Chapter 5 #3
She looked at Cody, who was so abrupt, so abrasive when she tried to talk to him about anything, that he certainly hadn’t given her the impression he was the one with the insider knowledge on how these kinds of resorts ran.
“What made you want to do that?”
“Just another way to make money,” Cody said.
“Oh. Well, I guess that’s important. But why?”
As far as she could tell, this was a big ranching operation even without the resort. Walker had already said that he and Cody had a substantial amount of money. Why did they need more? Yes, that was human nature, generally speaking. But there had to be something driving a person.
Not in a superior way, but Marlowe wasn’t the kind of person who just wanted more and more money.
She was looking for something. But money wasn’t it.
She’d been lucky, she supposed, because part of taking on the kind of work that she had meant that she had a built-in place to live most of the time when she took a job.
Maybe that had been part of her calculation, though she knew there was something deeper, too.
Still, she wanted security. Not wealth.
It didn’t take a psychologist to look at all the ways in which the kinds of jobs that she took gave her an instant sense of security. All-encompassing roots that surrounded her completely. Sometimes felt like they were strangling her, sure, but that was better than being alone, insecure, adrift.
She fought against that feeling now, which threatened to overwhelm her.
Maybe that was why she had married the first man she had ever dated. The only man she had ever dated. Security and roots. His family…
“Everybody wants money,” Walker said.
“Yeah. Of course. Everybody wants to be comfortable. I just meant it seemed like maybe you had that already.”
“That’s not enough for me,” Cody said, his voice hard.
“What I want is to show everybody. Even if they don’t care.
Even if they’ve forgotten at this point, I want to show them that I was always just as good as they were.
Better. And if it takes money and land, notoriety, to prove that, then we can do that too. ”
“Hell yeah,” Lila said, taking a sip of her lemonade and leaning back in the chair.
Marlowe realized then that she had forgotten about her sandwich.
She was wondering if they should transition into small talk so they could eat in peace, but there was something about this family that made her feel like they’d never engaged in small talk a day in their lives.
Only big things, and then, likely silence if there was nothing big to discuss. She didn’t know why she had that impression.
Only that she did.
“I know we talked about this a little bit when I did the interview initially. But I think what I really need to know is what exactly you want the guests to experience when they come to the hotel. I mean, beyond just a list of activities that are offered. That’s obvious.”
“I don’t know. I want them to have a good experience,” Cody said. “So that we get good reviews, and they come back.”
She knew that he wasn’t being entirely honest. Because he didn’t start this as a money-making venture in a vacuum. But getting down to the why of anything that he did seemed like it was going to require intense work. The man was so closed off.
He didn’t even want to share this. Which made her think there was something deep that he wanted. Something emotional that he wanted people to take away.
She was no stranger to trying to keep her gooey center hidden. In fact, it was why this whole discussion had made her slightly uncomfortable.
She didn’t even like to admit to herself how much security-seeking she had done her whole life. And she especially didn’t want to reflect on it now.
“I can do that,” she said. “I am very good at customer service.”
“That’s good,” Lila said. “Because the only one of us who’s even sort of good at it is Walker, and that’s just because he’s so disingenuous.”
She could see, clearly, that neither Cody nor Lila had a disingenuous bone in their bodies. Had no inclination or ability to tell a lie, and in the present moment, she found that somewhat reassuring.
“That’s okay. I’m very good at taking complaints.
It’s my job. So, I can certainly get into the space where I let the customer be right about everything.
But I hope that we don’t have very many incidents.
I think the facility is great, and as long as I have the resources to keep it running and a competent staff, I think it’s going to be smooth sailing. ”
It was very organized. Cody might hate paperwork, but clearly, he had done his due diligence in getting this place up and running.
“I suppose I ought to take you down to the cabins.”
“Oh, that would be great,” she said. “I’d love to see those. Really, I think I need to do a whole tour of the facility. But I also… I need to get a car. Except…”
She didn’t want to get into this in front of them. She shouldn’t have mentioned it at all.
“I have to check some things.”
“What things?”
She gritted her teeth. “Well. To be perfectly honest with you, I don’t know if I have a car budget left in my account.
Because it’s not my account. I have a joint account with my…
My ex-husband, pending, and I think because I was shocked, I just didn’t even think about money until I got here, and then I haven’t looked and –”
“We have an extra car,” Cody said. “Well, it’s a truck, and it’s older than Lila. But it should be able to get you around the property. And into town if need be. I wouldn’t want to take it on a long road trip.”
“Oh, you don’t have to offer me that,” she said.
“Sure, I do. Don’t worry about it. Nobody’s using it. When you leave, you can leave the truck. But you might as well drive it. Then you don’t have to worry about whatever happened with the money.”
That was kind. Cody might not be nice, on the surface, but he was a good man, she could see that. That might’ve made her feel slightly more at ease if she could catch her breath at all. If she could do something to de-escalate the nerves coursing through her body every time she looked at him.
Nerves, that was a very polite way of saying arousal.
Because that was what it was. Plain and simple.
When she looked at the man, she felt like she was being lit on fire, and maybe part of her was just desperate for that feeling. Because she felt wrung out, abandoned, unattractive, unloved, and she’d had too much of all that in her life.
But there was no worse idea for easing that feeling than Cody Grayson. That was for sure.
“Why don’t I take you to get the vehicle, and we can do the cabins tomorrow. I know that you have your stuff coming in the moving truck then.”
“Yeah. That sounds like a good idea,” she said.
“All right.”
Cody stood, and she noticed that his lunch was largely untouched.
She had polished off her sandwich, and she stood too.
“It was nice to meet you,” she said.
“Yep,” Lila said. “Nice to meet you, too,” Walker said.
He was definitely the one with the most in the way of people skills.
And she found that a little off-putting at this moment in time.
They walked out of the house, onto the porch, and she was stunned, yet again, by the gorgeous view.
“This is just incredible,” she said.
He cleared his throat and walked down the steps. “Let’s just walk down the trail to the barn. The truck is back behind there.”
“Oh. All right.”
The wind felt thin and cool, and she had to wrap her arms around herself to keep from shivering, even with her light sweater on, even with the sun shining like it was.
It was nice, though. Nice to feel something other than the riot of competing emotions inside of her. Nice to feel something that wasn’t quite so confusing.
At least for a little while.
“I can see why this is becoming such a popular tourist spot,” she said.
Even though the chilly air was a nice distraction, silence felt a little bit too uncomfortable.
Because silence meant that it was far too easy to look at the broad line of his back, his shoulders, the way that his muscular body tapered to a slim waist and hips, and…
Well, she was trying really hard not to look at his butt.
She was failing.
It was just so easy and so delightful to look at him like this. He had an easy gait, and she liked the swagger that he moved with.
And yet, for all that, he wasn’t cocky.
Certain, yes, but it wasn’t that overdone confidence that young men had, or men who didn’t quite have the courage of their convictions, whatever those might be.
She might not know what Cody felt about everything, like why exactly he wanted to do the resort, why this place mattered to him, why making money meant something, but she knew that it meant something to him.
There was an untamed quality to him, and yet even within that, there was something certain and settled, which was an odd combination of traits, but he wore both with ease.
She could see him easily disappearing into the wilderness and never speaking to another human being again.
She could also see that he was the glue that held his family together.
“Yeah, it’s funny. I’ve lived here my whole life, so I can’t say that I stop and look at the beauty of it all the time. But whenever I’m with somebody who hasn’t been here before, it forces me to look at it with new eyes.”
“Yeah. I’m from a beautiful farming community in Vermont. It’s gorgeous. So green and bright. Lovely back roads and trees that turned the most brilliant orange in the fall, but when I was younger all I could think was that it was such a boring place to live.”
Another thing that was a bit more complicated than that, but there was no use getting into it.
“I share that feeling. So, you’re from a small town?”
“Yes. Smaller than this one, as a matter of fact.”
“I had a particular image of you, since when we spoke, obviously, you were in New York.”