Chapter Thirty-Nine Reese
Thirty-Nine
Reese
Reese was laughing at something David Harrison was saying about municipal bonds, pretending to find it interesting. All he wanted was to get back to Grace, when he realized he’d lost sight of her.
He scanned the ballroom, looking for champagne silk and pink-tipped hair. Nothing.
A flutter of unease moved through his chest.
“Excuse me,” he said to David, not waiting for a response before moving through the crowd. His height gave him an advantage, letting him see over most heads, but Grace wasn’t by the bar, wasn’t near the silent auction tables, wasn’t anywhere he could see.
Then he spotted movement near the ballroom exit. A flash of champagne silk. A woman walking too fast, heels in her hand.
Grace.
What the hell?
Reese started after her, his long strides closing the distance, but there were too many people. A cluster of tech executives blocking the path. A waiter with a tray of champagne. Someone grabbing his arm to ask about the sanctuary fire.
“Not now,” Reese growled, shaking them off. But more bodies appeared, a whole group wanting to discuss conservation funding, and by the time he broke free, Grace was gone.
He shoved through the remaining crowd—heard someone’s indignant “excuse me!”—and didn’t care when his elbow caught a waiter’s tray, sending champagne glasses crashing to the marble floor. Crystal shattered. People gasped.
Reese kept moving.
He burst through the lobby doors just in time to see Grace, barefoot on the streets of Seattle, climbing into an Uber.
“Grace!” he shouted.
She paused, turned to look at him and Christ, the expression on her face. Pure rage. Then she hopped into her Uber and it pulled away from the curb, disappearing into Seattle traffic.
“Fuck.” Reese stood there on the sidewalk, breathing hard, staring at the taillights fading into the distance. “Fuck.”
What the hell just happened?
He pulled out his phone, dialed her number. It rang once, twice, then went straight to voicemail. Like she’d turned it off.
Reese tried again. Same result. His chest felt tight, panic rising in a way he hadn’t felt since—since when? Since never? He didn’t panic. He solved problems. He fixed things.
But he couldn’t fix this if he didn’t know what this was.
He needed to know what was wrong first.
Reese turned and strode back into the hotel, ignoring the stares from people who’d clearly witnessed his champagne-smashing exit. He scanned the ballroom, looking for the last person he’d seen Grace talking to.
There—red bob, green dress, standing by the bar looking supremely satisfied with herself. He didn’t recognize her from any of the usual circuit events. But she’d been talking to Grace and now Grace was gone, and this woman looked like she’d just won something.
“Excuse me,” Reese said, not bothering with pleasantries. “You were talking to Grace Sullivan a few minutes ago. What did you say to her?”
The woman turned, eyebrows raised. “I’m sorry?”
“Grace Sullivan,” he repeated. “Champagne dress, pinkish hair, was standing right here with you. She left upset. What did you say to her?”
Recognition flickered across the woman’s face. “Oh. You’re Reese Spencer. We haven’t formally met. I’m Victoria Warren, from Solace Springs.”
He knew that name. The richest person in town, according to his research. Owned several restaurants. Sat on multiple committees.
“What did you say to her?” Reese repeated, his voice hard.
Victoria’s expression shifted, something that might have been guilt if it wasn’t wrapped in defensiveness. “I had no idea she didn’t know. I genuinely thought you two had discussed it.”
“Discussed what?”
“Your plans for the inn. The demolition permits. The excavation.” Victoria pulled out her phone. “Your assistant reached out to me last week. I’m on the development committee, so she needed my approval for—”
“Show me.”
Victoria hesitated, then handed over her phone.
Reese read the email. Felt his stomach drop with each word.
Demolition. Excavation. Historical Spencer family artifacts.
“Fuck,” he breathed.
“Grace clearly didn’t know,” Victoria said quietly. “About any of it. I showed her this email and she just…she looked devastated. I really am sorry. I assumed—”
“You assumed wrong.” Reese shoved the phone back at her, his mind racing. “I never said I wanted to tear the place down.”
But even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t entirely true. It had been an option. One option among many that his team had explored. It was due diligence. Business planning. Exploring all possible angles. But he’d never decided anything. Had never told Erika to move forward with permits.
Except apparently Erika had got the ball rolling. She’d seen it as a viable option and taken initiative, the way she always did, and now everything was ruined, thanks to her.
No.
Reese stopped that thought in its tracks.
He couldn’t blame Erika for this. She was doing her job.
She didn’t know about Grace, didn’t know that the inn meant something different now, didn’t know that Reese had been considering…
what? Letting Grace have it? Sharing it somehow?
He hadn’t even figured that out himself yet.
He should have told Grace from the start.
Should have been honest about his family’s history with the property, about the options his team was exploring, about all of it.
Instead, he’d just…avoided it. Let himself get caught up in Grace and her spike and the way she looked at him like he was something other than a means to an end.
And now she thought…Christ, she thought he’d been using her.
“I have to go,” Reese said, already moving toward the exit.
“Mr. Spencer, I really am so—”
He didn’t hear the rest. Was already out the door, already calling his driver, already mentally calculating how fast they could get back to Solace Springs.
Three hours. Maybe two and a half if they pushed it and traffic was clear.
Too long. Way too long.
Reese climbed into the car when it arrived, called Grace’s number again. Still off. So he left a message.
“Grace, it’s me. I know what Victoria told you and I need you to know—” He stopped.
Started again. “The excavation thing, the permits, that was just my team exploring options, I swear to God. I never decided anything. I never told Erika to move forward with it. And I know how that sounds, I know it looks bad but please, just—” His voice cracked.
“Please call me back. Let me explain. Let me—”
The voicemail cut him off.
Reese stared at his phone, then dialed again. Left another message. And another. Each one sounding more desperate than the last, more hollow in his own ears.
What was he going to say? Sorry my assistant filed demolition permits while I was busy falling for you? Sorry I didn’t mention there might be something important to my family buried under your dream inn?
It all sounded like excuses. Like exactly what a rich guy would say when caught in a lie.
The drive to Solace Springs took two hours and forty-three minutes. The longest two hours and forty-three minutes of Reese’s life.
When they finally pulled up to Blossoms & Brew, it was nearly 10 PM. The café was dark. The whole street was dark.
But there, lined up on the sidewalk outside the café’s front door like a rebuke, were all ten dresses he’d sent. The shoes. The jewelry boxes. Everything arranged in a neat, deliberate row that screamed, I don’t want your charity. I don’t want you.
Reese’s chest felt like someone had reached in and squeezed.
He got out of the car, walked to the door that led up to the apartment above the café, knocked. “Grace? Grace, I know you’re in there. Please, just let me explain.”
No answer.
He knocked again, harder. “Grace, come on. I know I screwed up. I know I should have told you about the inn, about all of it. But I wasn’t using you. I swear I wasn’t using you.”
Still nothing.
“Please.” He pressed his forehead against the door, not caring how desperate he looked. “Please just talk to me.”
A light flickered on in a window above. Not the café, but the apartment next door. A woman with long red hair looked out. “Can’t you be quiet please?”
Great. Now he was that guy. The rich asshole yelling at a closed door in the middle of the night.
Reese straightened, looked up at the dark windows above the café. He could see a faint glow, like maybe a light was on somewhere inside. So she was there. Just refusing to come down.
“Fine,” he called up. “I’ll wait. I’ll stay out here all night if I have to, Grace!”
And he did.
He sent his driver home, settled himself on the front step between a pair of Jimmy Choo heels and a Carolina Herrera gown and waited.
The street outside Blossoms & Brew was dark except for a few streetlights throwing weak light across the sidewalk. Leaves scattered in the wind. Maple, mostly, gone brown at the edges.
A banner for the Harvest Festival hung crooked between two lampposts, flapping in the breeze. He thought about that night, Grace’s courage. Her fury and strength.
He clenched his fists and looked out at the lake, black beyond the buildings. Maple Island was just a darker shape against dark sky, the inn’s tower barely visible. That tower. Their tower.
Hours passed. People walked by, heading home from bars, walking dogs, generally giving him strange looks. He ignored them all, his eyes fixed on those dark windows, willing Grace to appear.
She didn’t.
Around 3 AM, it started to drizzle. Reese turned up his tux collar and didn’t move.
Around five, the rain stopped and the sky started to lighten at the edges. That pale pre-dawn glow that promised sunrise.
Reese was still there, soaked through, exhausted, when footsteps approached.
He looked up to find Zach standing over him, two paper coffee cups in his hands.
“Why are you sleeping outside my grandma’s café?”
Reese blinked at him. “I’ve messed things up with your mom, bud.”
“Yeah. Thought it might be something like that when I heard you whining like a dog outside.” He gestured to a bench overlooking the lake and Reese got up, following the kid to it.
They both sat down and Zach handed him one of the cups.
They sat in silence for a moment, watching the lake turn gold with approaching sunrise.
“Your mom okay?” Reese asked after a while.
“She’s not happy. I wasn’t happy either when she made me help her get those dresses down the stairs.” He gestured to the rack of dresses, which were now being explored by a couple of old ladies like it was a goodwill rack.
“Did she say anything?” Reese asked.
“Just that I should never ever trust billionaires.”
Reese groaned and put his head in his hands.
“So,” Zach said, “you want to tell me what happened or should I guess?”
He peered up at Zach. “You’re too young to have an old man like me spilling his life story.”
“Dude, I got to the end of Elden Ring,” he said, referring to a notoriously difficult video game. “I’m as wise as they come.”
Reese laughed, then told him. The family history with the inn. The excavation possibilities. Erika’s email. Victoria’s revelation. Grace running.
When he finished, Zach was quiet for a long moment, sipping his coffee like an old man and watching the sun climb higher.
“Yeah,” he said finally, “you’ve lost any chance with my mom.”
Reese’s chest felt tight. “I know, kid.”
“Even if you just thought about demolishing that place, even if it was, like, just one option in a bunch, that’s enough for my mom.
For any of the old crones around here.” Zach shook his head, laughing.
“You don’t know Solace Springs, man. The dude who runs the boat tours here, Luke Rhodes, he said to me once how the place gets itself right in your fibers and roots.
That inn isn’t just a building to these people. It’s real history.”
“Damn, you are wise.”
Zach shrugged. “Told you.”
“So what do I do to win your mom back?”
Zach drained his coffee, crushed the cup and kicked it with excellent skill into a nearby trash can. “Dude, it’s over. You basically nuked that whole thing. Just walk away before it gets sad.”
“I can’t do that.”
Zach examined his face for a minute, serious.
Then he snorted. “Why? Because you’re not used to losing?
” He shoved his hands in his hoodie pocket, glancing out at the lake.
“Look…I’m not saying you’re a bad guy. You treated her decent.
Better than most. But my mom—” He broke off, huffed out a breath.
“She’s been through it, okay? She finally starts looking happy again, and now you’re sitting here doing the whole tortured-billionaire routine? ”
Reese looked at him, but Zach kept his eyes on the water, his foot tapping restlessly against the dock.
“Thing is,” Zach went on, “I could tell she liked you. Like, really liked you. And sounds like you’re really into her too.
” Zach shrugged, pretending to be casual, but his jaw was tight.
“But sometimes that’s not enough. Sometimes the gap’s too wide, you know?
And my mom’s too good for you, so there’s that, too. ”
He gave Reese a single, awkward pat on the shoulder then jammed his hands back into his pockets and started walking.
Reese sat there for a long time, watching light dance on the water, feeling the kid’s words settle into his bones.
Sometimes the gap’s too wide.
Reese stood up, took one last look at the café where Grace was presumably still hiding from him, and called his driver.
He’d lost her.
And maybe that was exactly what he deserved.