It was precisely because we were hungry for more that we stopped—somehow knowing that taking it beyond the exploration we’d already indulged in would be going too far. And I think we both knew we weren’t quite ready for that.
A stiff drink, however, that we were ready for. And Archie could mix a mean drink. Set into a cabinet in the living room was a fully stocked bar, complete with shakers and tongs and monogrammed glasses.
“Wedding gift?” I’d asked, as he tumbled ice into the shaker along with vodka and a kiss of vermouth.
“Why do you ask?”
“Just wondered,” I said, watching as he expertly carved a lemon into two twists. “That’s usually where people get this kind of stuff.”
“Actually, it’s a set I liberated from the hotel.” He laughed, pouring the martinis into the tall-stemmed glasses etched with the letter B. “An old set from the forties, but Ashley was the one who had the monogram put on. Monograms are very important in my family, you might have noticed.”
“Yeah, it’s been hard to miss the giant B on the towels in my room, or on the coasters, or on the sheets.”
“Family name, family business, gotta keep up appearances.” He smiled, handing me my glass.
We’d moved onto the couch, getting comfortable.
“Did you ever want to do anything other than this? I mean, inherit the family dynasty?”
He raised an eyebrow, but then grew thoughtful. “I don’t think so, not really anyway. The last generation of my family has been a bit slacking in the heir department.”
“Literally, and I mean this literally, I have never heard anyone use that phrase in my entire life.”
He shook his head as though trying to convince me. “It’s true, my father only had one brother who died before he was eighteen, and I’m an only child. There are a few second cousins here and there, a few who still work for the hotel, you’ve probably met them, but when you look at our family tree, which used to be expansive, there’s really only me left.”
“So you’re pretty much locked in,” I said.
He nodded with a faraway look in his eye. “I suppose so, but I never really thought of it that way.”
“So even when you were a kid, or in high school, or in college, even, you never thought about, I don’t know, running away to join the circus?” I turned toward him on the couch, curling my feet underneath me.
“Oh sure, there were a few circus moments here and there. I thought, for about five minutes, about going to medical school. I thought, for about seven minutes, about becoming a teacher, I’ve always loved history.”
“That actually makes perfect sense,” I said. “I could totally see you on a college campus, rattling around with your pipe and your busted briefcase.” And I could too. “I bet all the young coeds would be fighting to take your class.”
He let out a laugh. “I hardly think I’d be the type that anyone would fight over.”
I looked at him, warm auburn hair glowing in the firelight, those freckles peeking out from beneath his twinkling eyes. “I’d probably throw an elbow or two.”
“This elbow?” he asked, reaching out and gently brushing against my arm.
“Mm-hmm,” I breathed, once more the touch of his fingertips sending shivers out all over my body.
We both sipped our martinis, eyes meeting over the rims. Jesus, this guy.
“But,” he said, breaking the spell as well as the eye contact, “once those seven minutes were over I remembered how much I loved this place and I wasn’t about to let someone else take it over.”
“Until I got here.” I laughed.
“Yes, until this tiny bossy person showed up and started acting like she owned the place.”
I sat up on my knees, fist-pumping. “Worst day ever for you, Hotel Boy.”
He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Not the worst day,” he said softly.
My gaze flashed down to the ring on his left hand. We sat in silence for a moment, other than the crackling of the fire, and when the clock in the hall began to chime, I sighed. “I should go.”
Part of me wanted him to say no. Stay. And I think part of him wanted to say it too. But instead, he just reached for my hand, squeezed it, and said, “I’ll walk you to your car.”
He kissed me before I drove away, this time crazy soft and sweet. When I crawled into bed later that night, I could still feel the whisper of his lips on mine.
Chapter 13
A Night of Stars. That was how tonight’s entertainment at Bryant Mountain House was advertised. Internally, hotel guests only. I’ll explain.
Every night at Bryant Mountain House there was in-house entertainment for the hotel guests. It could range from supremely entertaining to entertaining in only the most very literal sense of the word. Every morning each guest received a “newspaper” under their door with the day’s activities. The Bryant Bugler listed exercise and yoga classes, what was on the lunch menu, the weather report, you get the picture. There was also a section for nighttime, such as what movie would be shown, what times were available for dinner, and what was on tap for the nightly entertainment, typically held in the Lakeside Lounge. Since I’d been working here, I’d attended lectures on soap making, witnessed three magicians and their disappearing rabbits, attempted to learn to square dance, and watched a group billed as the Schmanders Sisters, not kidding, boogie-woogie until the boys came home.
And these evenings were always well attended. I’m telling you, take people’s televisions away and pow, let’s all learn how to macramé becomes oh so special. I’d asked Archie about the nighttime entertainment once, if he felt it needed to be punched up at all, and he honest to God asked me, “Why, what’s wrong with the entertainment?”
So when a Night of Stars popped up on the Bugler, I’d assumed it’d be some kind of variety act where jugglers and ventriloquists would vie for top billing only to come up short to a dancing poodle.
No no, it was actually something very cool. An astronomer was coming up to lead us on a nighttime hike up to Skytop to watch a meteor shower. Thinking I’d finally found the one event I was ready to invite everyone to, I put the call out.
“You gotta come up, it’ll be so cool.”
“Wait, hike? At night? In the dark? To see stars?” Natalie had a firm grip on the obvious.
“Ow, Pinup, not so hard,” I heard in the background. Apparently the obvious wasn’t the only thing she had a firm grip on.
“Jesus, morning boning? Are you guys animals?” I asked, rolling my eyes.
“Listen, just because you’re not getting it doesn’t mean I’m not getting it.”
“Touché,” I replied. “So you’re coming?”
“Gimme five minutes and yeah, I’ll be coming.” She laughed, and I sighed heavily.
“Tonight? Up to the resort? Are you in?”
“Let me ask Oscar,” she said, covering the phone. I heard things that, even though they were muffled, I had no business hearing, but eventually she came back on the phone. Albeit breathless. “We’re in. What time?”
“Seven thirty, we’ll meet in the lobby, and I’ll tell the guard shack you’re coming up and to let you through. Make sure you wear boots and . . . Jesus, I’m hanging up now.”
My next call went somewhat smoother.
“A nighttime hike? That sounds . . . interesting. Won’t it be cold?”
“Yep. The way to combat that would be to wear a coat and mittens.”
Roxie laughed. “I’ll double-check with Leo, but that should be fine. Polly is spending the night with Trudy.”
“Oh, I hate to take you away when you guys have the night to yourselves, I know that doesn’t happen too often.” Roxie adored Leo’s daughter, Polly, but dating a man with an eight-year-old did have some limitations.
“No no, it’s good. Besides, it’s nice having you in town. Leo was just saying how much fun it was hanging out with you and Archie.”
“Me and Archie?” I scoffed. “There’s no me an
d Archie. I mean, there’s me, and then there’s Archie, and we work together, and I suppose he’s pretty cool when he’s not being an asshole, but there’s definitely not a me and Archie per se, like in the traditional way. Why would he say that? Me and Archie? That’s crazy.”
Silence on the other end of the phone.
“Um, okay,” she said, her tone measured.
I nearly smacked myself in the forehead when I played it back, how crazy had I just sounded?
“So, um, yeah, anyway. Seven thirty?”
“Sure. Got it.” She paused for a moment. “Everything okay up there?”
Shit. “Fine!” I practically shouted. I made myself take a breath. “Fine,” I repeated in a much calmer tone. “Everything is fine. Working hard. Doing my thing. You know me.”
“I do know you.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“So, if there was something going on, something you wanted to talk about, you know you could talk to me, right?”
“Mm-hmm.” Sooo much trouble.
“Because you know, I’d hate to think that one of my very best friends had something going on that she was excited about, but didn’t feel like she could tell me because who knows why . . . but I know that’s not happening because of course you’d tell me, right?”
“Mm-hmm.” I was humming because my lips refused to unseal.
“Okay then,” she said, with the sweetest-sounding voice ever. “We’ll see you at seven thirty.”
You already know my response.
Okay, so. Roxie was onto me. She knew something was up. But if I could play it cool tonight, she might just let it lie. If Natalie sniffed something, however, I was screwed.
Sigh. I really couldn’t talk about this with those two. They’d already been planting seeds left and right about the magical gravitational force that was Bailey Falls and how hard it could suck me in. If they got a whiff that there was actually something going on between us? They’d never let it go. And it wasn’t that I didn’t confide in my girlfriends, these two were my family. But when I talked to Roxie and Natalie about something, it was something. And if I didn’t even know what this was, whether it even was something or not, I didn’t want to make it more than it was.
If I told the girls, then this shit was real. And when shit was real, it could hurt. So I needed to minimize their interest in this.
I called Chad and invited him and Logan. They could run interference if needed. Plus, they were fun. And we needed fun young people up at the resort, if for no other reason than to tell other fun young people to book a weekend trip. In fact . . .
I headed down to Archie’s office, poking my head around the corner to find him behind his desk, working.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” he said, looking up with a smile.
“I invited some people up tonight for the meteor hike, Roxie and Natalie and company, seven thirty?”
“Of course.”
“I was also thinking, maybe we could invite some of the locals to come up for a free weekend. People like Chad on the town council, the mayor, et cetera. Let them see what they’re missing and then roll out the new Bailey Falls resident pricing program. They could really help spread the word about how much fun they had.”
He sat back in his chair, thinking. “I like it. Invite them all up. We’ve still got some rooms free Easter weekend. Do they have plans?”
“Easter?” I gulped.
“Sure, we can ask them tonight. What time did you say everyone was coming?”
I gulped again. “Seven thirty.”
“Great,” he said, looking pleased as punch.
I started to head out when he called me back in. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Um, back to work? I’ve got a meeting with the front desk crew in a few minutes.”
That night I headed down to the lobby a few minutes before everyone was due to arrive. My stomach all flip-floppy, a bundle of nerves. I wasn’t sure why, we’d all had dinner together at the diner and I hadn’t been nervous.
That was a happy accident. You invited them here this time. To spend time with you . . . and Archie.
Not officially.
Keep telling yourself that.
It was true. My worlds were always kept apart, such as they were. My professional world was for me and me alone. Alone being the key word. I spent time with my friends when I could, of course, but I led a fairly isolated life. My work took me wherever it took me, I never said no to a job far away. It wasn’t that I didn’t like spending time with my friends, I loved my girls. But suddenly my work life and life life were mixing, through my own invitation, and it just felt . . . strange. Flip-floppy was honestly the best way to describe it.
“Think you’ll be warm enough?” I heard behind me, and I turned to see Archie standing there, admiring my faux-fur hat. “You look like you’ll be invading Poland in that thing.”
“Laugh all you want, but you lose most of your body heat through your head, and it’s cold tonight.”
“There’ll be a campfire.”
“Won’t that make it hard to see the stars?”
He leaned down closer to my ear, inside my faux fur. “The campfire is for after.”
“After?”
“After.” He nodded, and I could feel his breath on my neck. I shivered. He noticed. “Guess it’s a good thing you’ve got that hat on after all.”
I pulled away, laughing, and gave him a playful swat on the chest just as the front door burst open.
“We heard there were stars up here,” Natalie said, pulling Oscar along. “Let’s see ’em.”
“Hold your horses there, woman, we gotta get up to the top first. How in the world are you planning on hiking in those?” I asked, pointing at her high-heeled boots.
“You said wear boots. I wore boots.” She stuck up her foot, clad in three-inch heels. “Besides, if I get tired I’ll jump on his back.”
“She’ll get tired,” Oscar replied. “She thinks I’m her pack mule.”
“Jackass, babe, I called you jackass.”
“Quit calling my friend a jackass,” Leo scoffed, popping his head up over Oscar’s shoulders where he was standing with Roxie.
“Everyone’s a jackass, just get in here,” I instructed, waving them all in, including Chad and Logan, who were bringing up the rear. “Hey guys, glad you could make it.”
“Are you kidding, I’ve been dying to get up here and see this place, it’s incredible!” Logan said, looking everywhere all at once. “Show me everything, I want to see everything. Right now.”
“Okay, well, we don’t have too much time before we need to meet the astronomer, we should probably—”
“Oh, I think we’ve got some time,” Archie said, patting me on the shoulder. Something eagle-eyed Natalie and Roxie noticed immediately. “And Clara here can give the tour.”
“I can?” I asked, as he moved me in front of him like a teacher in front of her students. “Wait, I can?”
“Sure, you’ve seen the house tour a number of times now, you should know it by heart. We won’t have time to see everything, but at least give them a tour of the first floor. Unless you don’t think you remember the details?”
I looked back over my shoulder at him, his eyes twinkling. “Was that your version of triple dog daring me?”
“Depends, are you going to give the tour?”
I narrowed my eyes, and while still staring at him, I started in my best tour guide voice. “Bryant Mountain House was started by two brothers, Ebenezer and Theophilus Bryant, in 1872. The original inn on the lake was named . . .”
I gave the tour. I kicked ass. I took them through the lobby, pointing out the important artwork there. I took them down the hallway to the gift shop and soda fountain, correctly identifying the main ingredient in a Green River and telling them how to make a cherry phosphate, an egg cream, and the Archie Special, the latter of which they all agreed sounded horrific and wrong. I took them into the main dining room and discussed the i
mportance of dressing for dinner and why it’d always be a tradition up on this mountain. Finally, we ended the tour in the Lakeside Lounge, where I not only explained the significance behind the fossil embedded in the keystone over the main fireplace, but also asked if anyone in the group knew what kind of wood made up the bulk of the paneling in the room, a question every employee who led the tour would ask and almost no one ever answered correctly.
“Mahogany?” Leo offered.
“Nope.”
“Rosewood?” Chad asked.
“No, but that’s a great guess. There’s rosewood in the reading room on the second floor.”
“It’s chestnut,” piped up Natalie.
“It is chestnut.” I beamed, looking at my friend.
“How did you know?” Archie asked, looking surprised.
“My family’s in construction. I know this place couldn’t have been built this way even thirty years later because of the chestnut blight that went through the Northeast, eventually the country. Chestnut is almost impossible to find as a building material after 1910 or so, it just became too valuable. It was all gone by the 1940s, which is what makes a room like this so incredible. You’ve got yourself something pretty fucking special here, Mr. Bryant, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“My girl,” Oscar said, crushing Natalie into his side with an arm like a grizzly bear’s. “She knows wood.”
“Okay, let’s meet up with that astronomer before this gets out of hand,” I said quickly, knowing by the shit-eating grin on Natalie’s face that this topic would quickly devolve into idiocy if I didn’t head it off at the pass. I looked over to Archie, ready to apologize for my friends and their crude language when I saw he was grinning with delight, and not just because someone recognized chestnut in all its impossible-to-find glory, but because he was genuinely enjoying himself.
I looked around at this group, some old friends, some new. Everyone was laughing and talking, bundling up for the hike. I watched as Archie showed Leo and Oscar on the big map where Skytop was, and what hike we’d be taking tonight. Chad and Roxie had their heads together, while Logan helped Natalie re-lace her inappropriate boots. All the while the fire crackled merrily, enclosing us all in a cozy little vignette.