Chapter 3
ELI
TRACK: Bob Seger, “Still the Same”
I barely manage to whip my eyes back up to meet Reese’s before she turns back to face me.
And thank Christ, because if Reese Franco caught me checking out the way her shirt lifted up when she did that twisty thing, exposing the thinnest strip of bare skin above the hem of her pants and pushing out that one beautiful curve of side-boob, I know she’d give me hell.
More likely, she’d scream at me to get the hell out of her office.
Even though it’s not that flash of skin that has me frozen. It’s the moment before, when I opened the door, right before she turned and adjusted the music. She’d been singing.
No, not singing. Mouthing the words.
But she doesn’t have that beautiful, pained expression on her face anymore. She’s staring at me, a little line between her eyebrows indicating she’s pissed.
I clear my throat. “Hey, Reese.”
“Can I help you with something?” she says curtly.
I don’t think I’ve come to see her once here in her office. In fact, we tend to avoid each other like the plague. It’s not easy, seeing as she works at my resort.
Much to my fuckin’ chagrin.
I know my twin Cassandra hired Reese because she’s brilliant at what she does. But sometimes I’m convinced my sister also wanted to make my life difficult.
“How are you?” I ask, trying to kick this off pleasantly. What I’m about to tell her is going to piss her the fuck off, more than she already is. It’s the same thing that’s making my heart beat like a damn timpani.
“Fine,” Reese says, adjusting the little cactus on her desk. She only moves it a hair, though. Is she nervous?
I relax, just a hair.
But it doesn’t last. I’ve never been one to beat around the bush, so I clear my throat and say, “Listen, I just got off the phone with Neil.”
Reese leans back in her chair, closing her eyes. “Oh God.”
I hate how this makes my stomach churn. I know Reese isn’t looking forward to this show. But Chef’s Apprentice is the least of our issues right now. It’s what comes with it that’s going to make her lose her shit.
“Reese, I know you’re not a big fan of this show—”
Reese’s eyes fly open. “I never said that, Eli. I told you when you called me about this six months ago, that what I didn’t like was your booking them for my kitchen without even checking with me, or more importantly, Jacques!”
“Jacques seems to be okay with it now. Have you seen his socials?”
Reese’s eyes narrow. She’s still pissed. It’s okay, I knew that coming in here. I fold my arms. “Yes.” Jacques has been posting about the show nonstop for months.
“Jacques is okay with the show because I spent a month working on him to convince him that the disruption to our kitchen would be worth it for the exposure his role in the show would give him.”
“Bet he didn’t mind the fact he can openly fire whomever he wants while the show is airing.”
Reese lets out a breath. We both know I’m right.
That’s probably Jacques’ favorite part—he has to go through Reese for staffing decisions now—a rule my sister, CEO of the resort, implemented after his disastrous run with the previous manager, who lasted all of a month.
Jacques may be a world-renowned chef, but he has the people skills of a gnat.
“He’ll be disqualifying contestants, which is not exactly the same thing seeing as I didn’t hire them.”
I lean against the doorframe, scraping my hand over my face. Even through the cacophony behind me in the kitchen, the sound of my palm going over my stubble is audible in the quiet of her office. “I know I fucked up with the way I handled this, Reese.”
“Seems to be a pattern.” Her eyes never leave mine.
My stomach twists. Low blow. But she’s not wrong.
The brief time we dated before she worked here was nothing short of a disaster.
She was light then; full of vivacity where I was in the darkest place I’d ever been.
Mom had just passed, foisting the hotel she’d run for decades on all five of us siblings, and my wife, Kelly, who I’d poured my whole life into, had filed for divorce.
Our three-week fling had turned out to be a hot-as-fuck, painful-as-hell disaster.
Because of me.
Just like this is going to be. “Reese—” I begin, needing to spit it out.
But Reese speaks first. “No.” She must misinterpret the pain on my face as being wounded by her words, because she sighs, leaning back in her chair, looking resigned. “Eli, it’s fine. It doesn’t matter now.”
“Yes, it does.”
I hesitate. Just say it, you fucking wuss.
But she beats me to it again. “Eli?”
I meet her eyes.
She looks away. “Would you call them off if I asked you to?”
The question feels like she’s asking me something different.
Like whether I care about her. But I consider the question itself.
If Reese gave me an ultimatum, would I shut down the whole thing?
Cassandra would blow her top. It took me a while to win her over on it—she was as furious as Reese that I’d invited the show here without consulting anyone at all.
Her biggest concern was that the east wing of the hotel was still under renovation.
“We’re not ready for something like this, Eli!” she’d said to me. Cassandra is nearly as tall as me, with shoulder-length wavy blonde hair, and if she weren’t my sister I might be alarmed by the way her fists curled on her desk. But she is, and I wasn’t.
I’m just as hot-headed. “You’ll never be ready!” I shot back.
I’d worked on Cass for a full week, deluging her with approximately a thousand spreadsheets with financial forecasts related to viewership.
I also reminded her, pointedly, that she hadn’t consulted me when hiring the woman I’d had a fling with in the throes of my divorce to work in our hotel. A woman who couldn’t stand me, and who was looking at me expectantly right now.
“Yes,” I say.
Her eyes meet mine again.
I don’t break our locked gaze. “If you wanted to shut it down I would do it.”
Reese blinks, her lips parting. I have to look away so I don’t stare.
I focus on a picture on the wall of her dog.
He’s cute as hell. And even though I’ve only met him once, during an awkward run-in down on the Quince River trail, it was clear by the licks and jumps that he loves me, even if his owner doesn’t.
Yes, I still care about Reese. More than I should. More than I was ever supposed to.
Reese clears her throat. “Thank you for saying that. But I won’t ask you to shut it down. You’re right, the show is going to be great publicity for the resort. And my staff are thrilled. Even Jacques.”
I smile, relief spreading through me. “I think the only time I saw Jacques thrilled was the day his ex-husband’s restaurant went up in flames.”
The corner of Reese’s mouth curls up, and for a moment, the breath catches in my lungs.
I can’t remember the last time I made Reese smile.
My mind flashes back to the first day we met, how I’d been in such a foul-ass mood, but she’d breezed over and introduced herself, that easy smile on her face.
She’d looked so… free. I think that’s what had made me stay and talk to her instead of mumbling some excuse.
That and those freckles and tousled hair.
And maybe that sexy as fuck body she keeps tucked under her conservative restaurant manager attire these days.
When I look at Reese again now, her smile’s gone. “Well, the show’s here now, and we’re nearly all ready for them next month. So, what did Neil want?”
I grimace, all the warmth dropping away as I’m brought back to the reason I came in here.
But I’m interrupted by a sudden commotion behind me in the kitchen: loud voices and the clatter of someone dropping something.
I whirl around to see a cluster of people at the far end of the kitchen by the door. People wearing black, with cameras and cords slung over their arms.
Fuck me.
“Well, you’re about to find out.”