Seventeen.
Shea
I wake to the sound of a belt buckle and the sight of Rhett pulling a T-shirt over his head in the grey dark of my bedroom. “Mm, where do you think you’re going,” I mumble into the pillow, not bothering to open both eyes.
He turns, and even half-asleep I catch the way his face softens when he looks at me tangled up in the sheets.
“Go back to sleep, baby.” He crosses the room, plants a hand on the mattress, and leans down to kiss my temple, then my cheek, then the corner of my mouth when I turn to chase it. “It’s early. I’ve got to meet Levi.”
“But it’s still dark.”
“Site opens at seven. Big framing day.” His thumb strokes along my jaw. He smells like my soap and him all mixed together. I make a small, pathetic noise in protest when he starts to pull away. He chuckles low. “You’re killin’ me. Don’t tempt a working man, darlin’.”
I roll onto my back, my bare breasts on full display. “I make no promises.”
“Mm.” One more lingering kiss before he straightens. “I’ll be at the Hargrove place by six. I’ll grab us takeout on the way, and—” he tugs his flannel on over his tee, “—I can swing by Cup O’ Joe, get you that fancy caramel-thing you order every day.”
I crack one eye fully open. “Now you’re speaking my language.”
He grins, reaching for his boots. “Sleep. I’ll see you later.”
I smile. “See you later.”
He pauses at the door, eyeing my chest with an audible groan that has me giggling. And then he’s gone, the suite door clicking softly shut behind him. I burrow back into the sheets that smell like him and me and sex, and sleep like the dead for another two hours.
When I finally surface, the sun’s up and Tyler’s door is still shut. I pad out to the kitchen for coffee, knowing I’ll need to wake him soon to get ready for his online classes in a few hours. As I make my way back into the bedroom, coffee pot gurgling, something on the nightstand catches my eye.
A phone, face-down on his side of the bed. I pick it up and the screen lights with a string of missed notifications—Levi, Levi, a number saved as Jenn P., Levi again.
My stomach drops on his behalf. A contractor without his phone is a contractor flying blind—no calls, no schedule, no way for his brother or clients to reach him. He must be losing his mind up there searching for it.
I could call the front desk, have someone run it up. But…the urge to see him, to grab just one more kiss, is very, very tempting. And it’s not like he’s far, a mere two floors up. I can simply run it up to him.
Twenty minutes later, I’m showered and dressed with Rhett’s phone in hand, riding the elevator to the top floor with the giddiness of a girl about to surprise the man she’s…maybe, sort of, kinda falling for? The thought has me beaming. I need to call Callie later.
The top floor doesn’t look like the rest of the resort.
Past a set of propped doors and a plastic dust barrier, the polished hush of the place gives way to bare studs and concrete, drop cloths, the scream of a saw somewhere, the thunk-thunk-thunk of nail guns.
Men in neon Montgomery Construction shirts move through the skeleton of what used to be three suites.
I spot him across the floor, sleeves shoved up, blueprint spread across a sawhorse, pointing something out to Levi. I’m about to call his name when—
“Miss Winton?”
I turn.
A sharp-looking woman in a blazer and a hard hat crosses toward me, clipboard tucked under one arm, her whole face rearranges into professional warmth. I don’t know her, but she clearly knows me.
“It is you.” She extends a hand, and her smile is polished.
“Jenn Paul, general manager. I didn’t realize you’d be gracing us up here.
We’d have cleaned up more for you. Your father speaks so highly of you.
” She beams. “Is there something I can help you with? Anything at all. You just say the word.”
And there it is. I’ve felt it a thousand times. The comparison, the assumptions, the forced kindness where money and status are involved. I just haven’t felt it here, in Rhett’s world, in Montana, and it lands like cold water down my spine.
“Oh, um, no. I’m fine, thank you.” My voice goes bright and careful, the perfect daughter voice. “I just needed to drop something off, I don’t want to interrupt—”
But it’s too late. Every head within earshot has turned. The saw’s gone quiet. Men are looking at me, then at each other, and I watch the information travel across the room. That’s the owner’s daughter, that’s Winton’s kid, what’s she doing up here…
And Rhett? He has gone very, very still. He sets down his pencil and when his eyes find mine across the open space, they’re not the soft eyes that kissed me goodbye mere hours ago.
“Shea.” My name comes out even as he crosses the floor, and a professional air settles between us that I feel like a slap. “What are you doing up here?”
I blink. “You, um, left your phone.” I fumble it out of my bag and hold it out to him. “You had a bunch of missed calls, I thought you’d need—”
“You should’ve left it at the desk,” he says, clipped. His jaw’s tight as his eyes cut to the general manager, to the crew watching us. And I understand, in a sick lurching instant, that I have done something wrong just by being here.
“I’ll walk you out.” His hand hovers near my elbow, not quite touching, steering me back toward the plastic barrier, away from everyone. His voice drops, but it’s not cold, it’s worse. Strained, almost pleading, he tells me, “Not here, Shea. Please. Not here.”
My face is on fire. My eyes sting. I don’t understand what just happened, only that I’m suddenly feeling like…a problem. And it’s an awful feeling.
“I’m sorry,” I manage, stepping away from him. “That was my mistake. It won’t happen again.” I press the phone into his hand and walk myself out past the plastic and the dust, chin up. I keep the ‘good-daughter smile’ bolted to my face until the elevator doors close and I can finally let it crack.
What did I do?
I stare at my reflection in the elevator’s brushed steel, throat tight. For the first time since I got to this town, I feel exactly like I always have. Labeled. Judged.
My father’s daughter.
The doors open on my floor and I don’t cry until they close again behind me.