Chapter Eleven Reese
Eleven
Reese
Reese watched Grace Sullivan open her laptop and take out a folder that had clearly taken a beating from the boat ride over.
Water had seeped through the edges, leaving dark stains across the print-outs inside.
As she set it down, he caught the flash of frustration in her eyes before she smoothed it away.
She’d dressed for this. Black blazer that looked new or at least carefully preserved for occasions that mattered.
A damp, cream blouse underneath that she kept trying to adjust. There was a small stain near the collar, coffee maybe, that she’d attempted to hide by repositioning the blazer.
The pink tips of her hair had been wrestled into a neat bun, though pieces were already escaping, softening the professional image she was clearly working hard to project.
She looked like someone who’d gotten up early to iron her clothes, who’d checked her reflection three times before leaving, who’d stressed over every detail because she knew she was walking into a room where she’d be compared to someone with exponentially more resources.
She looked up, meeting the eyes of everyone around the table. Sure, that blazer was trying hard to say professional but her whole energy screamed fighter.
Then the line that he’d rattled her with came back to him, sharp and clear in his own voice.
Can someone who’s spent their whole career taking orders suddenly start giving them?
That’s how you talk to a woman, Reese Alexander Spencer? You think that makes you big? He could hear his mom’s voice in his head. You think that makes you strong?
His mother had spent forty years taking orders: being a care home worker, working double shifts so he could have school supplies and hockey equipment. She’d done it all with more dignity and grace than most CEOs Reese had met.
And now here this woman was, trying to do the same.
Had he taken his critique too far?
Jesus, since when had he ever cared about that?
He clenched his fists under the table then noticed Abe watching him, a curious look in his eyes. So he adjusted his face into an easy smile and looked up at Grace. At his competition.
Grace squared her shoulders, the movement straining her blouse against her breasts. He felt himself harden, found himself imagining flicking opening the top button of her blouse with his teeth, circling his tongue around…
Stop. STOP.
Grace flipped open that damp folder with hands that trembled just slightly.
“So, I might not have a helicopter,” she started and Caleb snorted into his coffee, “and I don’t have unlimited funding or international connections to fall back on if this goes sideways…”
Reese couldn’t help but smile to himself. This certainly wasn’t how he was used to pitches starting.
“But what I do have,” Grace continued, her voice steadier now, “is over thirty years of watching people come to Solace Springs looking for something they can’t find in their regular lives.
Something real. Something that feels like…
” She paused, searching for the word. “Like coming home, even if they’ve never been here before. ”
Reese noticed Margaret lean forward slightly, listening intently.
“The Maple Inn isn’t broken,” Grace said as she looked around her, wonder in her eyes. “It’s just…sleeping, waiting for someone to wake it up and remember what it was always supposed to be. Not a luxury resort. Not a conservation project. A home away from home.”
Grace pulled out several soggy sheets of paper: hand-drawn sketches, Reese realized with surprise.
The bottom edge was wrinkled from water damage, the colors slightly run where the lake spray had caught them, but the images were still clear.
Watercolor washes of the inn in different seasons, rooms decorated with quilts and mason jars full of wildflowers, a dining room with mismatched chairs and candles on every surface.
This was why he refused to dismiss someone like Grace Sullivan. She was all heart…and that was dangerous.
Margaret was looking at the sketches, her fingers tracing the watercolor rendering of a guest room. “You drew these yourself?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Grace replied. “I wanted you to see what I see. Not just numbers and projections, but the actual feeling of the place.”
Reese raised an eyebrow. She’d done these herself? Not hired a designer or an architect. She’d sat down with watercolors and painted her vision.
Now Reese was leaning forward too, watching her intently. She was just getting more and more dangerous, and he was enjoying it. Relishing it.
“I want people to walk in and smell maple syrup and woodsmoke and fresh bread,” Grace said, spreading the sketches across the table, carefully avoiding the damp spots.
“I want them to sit on that wraparound porch with a cup of coffee and watch the mist come off the lake at sunrise. I want them to feel like they’re staying at their grandmother’s house—if their grandmother had excellent taste and made the best pancakes in Washington,” she added with a charming smile that did things to Reese.
Caleb picked up one of the sketches of a guest room with a brass bed, vintage quilts and a window seat overlooking the water. “Oh, this is darling. Mikkel, look at this.”
Grace was gaining momentum now, that initial nervousness burning off as she talked about something she clearly loved.
“Every room would have its own character. No cookie-cutter hotel design. This room might have a reading nook and that room might have a clawfoot tub. The Blackwells’ family photos would stay on the walls. ”
Abe nodded at this. Damn, she had them hook, line, and sinker and Reese could feel his competitive edge rise inside him.
Nothing motivated him more than high-quality competition.
And Grace Sullivan, flushed and animated and completely in her element?
She was competition he wanted to pin against a wall and make surrender in entirely different ways.
She pulled out more pages which looked to feature a detailed budget, some of the numbers slightly smudged from water but still legible. Logos of local suppliers she said would be willing to work with her, testimonials from people in town. People passed them around.
“The dining room would serve family-style meals using local ingredients,” she continued.
“Margaret’s maple syrup, obviously,” she added with a gentle smile toward Margaret.
“Produce from the farmers’ market. Fish from the lake.
Everything seasonal, everything real. And during fall…
” Her face lit up in a way that did something dangerous to Reese’s ability to stay detached.
“In fall, this place will be magic. Apple cider on the porch. Bonfires down by the water. Guests could help with the maple syrup harvest if they wanted. Not as some performative agritourism thing, but because it’s part of what this island is. ”
Damn it, she was good. Really good.
Too good.
The problem wasn’t just that she was winning over the Blackwells.
The problem was she was winning him over too.
Everything she described—the family meals, the seasonal rhythms, the sense of belonging to a place instead of just passing through—it painted a picture of something he’d never let himself want.
Home. Not a house or a property or another acquisition in his portfolio, but an actual home.
The kind where you knew your neighbors’ names and showed up for harvest season and sat around bonfires that weren’t networking events. The kind where you stayed.
He’d spent the past few years avoiding exactly that. And here was Grace Sullivan, sketching it out in watercolors and making it look like something worth having.
Which was exactly why he needed to shut this down. Now.
He studied the budget sheet that was being passed around. “What about capacity?” he asked. “How many rooms can you actually operate profitably?”
Grace didn’t flinch. “Twenty guest rooms, fully booked.”
“And in the off-season?” Reese said, scanning the numbers Grace had laid out.
His eyes caught on the revenue projections for December through March.
“You said yourself, winter on the lake is brutal. You’ve got occupancy estimated at what?
Sixty percent? That’s optimistic for a location that’s only accessible by boat when the weather cooperates. ”
Grace’s jaw tightened. “As an outsider, you wouldn’t know this,” she said pointedly, “but plenty of people come to Solace Springs for Christmas. People who want to watch snow fall over the water and sit by a fire and not think about anything except whether they want another mince pie. Snow doesn’t stop boats.
I’d run winter packages: bring your family, celebrate the holidays somewhere that isn’t your in-laws’ house. ”
The people around the table laughed at that.
Reese tapped the number with his finger.
“But you’re projecting full vacation bookings here.
What happens in January and February when nobody’s celebrating anything except waiting for spring?
These numbers assume steady income, but you’ve got maybe six profitable months and six months of barely breaking even.
” He looked up at her. “What’s your buffer when winter sticks around longer than it should?
Ice shuts down the lake, nobody’s crossing for days. Then what?”
“The buffer is in not overextending in the first place,” Grace said, her voice tight.
“You’re looking at this like it needs to make back millions in the first year.
I’m looking at it like it needs to survive.
To be here in twenty years, still serving maple syrup pancakes, still making people feel like they’ve found something special. ”
“Survival isn’t a business model,” Reese said, even as part of him recognized she had a point. “It’s a hope. What about unexpected costs? That foundation is over a hundred years old. One bad inspection and your whole budget falls apart. What’s your contingency plan?”
“I have a line of credit—”