Chapter 12
CASSANDRA
I don’t know why I didn’t tell Blake about what happened that night. Maybe because it was easier that way—and it absolutely was. But maybe I just wanted to hold on to that moment, keeping it mine, tucked away where no one would ever find it.
But despite our rocky start, the first couple of weeks of the review went surprisingly smoothly.
I worked half with Lila, and half with Blake.
Getting to know Lila was nice—she was smart and, though curt, funny sometimes too.
I could see how Blake would have enjoyed being friends with her.
How he’d wanted to protect his friend from harm.
Working with Blake was more of a challenge at first. Mostly because of me. Because no matter how much I tried to shove it aside, I couldn’t stop seeing it.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the way he’d opened up to me. The emotion he’d expressed while talking about his family. The way he knew what happened to me at my old job and admired what I’d done.
And I couldn’t stop seeing the way he’d looked at me when he showed me his need for me.
Because of this, and because we’d both acknowledged that our interactions so far hadn’t been strictly professional, our first few days were slightly awkward, our conversations stilted.
We kept our distance, but still managed to bump up against each other, both in words and body.
We’d give each other too-large berths when passing each other, stepping awkwardly aside when grabbing files and pointing out things on laptops.
We took exaggerated care to ensure we didn’t bring up anything tricky or personal, unless it was strictly related to the business.
But by the end of the first week, we’d both started to relax, and I commended myself for doing a good job of shoving down the electric heat I felt around Blake.
I still felt it, but it wasn’t quite as intense as it had been, so long as I made an effort to contain it.
It was easy if we butted heads about something—which happened several times.
But there were these moments when that heat came roaring back to life.
When Blake leaned over me to look at something on my computer, forgetting to keep his distance, and his now-almost-familiar scent filled my nostrils.
When he handed me my coffee in the morning and our fingers brushed.
In those moments, I’d be hit with a kind of pain—an exquisite ache of a feeling I’d never get to have again with him.
That was the only reason I was feeling that way, I knew. Because he was something I’d never have. I was sure if I’d known him in some other capacity—as a man I’d dated even—I wouldn’t feel so strongly.
Would I?
Or would I still get a spurt of adrenaline when I saw him smile?
Would I still yearn for a moment when we’d accidentally touch, or when we’d argue about something with enough of a volley that by the end we were almost physically affected—my chest heaving and having to turn away so I didn’t…
what, grab him by the collar and smack him?
Or try to kiss him?
Over those first couple of weeks, Harrington Consulting was getting to know the ins and outs of our business—the business plans, the annual reports, the financials. While Lila began interviewing employees, Blake and I spent a lot of time together going over all our planning structures.
I learned more and more each day about how Blake Harrington ticked. He was thorough. Methodical. Thoughtful.
Irritatingly able to push all of my buttons at once.
But even though we continued not to see eye to eye on some things—like what we’d been doing at the resort to rectify the errors George had made—Blake listened to my point of view.
He considered it, weighed it against his experience, and if he still had an issue with it, told me in a way that left room for a more flexible, nuanced approach.
Although sometimes, I felt like he said things just to get a rise out of me, too. Usually it was inconsequential stuff, like one time how he insisted I had a too-elaborate series of keystrokes to do a command in a spreadsheet.
“You know you can just right-click there, right?”
“I don’t want to right-click,” I said, leaning into my computer.
We’d been sitting next to each other in the boardroom that time—not too close, of course—and Lila had gone to get coffees. I’d tried to replicate my way of doing it, but with his eyes on me, I couldn’t remember the keys to press. “Do you mind?” I’d moved my laptop sideways.
“There’s also a button that does it,” he said. “Right there.” He pointed vaguely at my keyboard.
I’d thrown a pencil at him.
Then Lila had come back, and we’d grown serious, as if we’d been doing something wrong.
Which we hadn’t been.
Had we?
Somehow, two weeks had passed, and it was already time for a check-in meeting. Lila had suggested we do it at a cafe in town for a change in scenery.
Lila, Eli, and Jude were all there. Griffin was still off wherever he was, though he’d sent me a text a few days before telling me he was at least alive and would be back ‘soon’.
Chelsea had called in sick, though I suspected she’d overdone it the night before.
It was the first time her social life had impeded on her work, so I hadn’t pressed.
Maybe she was sick, anyway. I hadn’t had the chance to check on her.
We’d taken care of everyone’s check-in items and had ordered food when Blake had turned to me and asked if I could share some more personal history about my mom.
“My mother?” I’d asked, surprised. This was outside Blake’s and my tacit understanding of safe topics.
But we weren’t alone. And it was related to the business—Mom was stitched into every part of this resort. Since we’d started the review, I’d been thinking about her a lot—probably because her name was all over the old documents; in the annual review photos; on every piece of correspondence.
“Yeah. What was she like?” Blake asked, stuffing a forkful of salad into his mouth. “I feel like I know who she was, but I don’t know what she was like, if you know what I mean.”
Something went warm inside my chest. It was like he knew how I’d been feeling. I was touched. But Blake was sitting next to me, and I was also suddenly keenly aware of his leg under the table, only inches from mine.
“She built this place up from nothing, right?” he asked.
“Yes. But she didn’t intend to buy it,” I said, tearing my eyes from his.
Everyone’s eyes were on me. At first I was worried they somehow knew about the warmth tingling through me.
But when I realized they were waiting for me to continue talking, I relaxed, settling back in my chair.
The noise of the busy cafe fell into the background as I thought back to the story Dad had told us so many times.
“When Mom’s parents passed, she got a small inheritance. They sat on it for a while, but Dad was really hating his job. He was doing some kind of insurance work in Cincinnati—it’s where his job had taken them.”
Even though they’d also heard it a hundred times, even Jude and Eli had their ears perked as they ate.
“She always had a dream of running a hotel, and when Dad said he’d rather stay at home and look after kids than do the grind every day, they’d started looking for a place.”
“Did they always know they wanted to settle in Vermont?” Lila asked.
I shook my head. “No. They looked all over the Midwest, mostly at small hotels in smaller towns—Mom always figured she’d run a smaller one for a while, grow her chops and investment, then move onto something bigger.
But it didn’t occur to her to look back in their hometown until Dad casually mentioned it. ”
“Wait, so both your parents were from here too?” Blake asked. I guessed their research hadn’t gone that far back.
“Born and raised.”
“Why didn’t she look at the resort first?” he asked. “It had been shut down for years, right?”
“Yes.” I took a sip of my water, hiding my smile at the rapt attention around the table.
I loved how invested everyone was. I loved that it felt like us coming back to run this place—and getting the Harringtons to help us fix it—still felt like exactly the right thing.
Even if there was that distraction of Blake.
“The Rolling Hills resort used to be called the Vista Grand,” I continued, “and it had been hugely popular in the 1920s and 30s. But during the war, visits plummeted.”
“Dad thought the owners’ sons had been killed in action, didn’t he?” Jude asked.
Jude was especially into the history of this place. He really ought to work with Dad on doing some kind of actual research project—if Dad ever came back.
And if they didn’t get distracted by silly ghost stories.
But I nodded. “It was our dad who’d been into the lore of the place,” I explained to Blake and Lila.
“He figured the previous owners had been so heartbroken they didn’t have the drive to renew the place once the war was over.
In any case, they ended up leaving it to a cousin, who kept the building chugging along for another decade or so but didn’t really do any major upkeep.
He started shutting down rooms when they needed work, and according to the records, they finally sold it to a developer in the 60s with only about 50 operational rooms.”
“How sad,” Lila said.
It was sad. I hated thinking about these bereaved parents, too devastated to greet the visitors they’d once loved. Watching their baby fall into ruin.
“But the developer didn’t do anything with it?” Blake said.
“That’s right. That’s when it went fallow. Dad said he remembered the building kind of looming over the town for years. The local kids all said it was haunted.”
“Dad still says that,” Eli said.
I rolled my eyes, but Blake’s eyebrows went up. “Oh yeah, the ghost in room—”
“114,” Jude supplied.