Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
The Future Looms
GHOST
T he conference departures lasted for hours, with crowds of people catching shuttles at various times. The front turnabout at the resort was mobbed and I felt like a maniac, guiding vehicles here and there, lifting luggage for writers, and helping people check flights at the front desk. Luckily, the storm had cleared out, and Denver was pretty quick about digging out after snow. Most flights were showing on-time departures or short delays not related to weather, and by six o’clock, the hotel seemed to breathe a sigh of relief as the familiar calm settled over the property.
The place wasn’t empty—a few writers had stayed longer for retreats or vacations, and we had a few other guests, but the weekend ahead looked relatively light, and on the heels of that, we’d have some Thanksgiving vacationers staying.
Antonio had promised to handle the details of arranging a traditional feast for those who would be joining us, but otherwise, we’d be returning to business as usual. Except for the small issue of a wedding, if my sister still wanted to do it, now that Finn was here.
I stopped through the bar as things wound down for the evening to check on how things were going with Wiley spending the week away to get to know his son.
I’d texted with Emily in the morning, letting her know that I’d be swamped until most of the conference attendees were gone, and she assured me it was no problem and promised we’d meet up later. I was getting ready to text her when I found her in the bar.
Monroe was behind the bar, Brainiac at her side, and my heart gave a quick stutter when I spotted Emily sitting at one end, a glass of wine and her laptop in front of her.
“Hey Ghost,” Monroe said, making a dramatic expression indicating Emily with her eyes as if I might not have noticed her there. Sometimes I thought the Kasper Ridge Resort gossip network was more effective than any emergency alert system could possibly be.
“What’s up?” Brainiac asked. “How’s the new baby?”
“He’s good,” I said, moving toward Emily at the end of the bar. The fading afternoon light from the high windows caught brighter strands in her dark hair. She looked beautiful. She glanced at me and gave a little wave and a smile, and I took the seat at her side, relishing the warm intimacy I felt there. “You guys have met Emily?”
“Not officially,” Brainiac said. He turned to Emily. “You’re the writer working on a story about the treasure?”
“I am,” Emily said. I half expected her to introduce herself formally, but she just added, “Nice to meet you.” Was it odd that I didn’t know her last name? I shrugged off the thought. Her room had been booked in her roommate’s name, and there’d been no real reason to ask her. Still, it felt strange to be so close to someone and realize you didn’t know their whole name.
“So, what have you guys figured out that we missed?” Monroe asked, leaning across the bar, her weight on her elbows.
“Emily suggested we go back to the map and see if there was anything there we didn’t catch before,” I told them.
“And?” Brainiac looked intrigued.
“The cross,” Emily said. “We thought it might relate to the photo Archie had, the one where Lola and Marvin are under the Kasper Ridge Worship arch in their wedding clothes?”
“Oh yeah,” Monroe said, looking between us.
“We found the arch about two miles south of town,” I told her. “And there was a symbol that led to another one carved into a tree. A number. 515 or 525 maybe. But we searched room 515 last night and didn’t find anything, so maybe we’re on the wrong path.”
“No other clues by the arch?” Brainiac asked.
“Well, Aubrey went into labor right then, so we got a little distracted,” I laughed.
“If nothing was in 515, I could help check out the other rooms,” Monroe offered.
I glanced at Emily, who pushed her laptop shut. “Sounds good to me,” she said.
“Yeah, okay. And we can check 505 and 535 if we need to, but it really looked like a one or a two.”
Emily pulled out her phone and laid it on the bar face-up, the photo she took of the marking enlarged for Brainiac and Monroe.
“Yeah, it does,” Brainiac agreed. “We might be able to sharpen this image if we throw it into an editor. Could you send it to me?”
“Sure,” Emily said, taking back the phone and texting the photo to him when he gave her his number.
“I’ll see what I can do when I head home tonight.”
“In the meantime, can we go search?” Monroe asked, her smile wide and bright. “I haven’t done treasure hunting stuff in forever.”
“Let’s go,” I said, sliding off my stool.
“Good luck,” Brainiac called as the three of us headed for the elevator. I’d thought I would keep a reasonable distance from Emily, given that we weren’t alone. I didn’t know if she’d be comfortable letting those around the resort in on what was developing between us. But she stepped close to my side and took my hand, throwing a smile at me over her shoulder as she found my eyes. Monroe made a little humming sound, but didn’t say a word. I caught her eye, and she raised an eyebrow and winked at me.
Monroe, Emily, and I tore apart room 525, and then headed to 505 and 535, finding nothing. We drew the line at actually disassembling the rooms—I didn’t want to pull down wallpaper or lift carpeting, but we did feel around for holes or hinges that might indicate hidden doors or things under the carpet that didn’t belong there. Disappointment made my chest feel heavier.
“Nothing,” Monroe said, blowing a strand of her blond hair from her face as we finished up the last room. “We looked in light fixtures, felt around all the shelves, got pretty personal with every inch of these rooms. I just don’t think there’s anything here.”
“How well did Marvin tend to hide stuff?” Emily asked.
“He hid stuff like he wanted it to be found,” I told her. “So it seems pretty clear we’re on the wrong track.” I realized I wanted to solve this thing—not just for me, but for Emily. I wanted to be part of her achieving her dream.
We closed the last door and returned to the hallway, the three of us ambling slowly toward the elevator. Emily slipped her hand into mine again and I gave it a light squeeze.
“What else could three numbers mean?” Monroe asked. “A time? A date?”
“Did your uncle get married on May fifteenth or twenty-fifth?” Emily asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. But if that’s what the numbers mean, how does that help us?”
Emily shook her head and blew out a frustrated huff of breath. It had been so exciting, believing maybe we’d figured something out, that Uncle Marvin’s intent hadn’t been for us to sue his old nemesis, but to actually find something meaningful. “I hate that this whole thing seems to be about money. Or about revenge,” I told them on our way back to the lobby.
“Yeah,” Monroe said. “It doesn’t really fit with the image of your uncle I’ve got.”
“Don’t give up, guys,” Emily said, her voice lifting with hope. “I bet we just need to think a bit more about the number. You were clearly meant to find it. We just have to figure out what it means.”
Her enthusiasm lifted my spirits a little, and I hoped she was right.
We said goodbye to Monroe at the lobby and Emily and I stepped out of the elevator, each of us looking around the quiet space. We kept the common spaces of the resort lit all night, but it felt a little eerie now, with the previously ever-present groups of writers gone.
“Should I walk you back to your room?” I asked Emily, suddenly shy, awkward around her. I didn’t want to say goodnight. Or goodbye. I wanted her to spend as much time with me as she was willing to, but I also didn’t want to push her.
“Sure,” she said, taking my hand and leading me back into the elevator. Once inside, she punched the button for her floor and then tugged me toward her. The ride felt short because I spent it remembering how incredible it was to kiss Emily, how much I loved the way she responded to my touch. How incredible she was.
“Come on.” She kept my hand in hers as we exited the elevator and headed to her room, and as soon as we were over the threshold, it was like a dam broke loose. The connection between us was chemical, undoubtedly—our atoms seemed to align in a way that made it nearly impossible to resist touching her, holding her, being as near her as was humanly possible. But there was something else, and I suspected it was the way she’d listened to me back at the hotel by the hospital, the way her eyes had filled when I’d told her about the accident, the way she’d seemed to understand me.
I guided her backward to her bed, kissing her every step of the way. Once her knees hit the mattress, I pushed her gently back and followed her down, dropping to my own knees on the floor and looking up at her from between her knees. It had been difficult, staying a reasonable distance from her as we’d searched the rooms with Monroe. Now that pent-up want was releasing, and I did my best to maintain some control.
I let my hands slide up her thighs, feeling the softness and muscle beneath the denim she wore, and then moved my fingers to her waistband. When her jeans were unfastened, I helped her slide them down, taking them down one beautiful leg and then the other, and dropping them in a pile on the floor. And then I took my time, kissing a path up the inside of each beautiful limb, lingering on the soft tender skin of her thighs, and finally dropping soft kisses like promises across the fabric of her underwear.
Emily sighed and shivered through it all, and just when I was about to move the fabric aside to taste her, she slid away.
“No,” she said, her voice heavy with need. “I don’t have the patience for that. I need you now.”
Excitement roared inside me, and I didn’t argue, pushing off my own jeans as I climbed to meet her on the bed. Our mouths met again, more frenzied this time, as Emily’s hands explored my body, each of us releasing a gasp when she found what she sought and held me firmly in her palm.
“This,” she whispered into my ear. “This is what I need.”
“Not going to argue,” I managed, working to remain still while my body wanted to explode into action.
Emily guided me to her entrance, which was slick and ready, and then she arched up under me, taking the tip inside her and sending my need for her skyrocketing.
“You’re so fucking incredible.” My thoughts became words as I pushed the rest of the way in and she hissed out, “Yesss.”
It was overwhelming, being next to her. Being inside her was like being on a different plane of existence, one where my life felt foreign, and I wanted to question everything and nothing all at once, but there was too much intensity to think rational thoughts.
She pushed on my shoulder and pressed her knee into me, and I rolled, taking her with me.
And if Emily beneath me was sexy, I already knew that Emily on top of me was something I’d replay in my mind for the rest of my life. She straddled me, her dark hair falling down around her face, tickling my cheeks. Her breasts, heavy and full, jutted forward, moving with every slide of her hips.
She moved like I imagined a mermaid or a siren would, undulating her hips and taking me deeper—controlling the motion entirely—in a way that I thought might actually drive me to madness. And when she arched back, bracing herself on my chest and throwing her head back, all I could do was hold on and desperately try to maintain some modicum of control.
I kept my hands on her hips, but she was in charge, and I watched her tense and gather, and inch toward her release as my own followed a parallel path. And when Emily unspooled above me, I had a front row seat, every cell inside me exploding with the release before she collapsed forward, dragging her hair to one side and crumpling over my chest with her face just an inch or so from mine.
It was a different feeling this time, watching her relax against my chest, and the word mine flickered through my brain. I wanted her to be mine, I wanted to keep her, but we hadn’t talked about a future at all. I wanted to, and decided that I’d bring it up. But it could wait until we were dressed again.
When we regained our breath, I opened my eyes to find her watching me.
“Hi,” I whispered.
“Hi,” she said.
There was something in her gaze, something I should have asked about. She looked...worried? Or like something was on her mind. I couldn’t find the right words to inquire, and the worry moved from her expression as I watched. My own happiness was a visceral thing, moving through me, overwhelming every thought, every worry.
I’d never felt happier than I did with Emily in my arms.
We continued that way for the next few days, Emily and I taking our own paths during the day but coming together at night, in her room or mine, to have mind-blowing sex and to talk about anything and everything. Despite the quiet of the guest load at the resort, Aubrey had kept things tense by announcing that she still intended to have a wedding, though she was less equipped to help pull it together than I’d hoped she would be when we’d made the initial plan. I raced around like a crazy man trying to ensure my sister’s desires would all be met.
During those days, Emily said she was making good progress on her story, building the background of the resort and the details of the hunt so far. I’d happily handed over all the artifacts of the hunt for her to review again, hoping they’d help her or that she’d find some new clue we’d missed.
Through it all, I had that same sense that something was there, some last bit of hesitation inside Emily, preventing her from giving me one hundred percent of herself, but I was too happy to worry about it.
I was relieved that Aubrey had relented on dragging everyone including Finn out to the arch, which would now involve a snowy trek and a lot of people standing in the freezing cold. Instead, she’d agreed to using the back patio for the ceremony and the restaurant for the reception.
Aubrey had made a point of inviting Emily, and had even asked for her help with a few details, which had gotten Emily out of her room and involved with the other staff—my friends. I loved seeing her with them and marveled at how easily she fit into our family here. It was impossible not to think about asking her to stay, or asking if there wasn’t some other way we could be together in the future. I just had to figure out how to word it.
The evening before the wedding, most of us were gathered in the bar, Aubrey and Wiley having brought tiny Finn in a little cocoon-like thing that Wiley wore strapped to his chest. I didn’t think I’d ever seen the guy look prouder.
“So it’s not a number?” Lucy was asking Monroe and Brainiac, who had finally gotten around to playing with the photo Emily had taken.
“I don’t think it is,” Brainiac told her, turning his laptop screen so she could see it.
Fake Tom peered over his wife’s shoulder and squinted at the screen. “The fives are letters.”
“Oooh,” Emily said, joining them. “So it isn’t 525. It’s S-2-S.”
“Well, that clears things right up,” Aubrey said, rolling her eyes. “Uncle Marv was off his rocker.”
“That’s been established,” I pointed out. “But I think he probably had something in mind here.”
“We just have to figure out what it is,” Emily said. I watched as she debated with Lucy and Brainiac, chatted with my sister, and fell so naturally into the group of us that it almost felt like she had been here all along.
I wanted to solve the hunt for her because I knew it was what she wanted—it was her make or break moment. But when I’d brought up my stress over not making progress quickly enough to ensure she’d get the final piece, she’d told me not to worry about the progress. She said there was plenty of backstory and enough details that it was already turning into a compelling read—even if we didn’t actually solve the puzzle my uncle had left.
But I wanted to. Not just for us, but for her. I wanted to give her that. In fact, increasingly, I was finding there were many more things I wanted to give her, but I knew it was still very early. And there was still something there, something I couldn’t figure out, but it was some final piece between us. Maybe it was Emily’s worry about our different geographies, or maybe it was just the importance of the cover piece she was working on.
We’d grown closer over these last days, talking long into the nights about our lives, our families. I wanted to meet her parents—the mother who’d given up a storied career as a chef to raise Emily, and the father who was stern and stoic, but who she loved with all her heart. Maybe it was the loss of my own parents so long ago that made the idea of hers so intriguing. Or maybe it was just my curiosity to meet the people who’d created the woman I was falling in love with.
I didn’t want to rush things, but increasingly, I was starting to see that my future didn’t lie here at Kasper Ridge. My future lay with Emily. If she agreed, of course.
Looking at her now, laughing with my friends, I suspected she would.
That night, we lay together in my bed, the moonlight from outside the window slicing across the foot of the bed and creating a glow in the room.
“What will you do when you get back to San Diego?” I asked, hoping to lead into a conversation about the future. About us.
“Well,” she drew the word out, as if thinking about it. “Turn in my story, which will depend on whether we solve this thing.” She traced circles on my chest as she talked, her warm body nestled at my side. “And I’ll need to prep my parents a bit for the idea of me leaving San Diego.”
“They want you to stay?”
I felt her stiffen slightly beneath me, but then she rolled over, covering me with her naked body. “They worry,” she said. “And I worry about them.”
I wanted to ask more questions, to understand what might keep the parents of an ambitious and capable woman in her mid-twenties from releasing her to explore her life, and the world. But Emily had other ideas, and within a few minutes, she’d slithered down my body and my mind scattered.