Chapter Twelve Ren
A real dilemma landed at her feet when it was time to stop for the night: She’d resolved to keep quiet for the rest of the day’s drive, and then they pulled up in front of what had to be the most beautiful hotel she’d ever seen. The building itself was sand colored, with an entrance that was five sliding doors wide and a giant well-lit white archway. Behind them was a wide paved path bracketed by manicured grounds with flowers and grass and beautifully placed rocks.
They climbed out of the car, stretched in the waning light, and stared at their home for the night.
Ren lasted all of ten seconds before it burst out of her: “It’s so beautiful!”
Fitz followed her attention to the entrance, his gaze sweeping, unimpressed, across the sight before them, then coming back to her. “It’s a Holiday Inn.”
She exhaled, awed. “Even the name sounds magical.”
He stared at her for another beat before wordlessly walking to the back of the Mustang and retrieving their bags, slinging one around each of his broad shoulders. His was an unblemished leather duffel. Hers was an old ratty backpack. Together, they looked so funny she couldn’t help but laugh.
“You don’t have to carry my stuff, Fitz,” she called, jogging after him.
“It’s fine.”
The automatic doors slid open, and they were hit with a wall of cool air smelling of industrial cleaner. She’d expected temperatures to be warmer the farther south they drove so she hadn’t bothered to pack her winter coat, but the early April air in Missoula still had a real bite to it and the air-conditioning didn’t help. She rubbed her arms, following Fitz into a lobby with shiny brass light fixtures, a stacked stone fireplace, and wood floors everywhere.
“Wow,” she murmured.
At the reception desk, a girl appeared from the back, coming to an abrupt stop when she spotted Fitz.
Setting their bags at his feet, he leaned his folded arms across the Formica counter. “Hey,” he said, voice low and deep. Even behind him, Ren could hear his trademark smile in the sound, and she looked up in time to catch the woman’s visible swoon.
“Hey—hi.” She swallowed. “Good eve—Welcome. To the Missoula…Checking in?”
Smoothly, he reached into his back pocket and pulled his wallet out. “I have a reservation.” He handed her his ID. “But was wondering if we could add a second room?”
The woman pushed a cloud of frizzy curls from her face and typed in his name. “Hmm. I do see your reservation here…one night, in a double?” She glanced sidelong at Ren and then quickly away. “But you want a second room?”
“That’s right.”
She pressed a few more keys and winced. “It looks like we’re fully booked because of the rodeo and won’t be able to add another room tonight.”
He lowered his voice further, dripping honey. “You sure?”
The girl stared at him for a long, silent beat. Ren looked from Fitz, to the girl, and back to Fitz again, wondering what was supposed to happen. Finally, he cleared his throat, and the girl jolted back into awareness. “Um…y-yes. Unless you want a room on the club level.”
“How much are those?”
She swallowed thickly. “Those are two fifty.”
“Two hundred and fifty dollars?”
“Yes.”
“Per night?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“In Missoula?”
“Yes.”
“On a Tuesday?”
She swallowed again, eyes flickering away. “Yes.”
Fitz deflated, turning to Ren. “You can take the room. I’ll sleep in the car.”
“No!” she yelled, startling them all. “No way. If anyone sleeps in the car, it’s me.”
He shook his head. “We’re not doing that.”
“Then I won’t even walk upstairs to the room,” she said. “I mean it, Fitz.”
After a moment of jaw-clenching contemplation, he turned back to the girl at the counter, resigned. “Fine. I guess we’re doing the one room. Is there a rollaway you can send up?”
She nodded, then stopped. “I—no, sorry. Unfortunately, this size room doesn’t accommodate one.”
“Don’t worry,” Ren told him in a whisper, “it’s not like there will be any hanky-panky.”
The girl smothered a laugh, and Fitz glanced at Ren with a smirk. “Hanky-panky?”
“You know. Like kissing and canoo—”
“Yeah, Ren, I know what hanky-panky is.” With a quiet laugh, he handed over his credit card, signed a screen when prompted, took the key card, and wordlessly picked up their bags again. “Thanks,” he said over his shoulder, charm turned off.
Ren smiled at the other woman, saying a quick “Thank you very much” before jogging after Fitz to the elevators. In silence, they stepped in when the doors opened, and Fitz hit the button for the fifth floor.
“I really don’t mind sleeping on the rug,” Ren told him.
He exhaled through his nose, eyes up as he watched the numbers climb, and then exited without answering. Ren fully intended to keep arguing, but when he unlocked the door and indicated that she should go in ahead of him, she pulled up short in shock.
She’d never even been in a hotel, let alone slept in one, and simply didn’t have the words for how stunning it was. The room itself was as big as half of her cabin back home, and when Fitz stepped through a door and turned on a light in a bathroom, Ren let out a cry, covering her mouth with her hand. “A bathroom in the room? For real?”
When Fitz emerged, Ren would have sworn he was fighting a smile. “Well, at least you’re easy to please.”
“I’ve never slept in a hotel before.”
One dark brow lifted. “Never?”
“I’d never even spent a night away from my own bed before Corona.”
“No shit?”
“Not even a little shhhhh…it,” she told him.
Fitz looked playfully shocked. “One day on the road, Sweden, and you’ve already got a mouth on you.”
While he stepped out to put the parking tag in the car, Ren looked around, opening drawers and exploring what the room had to offer. A dresser with room for clothes, an empty fridge that didn’t appear to be plugged in. The view wasn’t much—a street, empty hills in the distance—but even if Fitz was unimpressed, Ren couldn’t get past the luxury of having everything at their fingertips.
Fitz came back and dropped the car keys on the dresser. “I’m gonna grab a shower.”
With a distracted wave, Ren resumed her snooping. She found a nightstand drawer with a Bible and a Book of Mormon, a desk drawer with a small notepad and a Holiday Inn pen, a binder on the dresser with information about all kinds of things to do in Missoula, and a closet with enough pillows and blankets to make a bed fit for a queen.
Getting to work, Ren folded the thicker blanket on the floor for a mattress and then the second for a cover, dropping a couple pillows at the top and staring down in satisfaction. “Perfect,” she said just as the bathroom door opened and Fitz exited in a plume of steam.
“Don’t look,” he said immediately, but it was too late, because she’d already gotten an eyeful of bare, wet torso and the dark line of hair just above the towel he had clutched around his waist. Ren slapped a hand over her eyes. “I forgot my bag,” he explained.
The door closed again, and the thought of her perfect makeshift bed and the excitement of being in a hotel room for the first time were eclipsed by a rush of adrenaline so intense she practically stumbled into the desk chair, feeling hot and jittery and stunned. She’d seen men without shirts; during the harvest it got hot, and Steve and any other neighbors who showed up to help often took their shirts off at the end of the day or even while working, but they didn’t look anything like that. Like smooth, warm, sculpted skin. Both soft and hard. Her palms felt fevered just from thinking about touching him.
Wait. Why was she thinking about touching him?
Linda down at the library would save any book for Ren that happened to come across her desk, and many of those were romance, which Ren of course gobbled up voraciously. But last summer she’d registered while reading one that she’d only ever experienced those feelings as a reader: the heart racing, the prickles at the back of the neck, the feeling of being inarticulate in someone’s presence, the sensation of being engulfed in heat, heavy with it. And here she was in real life, reacting just like that after seeing Fitz in only a towel.
Ren had told him no hanky-panky. She was already a burden to him. The last thing he needed was one more female staring with moon eyes when he was just trying to get to Nashville for whatever it was he was doing there. So when he came out, blessedly dressed and avoiding eye contact, Ren ducked in right after him, leaving the water as cool as she could handle to flush away any ridiculous romantic notions.