Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
It had been a long week, and Oliver had filled every hour of it with work — fielding furious calls from investors, fronting up to meetings he’d once been too powerful to dread, and navigating the maze of approvals needed to reverse course on the Old Colonial.
It was humiliating work, the kind he’d built a career on avoiding, but he didn’t stop.
He’d seen himself through Lucy’s eyes and hadn’t liked the man staring back.
Saving the hotel wouldn’t redeem what he’d done to her trust, but it was the one decision he could live with.
Back in MacLeod’s Cove the emptied hotel felt strangely alive.
Afternoon sun poured through the tall windows, catching dust motes and the worn curve of the bar.
Outside, tui warbled in the garden, bowls clicked next door, and children’s voices drifted from the crèche down the road.
Oliver had intended to start sorting the old books and papers for Kate’s family, but instead he sat in a cracked leather chair and let the quiet settle over him.
For the first time in years, he allowed himself to feel the truth beneath the drive and bravado: he was tired — bone-deep tired — of fighting, of winning, of being the man who never stopped moving.
And he was sad. Deeply, unexpectedly sad.
The rattle of the front door broke the silence. He frowned and glanced at the small security monitor he’d had installed in preparation for the deliveries due from tomorrow.
Lucy stood just outside the entrance, bright against the shadowy porch in her white shirt and blonde hair.
He watched her press a hand to the glass and peer in, jaw set, posture as direct as he remembered.
Such a mix: beauty and bluntness, delicacy and stubborn strength.
He would miss sparring with her. More than that, he’d miss simply being in the same room.
He’d wondered if she’d hear the rumours. He hadn’t told anyone who didn’t need to know; he wasn’t doing this for her, and he knew there was nothing he could do now that would redeem him in her eyes. But she must have put the pieces together.
Then she turned away.
No doubt it was just as well. They had nothing left to say to each other.
He switched off the remaining lights and walked through to the back, drawn outside by the heavy, warm air.
Out here he could breathe more easily. Inside, all week, he’d felt caught in a sticky web of his own making, panicked by how closely his tactics had echoed his father’s underhand methods.
He’d spent years convincing himself he was different.
It had taken MacLeod’s Cove — Lucy — to show him that, left unchecked, he wasn’t.
He wasn’t free of that legacy yet, but he’d made a start.
The partially cleared garden still bore the scars of neglect, but beneath the broken pallets and old kegs he could see its bones.
It reminded him of Lucy’s café garden, though this one hadn’t felt care in decades.
It would again. He’d see to that, even if he never saw the finished result.
He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t hear the garden gate squeak. Only footsteps on the path alerted him. Someone moved through the tangle of overgrown shrubs, then stopped just behind his shoulder.
‘I didn’t imagine I’d find you in the garden,’ Lucy said quietly.
For a moment, he couldn’t speak. The sight of her brought that familiar lump to his throat, a reminder that losing her was entirely his own fault. He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and fisted them to make sure he didn’t reach for her.
‘Not much of a garden at the moment,’ he managed, clearing his throat. ‘It must have been once.’ He nodded towards a brilliantly flowering creeper hanging from the first floor. ‘Before it was turned into a beer garden, by the look of things. Then a dumping ground.’
‘Shame,’ she said, glancing around. ‘But I don’t suppose you care now, do you? You’ve won.’
He braced, ready to fall back on the old party line. ‘I’m not in the business of caring.’
She scoffed. ‘That much is obvious.’
The sadness inside him cooled to stone. It was easier that way.
‘Why are you here, Lucy?’ he asked.
‘Because my sisters said something weird was going on with the hotel, and I wanted to see for myself.’ She met his gaze squarely. ‘They’ve heard rumours you’re not knocking it down after all.’
So the jungle drums had started up quicker than he’d hoped. He’d imagined he’d be gone before word spread. And yet here she was.
‘Is Ellie right?’ she pressed. ‘Have things really changed that much in a week?’
I have changed that much, he thought. Not that it mattered. Why should she believe him now? He drew a slow breath.
‘Things are going to change,’ he said at last. ‘Over there —’ he pointed to the north-facing corner that caught all-day sun ‘— there’ll be a kitchen garden.
Tomatoes. Beans. Herbs. That sort of thing.
’ He realised he was guessing; his instruction to the team had been vague.
‘And over there —’ he nodded towards the rusted ranch sliders opening onto the patio ‘— will be some re-purposed French doors in front of which will be chairs. Somewhere for people to sit, talk. That’s how I imagine it. ’
‘In your brand-new shiny hotel,’ she said.
He gave a short laugh. ‘No. In this hotel. Renovated. Strengthened. Ready for the next hundred years.’
Her eyes widened. ‘So it’s true.’ She wandered over to the open door of the library and poked her head inside, keeping her eyes looking anywhere but at him. ‘That’s great news.’
‘Seems the comm… most people around here want it kept,’ he said lightly. ‘I’ve decided to listen.’
‘You still can’t quite bring yourself to say the “c” word, can you?’ she said, turning to face him once more.
He blinked. ‘Christmas?’
‘Community.’
He huffed. ‘Community, Christmas, colonoscopies — I’ve never seen eye to eye with any of them.’
‘You wouldn’t see eye to eye with a colonoscopy,’ she muttered, but her mouth twitched.
The small crack in her expression almost undid him.
‘What’s going on, Oliver?’ she asked more quietly. ‘You had everything lined up. The council, the consultation, the consents. Why change now?’
‘Does it matter?’ he deflected.
‘Not to the outcome, no. But I’m curious.’
He hesitated. The simplest truth was the one he couldn’t give her: that meeting her, and her family, had made his old plans impossible to stomach. That he’d rather fight his way out of bad deals and eat humble pie than look at himself and see his father.
‘Put it this way,’ he said. ‘I’ve learned something from this whole…process.’ It was as close as he would go to admitting it felt like a reckoning. ‘I don’t fit. And if I don’t fit, my vision doesn’t either. So I’ve handed it on to people with the right vision for the…community.’
She tilted her head. ‘But you told me it would be too expensive to renovate. That you’d never get your money back. What’s changed?’
Everything. And nothing he was willing to lay at her feet.
‘That part’s commercially sensitive,’ he said, falling back behind the familiar shield. It felt false now, but it was still safer than the truth.
He saw the hurt flicker in her eyes before she hid it. ‘I wasn’t talking about business,’ she said softly.
‘I know what you meant,’ he replied, after a beat. ‘But the fact remains — I’m in the business of making money, not friends. I didn’t do this out of the goodness of my heart. I don’t have one, remember?’
Her shoulders stiffened. ‘Right.’
He hated himself for the words, but they were the only protection he had left — for both of them.
If she knew how far he’d turned his life upside down because of her, he’d feel stripped bare.
And she’d feel cornered. She’d told him once there was nothing he could do to change her mind; he believed her.
She turned abruptly, hunting in her bag for a tissue. When she looked up, her eyes glistened.
‘Damned dust,’ she said thickly.
‘Contractors have been drilling,’ he said, forcing practicality into his voice. ‘Checking the structure. They start work tomorrow.’
She blew her nose, breathed in, and seemed to pull herself back together. ‘That’ll be a great day for the village.’ She glanced at him, expression brittle. ‘Thanks to you. Without your…change of mind, this place would have crumbled away.’
‘Given the context, it made sense,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’
A silence dropped between them, heavy with everything unsaid.
‘If we’re done here, you should go,’ he added quietly. ‘I have things to do.’
‘Sure,’ Lucy said, too quickly. Without another word she retraced her steps along the garden path and disappeared behind the overgrown hedge without looking back. The squeak of the gate was the only clue she’d gone.
He headed inside to the library, pulling the doors to the garden firmly closed behind him. He had to get out of here, but first he had one last thing to do.
He yanked open the first metal filing cabinet and flicked through the contents. Junk. Random invoices, maintenance records, supplier contracts, old council letters. Nothing even the keenest historian would care about. He swept the lot into a plastic bag for shredding.
The last cabinet was shoved half behind another, directly under a window.
Dust lay thick over it, baked hard by the sun.
When he tugged the drawer open, he immediately saw the difference.
The files were neatly arranged, tabs labelled in precise copperplate.
Whoever had run this system had cared about order.
He ran a fingertip along the metal tabs. Names. Dozens of them. He pulled one file out. Inside lay a single letter and, clipped to the front, a note in the same careful hand:
Deceased 12 October 1944. Sender requests delivery to recipient only. Not to be forwarded to family or returned.
Below it, an account number. So this had been a paid service — some kind of private poste restante run out of the hotel.