Chapter 2 #3
With her renewed vigor, she finished the third floor.
After the cart was back in the closet and safely locked, she traversed the main staircase down to the second floor of the inn.
This one boasted the most rooms, nine in total, all standard kings or double queens.
Each room she serviced had slightly different decorative touches.
She made note of this as, during her previous visits for the purchase, she hadn’t been able to view every single room.
She didn’t stop at her own room on the second floor, but she gave her current home a nod as she passed by.
By the first floor, she felt like she was hitting her stride.
The ground floor was bustling with early afternoon activity. She could smell the limited lunch menu being prepared: casual fare including a lobster roll, clam chowder that made Reese’s mouth water, and a bevy of other seafood dishes that rotated weekly.
She was wondering if she’d have time to grab something as she worked through her list of rooms, drawing closer to the scents infiltrating her nostrils and making her stomach gurgle. She’d been so on edge this morning before meeting Hallie at seven that she hadn’t eaten yet .
A few feet back, she’d dropped the first-floor cleaning cart back in its space. The cleaner who’d come in at the last minute, Brittany, had given her an appreciative nod as she’d pulled the cart right back out and headed toward the other end of the hallway to start the full cleanings for checkouts.
“One more,” she coached herself, the door to the kitchen within sight.
She knocked, loudly enough that someone still in the room would hear her. Double-checking to make sure there was no ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign, she used her master key to unlock the door and let herself inside.
She’d taken to keeping the doors open when she serviced them, just to make sure guests weren’t concerned about a non-uniformed woman without a name tag traipsing through their rooms.
This room, she noted, was configured differently than any of the others she’d been inside, with additional touches to make it more like an apartment than the suites on the third floor.
It was almost as if three normal rooms had been fused together, the doors on the left and right in the hallway that should be there having been removed.
These must be Hallie’s owner’s quarters—at least for the next six months. When Reese had purchased the inn, she hadn’t been very concerned with what would be her future accommodations if she’d wanted them.
Hallie’s willingness to stay on in a managerial capacity had meant that of all the things Reese needed to concern herself with to get oriented to hotel ownership, where she slept for a few hours a night wasn’t one of them.
The room she’d walked into was a living room, with a kitchenette built along one of the side walls.
There were art prints on the walls that weren’t the hotel’s aesthetic, along with furniture that didn’t match the other rooms. The back wall boasted a beautiful glass door that overlooked a small, private patio.
Beyond that, the ocean was visible as the edge of the property dropped off at a small cliff butted up against the sea.
On each side of the living room were what appeared to be bedrooms, each of which likely had its own bathroom.
Reese moved to the left and found a well-lived-in room that must have been Hallie’s. She quietly placed the new towels in the bathroom.
The door to the other bedroom was closed, likely unoccupied unless Hallie had it decked out as some type of office. Any guests of Hallie’s probably used that bathroom, which was how Reese decided to close out her task strong and replenish the soaps, at the very least.
Reese opened the door, noticing the clothing strewn across the floor first.
Her confusion ratcheted up a notch when it sounded like a shower was running behind the closed bathroom door, but it took a back seat in her brain when a woman’s scream pierced the room.
She froze, her stomach plummeting from the sound as she quickly glanced up and then immediately back down.
The ground was her best friend right now. She studied it like an artist studying a landscape before painting it.
She knew from her brief glimpse that a woman stood in front of her at the foot of the bed, decked out in nothing but a pair of teeny-tiny boy shorts.
Reese’s mind tried to catch up, seeing in her peripheral vision as the woman pulled her earbuds out of her ears before using her arms to cover her chest.
“I’m so sorry,” Reese said when she found her voice, speaking to the floor. “I didn’t know anyone was in here.”
On reflex, she handed the woman one of the towels she was holding in her arms like a security blanket.
It felt hot in here. Why was it so hot?
Reese knew that she should flee the room as quickly as possible, but she was equally mortified and transfixed.
Also, she needed to save this train wreck of an interaction.
Was this Hallie’s friend? Girlfriend?
“Ugh,” Reese groaned, covering her eyes with a hand and pitching her view into darkness.
“I know I haven’t been working out lately, but I didn’t think it was that bad.”
The teasing voice, sweet but with a bite of sarcasm, made her drop her hand, pulling her eyes toward a body she knew looked sculpted out of marble.
“No. It’s not that,” Reese said once she’d made it to the woman’s left shoulder, which was tan. Smooth. And looked incredibly soft.
She cleared her throat. She’d been out of the game since her business and personal relationships with Megan had imploded. That was proving to be a mistake right now.
No. She was Reese Devereux, and she needed to start acting like it.
She’d graduated from Stanford undergrad and Stanford business school at the top of her class.
She’d built and sold—begrudgingly—a multimillion-dollar software company.
She’d just launched her newest venture with the acquisition of The Stone’s Throw Inn.
Unexpectedly seeing a beautiful woman in nothing but her underwear was just another day at the office—which made a lot of sense given that her office was now a hotel.
“Reese.”
The sound of her name was like a lightning bolt through her chest, and she finally inched her eyes over to meet vibrant green, like a lush, tropical forest after a rain.
It couldn’t be.
Holy shit. “Sydney? Sydney King?” She tried to find the right words but failed. “What are you doing here?”
She unconsciously took a small step forward, trying to get a better look at her brother’s ex-girlfriend—respectfully, of course.
It had been years since they’d seen one another in person, not that she hadn’t seen Sydney splashed across magazine covers or on gossip websites over the last half-decade .
Even though her outfit now wasn’t dissimilar to the one she’d worn on the cover of Sports Illustrated a few years ago, it was still hard to accept that Sydney was standing here, in front of her. It was like seeing a teacher out in the wild: unexpected because it wasn’t their natural habitat.
Time had been good to Sydney. Reese could happily admit that. Her long, blonde hair was tied up in a high ponytail, her body all lines of sinewy muscle that ran across her limbs.
Sydney hadn’t bothered to wrap the towel around her; instead she was holding it against her chest as she looked at Reese with less confusion than Reese had expected, given the situation.
“Hallie’s my best friend,” Sydney finally answered, her gaze flicking across Reese’s face like she was looking for something.
What it was, Reese didn’t know.
Reese released a deep breath, struggling to maintain eye contact. “I’m still so sorry. Hallie didn’t mention you were staying here with her. I knocked on the door, and no one responded.”
Sydney pointed to the earbuds that now rested on a dresser.
“Was sort of in my own world. Trying to pump myself up for a midday jog. It should have been a morning jog, but…” The words trailed off, a soft, embarrassed smile flashing across Sydney’s full lips.
Her white teeth popped against her perpetually tan skin, which made sense given that, if Reese remembered correctly, Sydney spent most of her time in between tournaments in Florida.
Oh god, did Sydney know that Grant was getting married this summer?
Grant, from where Reese was standing, was a fucking idiot for letting Sydney get away. Or breaking up with her and falling head-over-heels in love with Brynn Fitzpatrick soon after—if she believed the official version being peddled by the rest of the Devereux family.
Thinking about him, it was like she could hear Grant’s stupid voice inside her head. “Reese?” he was saying. “Why haven’t you answered any of Mom’s calls? She’s been trying to get a hold of you all day, and I’m not the family’s errand boy, you know.”
Why was Sydney looking at her like that? Head cocked to the side, straining her ear toward the open door. Almost like she could hear Grant’s annoying voice, too.
Oh.
Oh no .
It happened quickly, as she heard his decisive footsteps in the living room before she saw him come into view.
Two years younger than she was, he’d been taller by the time they were teenagers.
Add an extra inch for his stupid pompadour hairstyle.
Now, as a man in his late twenties, his frame took up most of the doorway to the owner’s quarters second bedroom.
Reese instinctively moved in front of Sydney, who was still very much unclothed and shrinking backward so that her legs bumped against the edge of the bed.
Reese heard the soft sounds of the sheets moving and ignored a fleetingly intrusive thought about how Sydney’s tanned skin must look against the crisp, white linens.
“Why is your door open?” Grant demanded.
“No one was even at the front desk, unsurprisingly. I’m forced to wander around like an idiot.
At least your voice carries—” He stopped fully once he entered the bedroom, his eyes bouncing back and forth between Sydney and Reese, trying to figure out what was going on.
He sure had the idiot part right, regardless of the situation.
It was unlikely he’d guess that Reese had bought the inn and she’d just had a hell of a first day unexpectedly walking in on Sydney naked. It was a hard guess on the best of days, and she didn’t think he possessed even a molecule of that level of critical thinking.
His forehead was scrunched in obvious confusion. “What’s going on?”
It reminded her of when they were teenagers, and he’d miss the point of movies entirely. When Reese would try to explain the plot, he’d stand up, scoff, and call the film ‘stupid’ to further illustrate whatever point he thought he was making.
Life had been hell on earth when he’d learned the word ‘reductive’ while studying for his SATs with his hundred-dollar-an-hour tutor and applied it to every single thing he didn’t like.
Strangely, Reese found it comforting that he hadn’t changed all that much since birth. Still petulant. Still whiny. Still thought the sun shone out of his ass.
And now, he was planning to further enshrine himself as the family’s golden child by marrying Brynn Fitzpatrick, daughter of one of the largest real estate investors on the East Coast.
It must have been her father’s wet dream when he’d found out they were engaged. Gross but apt, as far as descriptions went.
She needed to remind herself that Grant was on her turf now. In her inn. He wasn’t the one calling the shots, even if he didn’t know it yet.
“Nothing that’s any of your business,” Reese finally answered, inching over to fully obstruct Sydney from his view.
She’d waited until she could see the vein in his forehead bulging with frustration at being so far out of the loop he didn’t know it existed.
She didn’t think Grant was that smart, but he was persistent. And that could be a problem at this moment.
“I think I deserve an explanation about why my sister and my ex are naked in a hotel room together.”
Reese pursed her lips. Yep, he was still as idiotic as she remembered. Luckily, they saw one another infrequently, and only with the buffer of their parents between them. But their interactions didn’t feel infrequent enough at this moment.
It wasn’t an unfair question, but it was so classically Grant that she wanted to laugh. Sydney wasn’t his girlfriend, and Reese barely had a relationship with her brother. Why he felt like he could waltz into someone else’s hotel room and demand answers only reinforced her disdain for him.
“Technically only one of us is naked, Grant.” Sydney’s voice floated from behind her, and as Reese shifted her body sideways, Sydney’s head peeked around her to look Grant in the eye.
Sydney stood up then, towel held across her chest, before she took a step closer to Reese, staying slightly behind her.
Their bodies were almost touching, and the warmth of Sydney’s naked skin pushed insistently against Reese’s shirt.
Sydney smelled like coconut and something floral, and it set Reese’s synapses on fire.
Grant, to his credit, stood frozen, except for his eyes pinging back and forth between them, like he couldn’t process what was happening.
With a quick half-step, Sydney now stood right next to Reese, their arms brushing and that heat threatening to engulf Reese again, when Sydney added with a widening smile, “And it’s still none of your business.”