15. Rhys
RHYS
She invoked clause four with my palm an inch off her jaw, and I’ve spent the days since in the best mood of my professional life.
Nobody at this lodge can make sense of it, and that’s fair, since heartbreak’s supposed to come with a costume.
Soren keeps portioning my desserts back up to standard size, watching me across the pass with the frown he saves for dough that’s rising too fast. Gideon has twice found reasons to inspect whatever room I’m whistling in.
They’re waiting for the crash, both of them, because they heard the west wing door was open that night and they can count.
What they don’t know is what she actually said. The rule was listening, not right, and she wasn’t sorry it was me who asked. That isn’t a slammed door. It’s one held closed from the inside. You don’t rush it.
I go back to the statutes. The treaty forbids naming or acting on courtship.
It does not forbid the documented winter courtesy the lodge once gave every long-stay guest. The ledger contains dates, contents, and Gideon’s grandfather’s annotations.
Briar is the only long-stay guest this season, which is convenient and legally irrelevant.
Reviving the practice is heritage operations.
That is the single absurd phrase I intend to defend.
That no one has ever assembled a heritage operation this carefully is between me and the ribbon.
I take the idea to Soren in the kitchen after close.
“A basket,” he says.
“A guest amenity, per the record. There’s precedent, I flagged the pages. Gideon’s grandfather ran it every winter, first frost, all long-stay guests. We’re simply a lodge that honors its traditions.”
“We’re a lodge that hasn’t honored that tradition since before you were hired.” He dries his hands, unhurried, and I watch the conclusion assemble itself somewhere behind the flour dust. “If it’s a courtesy, it goes to every long-stay guest.”
“She’s the only long-stay guest.”
“Convenient,” he says. Then he brings me a jar of first-frost rowanberry preserve and sets it on the legal pad. He is helping.
The merino socks are my contribution, lodge green. They are also a message.
The honey’s the delicate acquisition, because the honey is Gideon’s.
The hives are his. Asking for a jar means telling him exactly what it’s for, so I go to the office and do. The one thing you never try with Gideon Hale is a lie he can catch.
He listens with his pen down, his version of full attention. The quiet afterward runs long enough that I start pricing my exits.
“Third shelf of the cellar,” he says finally, back at his ledger. “Take the dark jar, the fall pull. The early batch is thin.”
Decision made. I’m at the door with my heart doing something athletic when he adds, without looking up, in the voice he uses for load limits, “The grandfather’s baskets had honey in them every year, and the record will confirm it. If you’re going to cite precedent, Rhys, cite all of it.”
He has refused the courtship and still makes sure I include the honey. I take the dark jar and leave before either of us has to discuss that.
Assembly happens at the front desk after midnight, the only territory on this mountain that’s fully mine.
I line the basket in lodge wool, add the contributions, and tie the ribbon four times before it hangs right.
The entire time my scent does its embarrassing rolling-meadow act all over the lobby.
Nobody’s awake to report me, so the meadow stays.
The card is the hardest hundred words of my year. I settle on: A Halewood winter courtesy, per house tradition. Contents guest-specific per standard practice.
She will understand exactly what the basket means. I am counting on it.
I leave the basket in the office safe overnight, tagged for presentation at dinner. On the stairs past the gallery, for once I don’t do my respectful eyes-forward routine. I stop and look at the empty spot.
The basket in the safe contains something from all three men in this pack. For the first time, I am not the only one willing to show that we want her here.