Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Post-It Peril
ARCHIE – AKA: GHOST
“ S ay it again, I dare you.” Aubrey stood next to me, glaring up at me with her hands clenched into fists at her side. She was like a feral house cat—unpredictable and violent. “I dare you, Archie. Don’t think for one second that this basketball I’m smuggling under my shirt is gonna keep me from tackling you and beating you into submission.”
My sister was barely five feet tall, but her threats were legit. She was strong. And she had a couple black belts that only made her that much more dangerous. Being an adult, a pregnant one at that, didn’t seem to curb her willingness to grapple around like an alligator wrestler, either.
“Whoa there,” Wiley said, striding coolly across the lobby to approach the desk. The only person on earth who could calm my sister was her longtime boyfriend, Wiley Blanchard, who was also the bar manager at our resort.
“You just don’t comment on a pregnant lady’s physique,” Aubrey sniffed, her back straightening and her chin going up in the air. To my horror, her bottom lip was beginning to wobble. I could handle my sister tough and attempting to beat the crap out of me, but I couldn’t take it when she cried. And since she’d gotten pregnant, her emotions were as unpredictable as her sneak attacks had been when we were little.
Wiley shot me a questioning look. “You didn’t insult my girlfriend, did you?”
“I didn’t, man. I don’t know much, but I do know better than to piss off my sister. Especially now. I just asked if she could move the bump off the desk for a second because I thought I left the Post-Its over there.” I pointed to the little neon pad on the registration desk where Aubrey’s baby bump had been resting a moment before. She was the exact right height to perch on the stool behind the counter and lean sideways to rest her increasingly big belly on the desk.
“Your slight was implied,” Aubrey sniffed, crossing her arms in front of her. “You have no idea how heavy this thing is. I can’t help it if I need to find unique ways to take the pressure off my back.”
“I’m sorry, sis. You know I’m excited about being an uncle. I really was just trying to find the Post-It notes.”
Aubrey stared at me for a moment, as if trying to decipher my true intentions, and then her face crumpled, and she wandered around the desk and practically fell into Wiley’s arms. “What’s wrong with me, you guys? This alien life form is taking over my entire personality.” This was a muffled moan uttered against Wiley’s chest.
I watched as Wiley’s face softened. He was like the sister-whisperer, and I knew the power he had over my sister was one hundred percent due to the love they had for one another. I wondered if I’d ever feel anything remotely close. Either way, I was glad it was Wiley who got to deal with my sister like this. I wouldn’t have the first clue.
“It’s okay honey,” Wiley said, wrapping her in his arms. “You’re busy building an actual human being. That’s gotta be exhausting.”
She nodded against him. “It’s awful.”
“I thought women loved being pregnant,” I said, exchanging a bewildered look with Wiley over my sister’s head. “All that glowing and blossoming?”
“Propaganda!” Aubrey moaned. “I can’t see my feet, and oh my god, the things that have been happening to my lady bits...”
A shiver of horror went through me, and I tried to will myself not to hear whatever was coming next. This was my sister, after all.
“And no one tells you about all the gooey stuff that comes out?—”
“How ‘bout a nap?” Wiley asked her, smoothing her hair from her face as he looked down at her.
I was ridiculously relieved that she hadn’t finished that particular thought. I owed Wiley a raise.
“A nap. Yes. But no funny business. You know that’s how this happened in the first place.”
My sister and Wiley had been together pretty much since we’d begun refurbishing the Kasper Ridge Resort, which my Uncle Marvin left to both of us in his will. It had taken literal years of work, but the place was humming along now, turning a profit, and making a real name for itself as some of the best skiing and accommodations south of Aspen and Vail. And now that the resort was thriving, it was beginning to feel like maybe it was time for me to move on. I just wasn’t sure to where, and I needed to finish up one thing first.
“No funny business, I promise. I’ll just tuck you in. I have to get back down and finish inventory for this writers’ conference.” Wiley shot a meaningful look at me as he said this last bit. We’d all been a little overworked, getting the place ready for a conference that had rented almost every single room and would span a week just before the ski season kicked off, but I was willing to take on extra duties if it meant not seeing my sister cry.
“I heard it was mostly romance writers,” Aubrey moaned. “Don’t they know what romance leads to?”
I held in a chuckle as Wiley led my sister off toward the elevator, and reached for the Post-It notes that had started the latest close call with Aubrey’s hair-trigger emotions.
Everything seemed in order, and we were expecting the first arrivals for the conference early the next morning. Unfortunately, we were anticipating some weather during the week as well, and I wasn’t sure how that might impact the travel plans of five hundred writers, but I hoped it would all work out. It was a boon for the resort, that much was certain. Several of the guests had rented rooms that extended well beyond the week of the conference, and I’d heard that a lot of the rentable properties outside the resort were booked as well.
We had a few guests checking out the following day, but the hotel was emptier than it had been in months as the staff braced for our first big convention.
“Kitchen’s stocked, gift shop and mountain shop inventory are tapped up. We’ve got a few extra bodies for housekeeping, and maintenance is on hand for that elevator. It’s been running fine though, no issues in the past few days.” Antonio gave me this report as evening fell outside, draping the snow-tipped peaks of the mountains in violet shadow.
Antonio had taken on the role of general manager, and we’d been spending a good deal of time together coordinating for this event.
“We’re as ready as we’re gonna be,” I told him as we made our way out the back doors of the building to the east patio, where the firepit was roaring and familiar faces dotted the circle of Adirondack chairs around the fire. “And good call giving Mickey a heads up about the elevator. I would hate someone to get stuck in it again.”
“We should be good,” Antonio said, claiming a chair and sinking into it as the light from the fire lit his face.
The air was cool and crisp. We’d had a warm fall so far, but it had been punctuated with a couple of snowstorms that brought in frigid temperatures, reminding us all that this was high-altitude Colorado and the weather was the one thing you never wanted to assume you understood up here.
“Hey guys,” I said, claiming an empty chair.
“What’s good, Ghost?” Sasquatch grinned at me from the adjacent chair, his dog Roscoe curled at his feet. “We ready?”
“You tell me. You have some moderately adventurous adventures teed up for our writers?”
“Yep. CeeCee’s got five or six short hikes around the resort lined up, and we’ve got some rock climbing planned if the weather holds. We’ll see what these folks are up for.” Sasquatch—whose real name was Travis—and CeeCee ran the adventure shop on the first level of the resort. The shop was a newer addition to Kasper Ridge’s offerings, but when the couple had won a national contest that gave CeeCee’s original shop in town all kinds of exposure, they expanded. Now there were two locations, and Sasquatch spent most of his time running this location.
“Planning any hikes to the backcountry cabins?” Monroe asked, giggling as she reached for the hand of the man at her side.
“Definitely not,” Sasquatch shot back. Monroe—whose real name was Annalee—had gotten caught in a snowstorm in those cabins with Mateo, whom she was engaged to now.
“The romance writers in the group might be up for it,” Mateo laughed now.
“What would you know about romance writers?” Monroe shot back. “You been reading steamy stories when I’m not around?”
Mateo chuckled, his love for her clear in the gaze he rested on Monroe’s pretty face. “Just saying, if anyone’s looking for romance...getting snowed in isn’t a bad way to go.”
“I don’t know how romantic it was. No heat, no indoor plumbing...” Monroe said.
“Getting snowed in back there is unlikely to have the same outcome for most people as it did for you,” Brainiac pointed out.
“Always looking at the bright side of things,” Monroe said, rolling her eyes.
“I’m an optimist,” Brainiac said, managing to look offended beneath his distinguished salt and pepper scruff. He was older than the rest of us, and most of us had had to call him “Sir” back in our navy days. Now, the man whose real name was Harrison was married to Penny, and he answered more often to “Daddy,” since their daughter Maggie had begun talking.
“If you’re an optimist, I’m Tom Cruise,” Fake Tom shot back. Will was Fake Tom’s real name.
“In your dreams,” Monroe laughed.
“Not anymore,” he answered. “I found my dreams up here.” He wrapped his arms more tightly around the woman in his lap—Lucy Dale. The couple had been some of the first people up here with Aubrey and me, bringing in the combined construction know-how needed to rebuild this place.
It seemed like everyone had found a reason to stay here at Kasper Ridge. They’d all found the person to complete them, discovered the real treasure at the end of their own personal hunts. It was part of the reason I knew this wasn’t where I ultimately belonged, no matter what my crazy Uncle Marvin might have intended for me. The resort had always been more Aubrey’s than mine, and once she and Wiley were settled, I intended to give it to her officially.
“Hey, what’s the verdict on the hunt now, Ghost? The lawsuit?” Lucy asked.
Ugh. The lawsuit. “I don’t know.” I leaned forward and rubbed the back of my neck as I gazed into the dancing flames before me. “On one hand, I feel like it’s what Uncle Marvin wanted us to do—get him credit for all those movies he wrote that were basically stolen from him...”
“But?” Antonio prompted from my side.
“But something about it doesn’t feel right. Does it make sense to ask a family to pay for the sins of someone who’s not even alive anymore?” Rudy Fusterburg had been my uncle’s partner when they’d worked in Hollywood, and then he became his enemy, after Uncle Marvin had stolen Rudy’s fiancée, my Aunt Lola. In retaliation, Rudy had erased any history of their work together writing dozens of movies in Hollywood, potentially cheating my uncle out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties. My uncle had hated the man, and the treasure hunt he’d set up for us to follow as we took over the resort had led us to this knowledge. But now Uncle Marvin and Rudy were both gone. Did it make sense for us to try to exact some kind of vengeance in Uncle Marvin’s name?
“It just doesn’t seem like something Uncle Marvin would do, to be honest.” I said, giving voice to my concerns. “It’s just so hard to imagine him hating anyone, let alone hating them enough to go through this kind of effort to get revenge at any cost, you know?”
“You think we missed something?” Since Fake Tom had been one of the first to arrive in Kasper Ridge, he’d been roped into the treasure hunt from the beginning.
I shrugged. We’d been through tunnels and hidden doors, found literal “booty” and dead ends. The hunt had been so crazy it was hard to know what my uncle’s actual intention had been. “It’s totally possible. We made a lot of assumptions based on an old pile of movie scripts.”
“He definitely wrote those,” Monroe pointed out.
“Yeah, but did he want us to prove it?” I asked.
She shook her head slowly, the firelight catching golden strands in her hair. “No idea.”
“I guess I feel like it makes more sense to let the past be the past. We’ve all made mistakes. We all have things we’d change if we could. Should we punish the living for wrongs against the dead?” The words, as they slipped off my tongue, made my guts twist inside me and I realized I’d just spoken more about my own past than my uncle’s.
Everyone around the fire seemed to realize it too, and the group fell into silence, only the occasional crackle of a log in the fire or the howl of a distant coyote breaking the heavy mantel of the night. My own mind wandered away, exploring ideas I’d been having about starting fresh somewhere new, somewhere no one knew about the single event that seemed to define me even if I didn’t want it to. The problem was, I wasn’t sure where to go or what I’d do once I got there.
“You’re doing okay though, right?” Sasquatch asked quietly, leaning close. He’d been pretty clear when he’d come up here that he was worried about me. All my old squadron mates were. I wanted to tell them everything was fine, that I didn’t spend my nights fixated on the awful events of my past. But I wasn’t going to lie to my friends—we’d been through too much together and they’d see through it anyway. Instead, I just didn’t bring up details.
“Yeah, of course. I’m okay.” And I was. I had a successful resort to run—had basically resurrected the legacy that had been so important to Aubrey and me as kids, even though it had looked impossible at the beginning. I was busy for now. I was surrounded by friends—a found family of my own making.
I wasn’t sure I could claim to be happy.
But I was okay. I was content enough.
Eventually, everyone drifted off to the staff housing down the hill from the resort, while I headed back upstairs with Antonio to what was starting to feel like the bachelor wing of the hotel. When we’d begun construction, one whole wing had been staff housing and it had felt a lot like old squadron days, all of us just down the hall from one another. But now it seemed like everyone had coupled off, and the family housing on the resort property was a better fit. Houses were built, and there was basically a tiny suburb of Kasper Ridge down there now—a park, a playground. Hell, they’d probably started a homeowner’s association.
Despite the increasingly family feel of the resort, I appreciated that my friends still made a point of hanging out up here after work when they could. I didn’t have any true family besides my sister. But I had my friends, and it seemed pretty obvious they were going to have to be enough for me. They were probably more than I deserved, anyway.