t know what to think anymore. The timing is too convenient. You get sent back to London, furious after our last conversation, and suddenly the system implodes.”
Her hand goes to her throat. Grips the necklace there. “Is that really who you think I am? A vindictive child throwing tantrums?”
“I think you’re hurt and angry. And maybe not thinking clearly.”
“And I think you’re desperate to blame anyone but Craig because admitting his failure would mean admitting you backed the wrong man. I built IRIS. Every line of code. I warned him this new feature wasn’t ready. I documented every risk. He ignored me because he wanted to look good for you.”
Something twists in my chest at the conviction in her voice. Yet evidence is right there in front of me. “Then where is it? These warnings, these documents?”
“They took my laptop! HR confiscated everything. I can’t access my files, my emails, nothing—”
“And you expect me to risk everything on blind faith in you when every shred of proof points the other way?”
The evidence is damning.
“I believe Craig deleted the emails and the logs. Or someone did.”
I shake my head, exasperated. “Enough.”
Craig said she’s been erratic since returning from Scotland. Distracted, defensive, not following protocols.
This is why I’ve always lived by the one rule every fool ignores at least once: never mix business with pleasure. It’s a cliché because it’s true.
Now Georgie and I are finished. Jake won’t speak to me. And my hotel empire is being dragged through the fucking mud while I sit here wondering if the only woman I’ve wanted in years just destroyed me.
Georgie
He steps out from behind the desk and stands right in front of me.
No barrier between us now. No professional distance.
Just him, looming, and air so thick I can barely breathe.
His blue eyes cut down to me, and after everything in Skye, it still makes my stomach flip to have that gaze land on me, even when it’s full of contempt.
It’s almost laughable, in a bitter way: we’ve come full circle. It’s the same sharp look he gave me after my disaster of a presentation, only now it’s so much worse. Because now I know what his eyes look like soft with sleep. What they look like when he laughs. What they look like when he comes.
And apparently, what they look like when he hates me.
God. I’m like those sheep we saw in Skye, the ones munching grass too close to the cliff edge. Too stupid to notice they’re falling until they hit the rocks. Except the sheep have an excuse: they’re sheep. What’s mine?
I stare up at the man I let myself love, and the truth hits me. He’s already judged me guilty.
“You don’t believe me,” I whisper.
His expression doesn’t soften. “You deployed that change without authorization and blew a hole in this company. My company. You’ve caused significant financial and reputational damage. Take responsibility for your fuck-up.”
My pulse thumps in my throat. In my head, Riri’s voice floats up, clear as the day she first said the words about Steve: Don’t you dare make yourself smaller for men who don’t value your worth.
Something fierce and desperate surges through me. “No. You take responsibility for yours.”
His eyes narrow dangerously. “Excuse me?”