Five
Lyra
T he best thing about old buildings is that they keep secrets. Not the scary kind, though the inn does make some pretty spectacular creaking noises at night. No, these secrets are the good kind, tucked away in forgotten corners and dusty boxes.
I’ve been searching through every nook and cranny of the library for two days, desperately hoping to find something that might help save my grandmother’s legacy. The massive oak table is covered in neat stacks of ledgers and photographs—my attempt at organization in the chaos.
I’d forgotten how much I love this inn. Why did it take my father wanting to sell to get me here? I haven’t stayed overnight at the inn in at least ten years.
And I’ve never stayed overnight with Byron Hale under the same roof. My dreams are not behaving themselves.
“Thought you might need this.”
Byron’s voice makes me jump. For more reasons than one, but mostly because of what I just hit replay on in my head. A blush feathers across my cheeks. Thankfully, he has no idea he’s been starring in my dreams. Or that occasionally I’m not actually asleep when he shows up in my mind’s eye.
He stands in the doorway holding two cups of coffee from the Kilt Valley Café, and the simple gesture threatens to undo me. Because it’s exactly what I need, exactly when I need it.
Just like old times.
“Peace offering?” I ask, proud that my voice stays steady despite the out of place flutter in my chest.
“More like survival rations.” He sets one cup in front of me, careful not to disturb my piles. “I grabbed dinner too.”
A takeout bag from The Table appears next to the coffee. The scent of garlic hits me and my stomach growls. “Is that five cheese ravioli with extra breadsticks?”
“Naturally.”
“You didn’t have to do that.” I’m already reaching for the bag.
“Consider it self-preservation. You’re scary when you’re hangry.”
I roll my eyes, but a smile tugs at my lips. “That happened one time.”
“You threw a ski pole at my head.”
“I was aiming for the tree behind you.”
His laugh is warm and familiar, and something inside me softens despite my best efforts to stay guarded.
He shrugs out of his suit jacket and drapes it over a chair. Even that simple movement draws my attention—the way the light catches on his carefully styled hair and how his shoulders fill out his dress shirt in a way they never did in high school.
This version of Byron, the one who brings me coffee and remembers my favorite pasta, is dangerous.
He rolls up his sleeves and loosens his tie, and I have to look away. But not before I catch a whiff of his woodsy cologne mixed with the dusty-paper smell of old books. The combination is oddly intoxicating.
“We can eat in here,” I say to distract myself. “Judy won’t mind.”
“What are you looking for?” he asks.
“Is this another thinly veiled attempt to figure out what I’m doing so you can keep my father updated?”
Byron makes a face. “That shtick is getting old. I’ve told you I’m not keeping tabs for nefarious purposes. What do I have to do to convince you?”
Nothing.
I stopped believing he’s a step away from blowing my whole “save the inn” scheme out of the water when he handed Miss Henderson her valentine and she teared up. Actually, that wasn’t the exact moment.
It was when he teared up.
Somehow that made the narrative in my head stop, the one casting him as the bad lawyer in the story. The wicked corporate guys don’t cry.
But that doesn’t mean I have to clue Byron in on my about-face. He can sweat it for a while longer. Meanwhile, I’m using my cover to secretly study this new version of him.
I’m softening but I’m not an idiot. I don’t plan to let him shatter me a second time. The more I learn about him, the easier it will be to see him coming. And pretend I’m not thinking about how much I used to like kissing him.
I decide to have mercy on him since he brought food. “I’m looking for documentation I can give to the Kilt Valley Heritage Trust.”
Byron’s eyebrows jump. “Trying to get the inn recognized as a historical landmark, are we? I wondered where you were headed with that whole cultural significance remark.”
I figured he would immediately understand. There is something to be said for intelligence. It’s far sexier than I will admit out loud.
Especially because I’m still not sure if he plans to use his brain for good or evil.
He grabs his to-go container and settles into the chair at a right angle to mine. Guess we’re sharing the table now. But I did say he could eat in here with me so I get what I deserve when I’m immediately hyper-aware of his bare forearms.
Did I say brains were sexy?
Clearly his arms heard me say that and want me to be aware that they are also in fact sexy.
“We’re looking for guest records,” I croak and clear my throat. “To see if anyone famous stayed at the inn. I would love it if we found proof of someone famous being born here.”
“Got it.”
We work in silence as we eat, which I appreciate. This is not a date. Though I’m a little curious why he’s not making small talk. Seems like something a lawyer would do.
“Found one,” he says, showing me a leather-bound ledger. His arm brushes mine, setting off a contagion of sparks that I promptly ignore. “Guest records from 1952.”
“Add it to that pile over there.” I focus on forking up ravioli so I don’t stare at his forearms flexing as he lifts the heavy book.
But when he settles back into his chair, I look up automatically. His perfectly styled hair is in a disarray, as if he ran his hand through it a few times, and there’s a smudge of dust on his cheek that I have to sit on my hands to avoid brushing off.
He looks more like the boy who used to carry my books to class and the memory zaps me in places that I closed off a long time ago.
“You know, I’ve been curious about something,” he says, and I do not like the look in his eye.
As if he read my thoughts and he’s having them too.
“How much over you’re going to be on your dry-cleaning budget for the month?”
His smile reaches his eyes, creating the same crinkles that used to make my teenage heart swoon.
“People who go to court as much as I do have astronomical dry-cleaning budgets, so I’m good. No, what I’m wondering is why all of this is so important to you.” He gestures to the piles surrounding us. “Saving the inn. What are you saving it from?”
“Being lost,” I counter frostily. Because come on. “It’s been in our family for decades and it belongs to us. To me. Selling it makes no sense. How much money does Laird MacLellan need, anyway?”
“Maybe it’s not really about the money for him,” Byron suggests as if I haven’t thought of this.
“Everything is about money, especially when you don’t have any,” I grouse. “What do you think it’s about then, Smarty Pants?”
He’s looking at me with this laser focus that I want to look away from. But I can’t. I don’t want to. Let him look. Hopefully he’s eating his heart out that he lost me.
Regrets. That’s what I’m trying to avoid by saving the inn. Mostly mine. The inn is important to me and it took this fiasco to remind me how much so. I don’t intend to lose it now that I’ve been presented with the harsh alternative.
“You have money,” he says, which makes me snort.
“I do not or I’d buy the inn myself.” It’s my turn to stare at him. “You do all of dad’s finances. Surely, you’re aware that I draw a salary from the resort and that’s it. The rest of the money is in the trust you manage, which I benefit from only when Dad dies.”
Which I’m certainly not wishing for. I don’t need his money. But I do want his hotels.
“I just never thought about it,” he says honestly and threads his fingers through his hair, messing it up even further. “The MacLellan wealth is renowned, and I’ve put my head down over the last decade to make inroads toward my own version of that. So, I could stand shoulder to shoulder with people like your father.”
My heart does a complicated little flip. Is that why he’s on Team Lachlan? He’s trying to feel worthy?
I never thought about how he must have felt to be dating me back in high school. When you’re seventeen, your parents’ money matters a lot more than it does as an adult—especially to other people on the outside looking in.
Not all Kilt Valley residents are wealthy, but it’s a resort town with year-round activities, like the film festival during the summer and Scotoberfest in the fall. Some of the families—my own included—make a pretty penny from the tourists.
My brothers chose different paths, and for the first time, I start to understand why neither of them wanted to follow Dad’s footsteps. They both probably realized there’s a whole world out there once you step out from Dad’s umbrella.
“I think your father is selling the inn because he had no idea it was important to you,” Byron says, his eyes holding mine, and there’s something in them I can’t quite read.
Or maybe don’t want to.
“Yeah, I got that. I’m trying to correct that notion as we speak.”
“Just be sure this is what you want.”
“What?” I bristle. “You think I’m going through all of this without having carefully considered that my father is selling this inn over my dead body?”
“I don’t mean the inn being what you do want. The flip side. That the resort is not what you want.”
“I love the resort,” I say automatically, reaching for another ledger just to have something to do with my hands. “What kind of lawyer point are you trying to make, here?”
“Do you love the resort?” The question is gentle but pointed. “Because I’m curious what’s going to happen if your plan works? If you save the inn?”
I almost drop the ledger. “Then everyone wins. The inn stays in the family, the resort keeps operating—”
He’s watching me too carefully, seeing too much. “And you keep running both?”
Well, of course. My hands still on the leather cover as I realize that’s not happening.
I cannot run both. I had to take time off just to spend a couple of weeks putting my plan together.
Honestly, I hadn’t thought that far ahead, and curse him for being the one to bring it to light. I’ve been so focused on saving the inn that I haven’t considered the reality of what comes next.
“I…” The words stick in my throat as his question sinks in.
“You can’t be in two places at once, Lyra.”
The truth of it settles heavily in my chest. If I save the inn—when I save the inn—I’ll have to choose. The resort or the inn. My father’s empire or my grandmother’s legacy.
Just like my brothers. This will be my line in the sand, where I take over the family business or I don’t.
“Why are you asking me this?” I don’t mean to whisper, but the words come out soft anyway.
Byron leans forward, and suddenly the table between us feels very small. “Because someone should. Because you’ve spent so long trying to be what your father wants that you’ve stopped asking yourself what you want.”
His words lance through my chest as if he stuck his sword of truth right between a couple of ribs. Because he’s right. I’ve been so busy trying to compensate for Leith and Liam that I haven’t ever thought about what I want.
Falling for Byron in high school was the last thing I did that was solely for me. And look how that turned out.
But for the first time, I can concede he might have had reasons I know nothing about.
“You don’t have to know the answers now,” he says, his voice still gentle. Like he knows exactly how much his question has shaken me. “Think about it.”
I stare at the ledger in front of me, seeing but not seeing the careful columns of names and dates. People who came to the inn, who found shelter and comfort within these walls. Just like I always have.
“I’ve never stood up to him,” I admit. “Not about anything that really mattered.”
“Your father is a difficult man to say no to.”
Something in his tone makes me look up. His expression is unreadable, but there’s a tension in his shoulders that wasn’t there before.
“You’ve run into the Lachlan MacLellan brick wall a time or two I would imagine.”
He looks away and picks up another ledger. “I stopped bloodying my forehead against it a long time ago.”
There’s more to his comment than he’s letting on. I want to ask, but we’ve done enough soul-bearing for the night.
Part of me wants to keep going though. To reach out, wrap myself around him and soothe away whatever put that line between his brows. But then I would have to examine why. And why his presence here stopped feeling intrusive and started feeling like exactly what I need.
His fingers brush mine as he hands me another box of papers, and I try to ignore the way my skin tingles at the contact. It feels like he did it on purpose though, as if he craves my touch in kind.
He smiles—that same soft, understanding smile that used to make me believe anything was possible—and my will crumbles into dust.
Because maybe that’s the real problem. Not that I don’t trust him, but that I do. Despite everything, despite knowing better, some part of me still believes in the power of us .
Where did that come from? I thought I was going to hate him until the day I died. Here it is barely a few days into our reluctant partnership, and I’ve already sprinted past forgiveness. I’m well on my way toward reconciliation.
I don’t know how to feel about that.
“Help me look through these?” I ask instead of all the other questions crowding my throat. “There has to be something we can use.”
He nods, and we work in companionable silence for a while. But his question echoes in my head: What happens if I succeed?
The inn or the resort.
In my head, I let myself imagine choosing the inn. Walking away from the resort. Standing up to my father and saying no, this isn’t what I want.
The thought is terrifying. And exhilarating.
And against all odds, Byron is the one who’s nudging me toward it.