5. Bar
BAR
The honeymoon suite, like every other part of the lodge that Bar had experienced so far, was freezing.
Given his chilly reception downstairs, literally and figuratively, he found himself briefly wondering if they might have gone so far as to sabotage the boiler on purpose—no, that was ridiculous. If nothing else, they wouldn’t want to ruin things for their other guests. Although he wouldn’t be surprised, under the circumstances, if they left him with a flurry of one-star Yelp reviews for his new lodge business.
“I don’t even want the lodge,” he murmured. “I just want what rightfully belongs to us.”
He released a little of his inner heat from the banked furnace inside him, warming himself up even if his socks were still clammy. He took off his shoes, peeled off the damp socks, and put both shoes and socks on one of the old-fashioned iron radiators in the optimistic hope that there would be heat flowing through it at some point soon.
Even without heat, the carpet was nice on his bare feet. He wriggled his toes in it and wandered around checking out the room. There was a huge bathroom with a sunken tub that looked like it had massage jets. He’d have to try it later, although right now the idea of bathing in cold water wasn’t exactly filling him with joyful anticipation.
Joy ... the one nice thing that had happened to him on this trip so far. He wondered how she was doing and whether she was settling in all right. Her sister had looked like she planned to sharpen her crutches into spears and impale him at the earliest opportunity, but Joy was all friendly, mellow warmth.
A real estate agent. Had Hester summoned her up here because of it? Had their meeting on the road been staged somehow?
Bar shook his head in rejection of the idea. That was his inner Dad talking. Everything was about deals and angles; everyone you met was looking for ways to get what they wanted at your expense, so you had to beat them to the punch.
Dad loved phrases like that.
Beat them to the punch. Get them on the ropes. Sucker punch and send them down for the count.
Fighting and winning, that was what Dad cared about. People weren’t friends, they were potential adversaries and rivals. The only sure loyalty was the kind you paid for, and that lasted as long as it took for someone else to offer more.
But some people weren’t like that. It was true that most of the people Bar had grown up around had been. But there were people out there who were genuine, people who wore their hearts on their sleeves. And he found it hard to believe that Joy’s sincere warmth was feigned.
That doesn’t mean she might not have an angle, though.
He tried his lawyer’s number to see if he could get any more work done, but after three dropped call signals in a row, he sent a text letting the firm know that the lodge’s cell service was shaky and he would check in when he could.
While it blinked on the little dots that indicated it was trying to send, Bar padded across the lush carpet to the window and looked out at dusk falling on swirling snow.
The cars were already covered with a white blanket. Below him, someone from the lodge—he couldn’t identify them, just a dark, fast-moving figure in a winter coat and wool hat—crossed the white expanse to an outbuilding.
There was a sudden thump from somewhere in the bowels of the hotel’s infrastructure, and the radiators began faintly ticking, as if hot water was flowing through them.
“Shocking,” he murmured. “I think we’re not going to die of hypothermia after all.”
Not that he was really in much danger of that. But being cold was still uncomfortable, even for him.
If the rooms were starting to get heat, it might be warmer downstairs. The idea of getting some work done still appealed. If nothing else, it would help get his mind off Joy and the entire confusing mix of feelings that she inspired in him.
.... Okay, most of the feelings weren’t all that confusing. They were very straightforward feelings. It was just that he wasn’t used to having those feelings about someone he’d just met.
Bar was a very reserved person, in general. It was partly how he’d grown up, and partly nature. It took him a long time to feel things for someone, to trust someone—or to experience sexual desire for someone.
With Joy, all of this had kicked in upon meeting her, and especially when their hands touched, instant and powerful. It almost made him wonder if someone could have invented some kind of shifter pheromone, or a skin-borne contagion, something to lower his resistance and?—
No, that was Dad talking again. It was ridiculous and paranoid.
Still, he’d feel better if he could get some work done. Accomplish something real and tangible, outside the realm of feelings and love and trust, things he had little to no experience with.
He ran a hand across the windowsill. All of this might be his soon. He felt a deep, visceral satisfaction at that. Something about this place felt like home , as nowhere else ever had.
But he wondered if winning this particular game would matter to him at all if he drove away Joy in the process.
And that—the feeling that Joy might matter more than a hundred pieces of commercial property—was what he couldn’t quite bring himself to trust.
Yet he wanted to see her again. More than anything.