The Man I Built It With (Arete Resort #4)

Chapter 1

REGGIE

Why? Why did everything have to go to hell just when things had started to look up?

“You’ve got that look on your face,” Marc told me as we stepped into the elevator. I smacked my pass against the panel on the wall and hit the button for the bottom floor.

“What look?” I wondered, stepping away from him to lean against the elevator wall.

I wasn’t tired, not physically anyway, and it wasn’t like it was going to be a long ride down to the bottom of the resort, but I really didn’t want to stand too close to him.

He was six foot two of healthy masculinity in that trim suit of his, the barest trace of silver in his jet-black hair and a touch in his carefully styled black stubble that looked professional yet sensual at the same time.

Then again, that might have been because he had a jaw models would envy.

His nose was a little too big for his face, maybe, but I thought it suited him; it looked as strong as the rest of him.

He was my boss, and I definitely didn’t need to be eye-fucking him, especially when there was so little space between us.

“The look,” he said, his head down slightly and looking at his shoes.

I looked in the reflective surface of the elevator and saw…

well, me. Blond hair that never behaved unless I meticulously styled it.

Hazel eyes that weren’t the fun kind that gave people the impression that they could shift and change with light, just a greenish tint but mostly yellow.

Standing next to Marc made me look short, but really, I was average height, a little above.

My eyes were too big for my face, but right now they were narrowed as I looked at myself and still just saw… me.

“There’s no look,” I said with a huff.

“You look like you’re about to freak out on someone,” he told me, calm as ever.

“Gee, Marc, I wonder why that could be?” I said as the elevator stopped.

“Maybe because we’ve just discovered that one of our guests was secretly a spy for our primary investors, and we just accused him of not only smuggling narcotics but distributing them to other guests while in fact, it was one of our Guides doing it the whole time! ”

Christ on a stick, what had happened for things to go so badly?

The Arete Resort, the place Marc and I had poured time, money, energy, and so much work and love into, was supposed to be where we could offer refuge for the men who came here from all over the world.

It was supposed to be a place where our Guides, the men I handpicked to be guides and companions for some of those men, were supposed to be trusted to act with compassion, dignity, and integrity.

Now I had to face the fact that I had made a bad choice and accused someone who was apparently innocent and who could be the reason we lost funding, or could make all the funding disappear.

Marc held the door close button. “Reggie?”

“What?” I asked because I knew he was going to try to placate me, and being placated was not what I wanted. Maybe needed, but right now I felt like I deserved to be upset and disappointed.

“Do not worry about our funding; that is, and has always been, my job,” he said calmly.

“And as for Mitchell, he made his choices, just as every man here does. You cannot hold yourself responsible for what other people have or haven’t done, not when you’ve offered them every chance to help people make the right choice. ”

“I know,” I said begrudgingly, hearing my advice coming out of his mouth and not liking it. “I know. But this has never happened before, and to find out we have problems with someone in-house, and we might have screwed up in dealing with someone from outside is…it’s a lot.”

“You have dealt with far worse things in life than a few missteps,” he said with a smile. “And don’t forget, we know Rowan did smuggle the drugs in, so that accusation isn’t off the mark. And from the conversation we had, I have a feeling you don’t need to worry about him.”

“He was only trying to protect Luka,” I said with a huff, thinking of our newest Guide who was currently on my bad side.

Oh, he wasn’t going to get fired or even written up, not even when he chewed me out and wished violence on me because I’d been doing my job and trying to protect Arete and the men in it.

He was going to be on my shit list for a while, but he still showed all the signs of being a good Guide, and hell, that he was willing to yell at me, his boss, in the defense of his guest was a sign that he was worthy of the job.

It didn’t mean I had to like it.

Marc smiled, pulling his finger away from the button and letting the elevator doors slide open.

“Then let that be an example that your abilities to choose the right people are still sharp. You don’t possess that level of loyalty toward someone who isn’t worthy of it, or at least, Rowan doesn’t strike me as the type to give his loyalty easily.

So, as far as I can tell, Luka has earned that. ”

“And Brendan?” I bit out.

“Why is it that those who are most prone to giving advice are the worst at following their own words of wisdom?” he asked as we stepped out of the elevator, walking toward the dormitory section.

It had been my idea when Marc and I had put our heads together in designing the place, to put the guests’ and the Guides’ dormitories near one another.

It had been my intention to foster a sense of closeness between the two groups, a sense that they were all in the same muck together.

I still wondered if maybe I should have done the same with my quarters, but it made most of the admin parts of my job easier being near the administrative parts of the building.

Putting Marc’s quarters in the same separate section was an easy choice; he believed in Arete and wasn’t afraid to walk among everyone in the resort.

He was, however, a private man, not half as sociable as I was, and someone who could be counted on to do his job quietly and undisturbed.

And now I was going to march into those same dormitories again and hope I didn’t create a stir.

“Still quiet,” Marc noted as we walked the almost silent halls. His voice was low, but it rumbled and carried through the quiet space. “What do we know about Brendan?”

He was trying to keep me focused, using a tactic I had used many times.

So long as I was focusing on the facts, explaining them to him, then I wasn’t focused on the emotions swirling through me at hyper speed.

It was a good tactic for people spiraling into a panic attack, and a solid tactic for keeping overthinkers, like myself, from doing their own version of a mental spiral.

I would have been irritated that he was being obvious about it, but we had worked together for years, so he knew it worked.

He also knew I used the tactic on myself, which was irritating, but hell, I needed to be focused.

“Mid-twenties,” I explained. “Interviewed fine. Truth be told, I wasn’t wowed by him, but I didn’t get any alarm bells.

He came recommended from the care facility where he’d been employed.

A handful of credits short of a degree before a personal tragedy made him stop and start working full time.

I didn’t bother to contact the restaurant where he’d been a part-time cook.

He’s worked here nearly a year, and I’m sure you know there have been zero reports against him in that time.

The only time I had to talk to him was about his habit of sleeping in and missing the occasional plan he had with a guest he was assigned to. ”

“And the guest?” he asked as if he didn’t know all the information.

“Mitchell Garner. Recovering addict who was advised to try our facility after he got out of rehab, considering this place is about as bone dry as it gets.” Well, it was in the main part of the facility.

There were a few bottles of liquor locked up in Marc’s office, as well as mine, but access was severely restricted, and I’d know immediately if someone tried to access either office without permission.

“His poison of choice was pretty much anything he could get his hands on, but he was fond of painkillers. It was only when he learned that his former partner, both romantic and a fellow pill popper, had died, leaving him in sole charge of his daughter, that he decided sobriety was for him. This is his first season here, and he was hoping his last because he wanted to get his head on straight after rehab so he could return to his family.”

“And the daughter?”

“From what I know, she’s staying with his parents, who have what I think is temporary guardianship, but have agreed to let him see her, and once they determine he has his life together, they’ll allow him to take her.”

“Do we know why Brendan would suddenly decide to raid a guest’s room to give pills to another? It’s not as if they have money…sexual?”

“Please,” I said with a snort. “Have you seen Brendan?”

At his silence, I stopped and turned to face him, seeing the look on his face and shaking my head. “You haven’t… Marc, we talked about this. You need to get out more.”

“I’ve been doing better,” he muttered, looking less like the self-confident businessman persona he had adopted his whole life and more like a slightly guilty, stubborn little boy as he turned his face away with a hard set to his jaw.

“Not everyone has the inexhaustible energy and sociability you do, Reggie.”

“Uh-huh, and you were also supposed to be doing better.”

“As I said, I have been, and… really, is now the time for this?”

It wasn’t, but it wasn’t often he got flustered. “Uh-huh, and since when do you let me get under your skin like this?”

“You’re not the only one who’s incredibly unhappy about current events,” he said, turning back to me, nostrils flaring. “I may not have an immediate stake in things because I know you’re taking this personally, but Arete is as much my passion project as it is yours.”