Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Lila was dead inside. She had felt like a hungover husk ever since she woke up, and much to her chagrin she could still remember every detail of last night.
And every detail of the day before.
Thank God she had a whole day off from him.
It was amazing how much more...unencumbered she felt getting ready to pop into the resort with spreadsheets and do some inventory.
She had been attached to Nolan at the hip for the last few days — and there had been the nudity, the drinking, the weirdness…
Knowing that she didn’t have to deal with him today was a gift.
She walked into the sliding doors of the resort, clipboard in hand.
Her brother Walker did all these things digitally, but Lila liked her clipboard. She liked an officious pen. She liked being grounded in the moment.
She liked managing things. She liked checking all the details.
She liked feeling in control.
It wouldn’t take a psychiatrist to figure out why that was.
But it had made her into a very functional adult.
It made her feel superior. To her mom, she supposed, because she was the great cautionary tale that Lila tried to avoid becoming.
Lila kept her head. And the one area where she sometimes didn’t was when it came to Nolan.
And in some ways, she supposed she should be grateful that Nolan had been in her life as long as he had been.
Because in that way, sometimes she actually felt like she had some control over those feelings for him.
She was used to them.
Bare ass notwithstanding.
She wrinkled her nose and walked full speed ahead.
Just then, Marlowe came out of the office, engagement ring twinkling on her hand.
“Hi,” she said. “Are you inventorying?”
“Yes,” Lila said. “Though I’m not sure that’s a verb.”
“It should be.”
“Well, if you say so.”
It was very interesting, this influx of female influence around the place.
Lila was used to being the only one, really.
And she wasn’t all that girly. A life spent being raised by boys would do that to you.
Because she had always wanted to keep up with them.
She had wanted to be someone that they thought was cool.
So she had done what she needed to to sort of shave off her more feminine impulses.
And that, she thought, was probably also why she felt a particular sort of shame when it came to her feelings about Nolan.
It was a shameful part of herself that she couldn’t get rid of.
A part of herself that persisted, whether she wanted it to or not.
It was complicated, and foolish, and it was almost like all the girly things that she had denied for all that time had collected deep within her and conspired to be just the most idiotic about the last man on earth she wanted to be an idiot about.
Which was what brought her back to the need to find someone else, honestly.
There were other reasons she had avoided that. Yes, there was feeling tragically like there was no reason to hop into bed with a guy who didn’t turn her on as much as a smile from Nolan did. But there was also her fear of obsession.
She had one. It was manageable. It was manageable because she had lived with it for all this time, she knew the shape of it, knew the contours.
She didn’t need to go introducing an unknown into all of this.
That seemed risky. Risky in ways she didn’t want to fathom.
And yet. If she didn’t do it now, when was she going to do it? She was rotting on the vine. Her lack of experience would only get weirder the more time passed, and she would only look more and more like the Victorian Maiden that she wasn’t.
She shoved that thought aside. “Where are we on linens?”
“The laundry service is supposed to bring by a new batch of them.”
“Great. How are we on the numbers? Should we keep the same amount or do we need to update that based on our current reservations?”
She and Marlowe discussed any changes they might need to make to the ordering, and Lila made notes to contact vendors and to update everything.
“You should see the bachelor party that’s here today,” Marlowe said.
“Should I?”
“Yes. Other than the groom, they’re all single. Very attractive.”
Lila squinted. “You’re engaged to my brother.”
“And I am not, in fact, dead inside,” Marlowe said. “So I can enjoy checking them out. They’re closer to your age anyway. So, outside of my wheelhouse. I plan on being with Cody forever, but if I hadn’t met him, I might have been gearing up for my cougar era.”
Lila bit the inside of her cheek. “Well, I don’t know if—”
“I bet you could go with them.”
“What?”
“They’re doing rafting. You are all approved to guide those, right?”
“Well,” Lila said. “But are you really trying to throw me into a boat with a bunch of men?”
“Sure.”
She looked at Marlowe hard. “Why?”
“Because. I feel like you don’t...”
“Date?”
If only Marlowe knew what a swing and a catastrophic miss last night had been.
She’d tried.
She’d wound up spending the night with Nolan, and very much not like that. But not like nothing either.
No one could ever know that had happened.
“Yeah. Or flirt. Or have any fun really.”
“I have fun. I carve wood. I spend days out in the woods. I plan new features for the resort, and I make... spreadsheets.”
“That’s all work, Lila. Except for the wood carving. That is actually a hobby, I will give you that.”
“But I love this work. It consumes me. It makes me feel competent. Flirting... would not.”
“Doesn’t or wouldn’t?”
“Well, it’s very theoretical.”
Her cheeks stung with heat. And she was forced to remember, yet again, what had happened with Nolan yesterday.
“Well, do you want to... change that?”
This, she supposed, was what came from having more women around. They noticed things. They noticed what she wasn’t saying, not just what she said loudly, as a distraction. They noticed things a little bit too deeply. Or at least Marlowe did. Specifically.
“A relationship isn’t going to fix everything,” Marlowe said. “But you’re not the kind of person that thinks it will anyway. You’re levelheaded. And there’s no crime in having fun. In letting loose.”
“Should I call my brother and tell him that you’re doing this?”
“Oh, I’ll rat myself out later. I tell Cody everything.”
That didn’t exactly fill Lila with cheer, but she did start considering what Marlowe had said while she made her way around the resort, making notes. She set herself up in the office for a little while and contacted vendors, then emerged after about an hour.
“The bachelor party is getting ready to leave for the rafting.”
“Don’t we have all the guides in place?”
“There was actually a bit of a hiccup with guides, and we were going to go one short, but now we don’t have to!”
“You already said I’d do it, didn’t you?” Lila asked.
“Yes. Come on,” she said.
“You did this before you asked me?” Lila was shocked.
“Oh, come on. It’s going to be fun.”
She propelled Lila through the lobby, out the back doors toward the pool deck. “They’re all down on the lawn. Then we’ll take the van out to the launch zone.”
There were in fact about fifteen shirtless men out on the lawn, and they were all fit.
But there was another man who was not shirtless, who caught Lila’s eye immediately.
Nolan.
Because of course Nolan was going to be one of the guides.
And perversely, it made her want to go on this trip. Really, really badly.
Because maybe these guys would flirt with her. Maybe she would flirt with them back. Maybe she could be different. Maybe she could be somebody that Nolan wouldn’t recognize. Maybe he would be shocked.
He’d said she was bad at it last night. Acted like she needed help.
Well, these guys were hot, unlike the guy who’d hit on her last night, so she’d be way more into it.
After last night, she owed him.
After this morning she owed him even more.
She wanted to surprise him.
After last night, after seeing his ass, she really needed to get some of her own back. Plus, she had just decided she needed to do this. She needed to hook up. It wasn’t that big of a deal. She didn’t even feel like it was that big of a deal, and yet, she had somehow made it one.
So why not? Why not get into a boat with, like, six of these guys and see what happened.
She wasn’t really dressed for rafting, but she was wearing the same style of tank top and shorts she’d had on yesterday, just in different colors. And she had a hat on, so she would be shielded from the sun.
“All right. Come on,” she said. “I guess I’m going rafting.”
She started to walk down the steps of the pool deck, and Marlowe scurried behind her. “We’re adding a third raft,” Marlowe said. “And Lila’s coming.”
Nolan’s head jerked up, and his eyes met Lila’s. She smiled and did her best to ignore the tightening in her stomach. “You’re welcome.”
“She doesn’t need to come,” he said.
Well, now she damn well would. No matter what. “Oh, I’m happy to.”
“I only mean, you’ve been working so hard, there’s no reason for you to derail a normal day and work a lot longer than necessary.”
But she felt offended. She didn’t feel like what he was saying was true. He was trying to get rid of her. And that was annoying.
“No. I’m totally happy to. Marlowe was discussing how many people were here for the party, and we mutually decided that there should be another raft.
I actually went over our insurance notes, and it’s pretty clear that if we push capacity at all and there’s an incident, we’re going to have trouble getting things covered.
And we may be liable.” She was lying through her teeth.
But she knew that Nolan wouldn’t know that.
What Nolan would know was that she knew and understood their insurance policy.
In fact, was the one who had mapped it all out with the agent.
It was part of her back-end managerial work.
She wasn’t in customer service, but a lot of the little things that went into running the ranch fell to her.
“Really?”
“Yes. So, we’re just going to do it this way.”
“Okay,” Nolan said.