by Holley Trent
WORKING TITLE
Lisa Cartwright thought she’d be spending the holidays getting over her ex Joey Novak. They just can’t seem to properly break up. When his company sends its staff to Lisa’s retreat, she has to play nice, even if that’s the last thing she wants to do.
Joey has marriage on his mind and intends to use their close proximity to remind her of how good they are together. However, an interloping coworker insists on proving him wrong.
His new rival, timid editor Finch Alice, has decided that she’s tired of undeserving men getting all the happy endings. She hopes she can be bold for once in her life and show Lisa that she can have more. But Lisa and Joey’s relationship is a more loving and complicated thing than Finch initially thought.
That doesn’t mean she was wrong. Lisa does deserve more. But it turns out that so do Joey and Finch…and surprisingly, in ways that may involve each other.
CHAPTER ONE
Lisa Cartwright was an equal-opportunity employer when it came to staffing her resort. To her, every applicant had fair odds of landing a job…unless they were tall or had accents.
As far as height went, she tended to prefer staff members with more generous endowments, because at six feet tall herself, she wouldn’t have to feel like such a condescending Gulliver when bending to look pocket-sized people in their eyes.
And as far as accents went, there was just something about a Southern drawl that made her pull a potential hire’s application to the top of the think-about-it pile. Maybe it was because they sounded like home.
Or maybe it was because after more than a decade living in and around the state of New York, she understood perfectly how that particular accent evoked worries of incompetence in some people.
Tired of having everyone assume she was unintelligent or lazy, she’d lost her Southern affectations in a hurry at Columbia.
There were plenty of relocatees who didn’t feel such an urgency.
Keely Hawley was far from the most qualified applicant for The Burnout Bungalows’ assistant manager position, but she’d sounded like Rocky Mount.
Lisa had decided to give her a chance. She knew what it was like to live far from home and to have to eke out a living without support.
Besides, it was a week before Christmas, and it just wasn’t a great time to make staffing changes.
If Lisa didn’t hire someone on permanently soon, though, long pisses would start to feel like vacations for her. She hadn’t had downtime for going on a year and a half—as long as she’d owned the old sleepaway camp she based her rest and relaxation retreat out of.
Physician, heal thyself.
Standing with her spine pressed to the wall near the opening of her office door, Lisa cracked her knuckles and drew in a quelling breath.
She was going to fire Keely at her first opportunity, she just knew it. Unfortunately, that first chance wouldn’t be until a week at the very least. In the meantime, she’d just have to suffer.
Two corporate groups were descending on the retreat at once, and Lisa needed to keep all hands on deck.
Even Keely’s.
Keely let out one of those lofty tittering laughs that always made Lisa’s back teeth grind together. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said to a guest. “I’ll see what I can do about your room assignment if you’re willing to wait, wink-wink.”
“Stop saying the quiet part out loud,” Lisa muttered to herself.
She sighed and gave herself to the count of three to compose her face before going out there to fix things.
There would be no room re-assignments. They were at a hundred percent occupancy—thank the Lord. Lisa knew that. The housekeeping staff knew that. Even the ancient dog knew it. Margo had been chasing her tail all morning, likely feeding off of Lisa’s stress, and that dog certainly didn’t have the energy to spare. At her age, she was lucky to have enough mojo to squat without falling.
“It’s just that you’ve got all these units,” the guest said in an unctuous voice that was probably meant to sound charming. “I’m hoping the math works out in our favor, is all.”
“That’s not how math works,” Lisa said under her breath.
The rules of division didn’t change just because people didn’t like the results.
Keely certainly had to know the score.
“Hmm,” Keely intoned. “Well, let me just take a look…”
Woman, I will tar and feather you.
Lisa had her B.B. logo polo tucked into her khaki skirt, her shoulders squared, and a smile plastered onto her face in four seconds before darting out of the office.
Keely let out another of those damned titters and gave her light-up Christmas tree brooch a tap to make the little colored lights twinkle again. “Didn’t expect them all to show up at once. They must have caravanned in from the city.”
Lisa gave the queue of travel-weary guests a cursory glance and sidled up next to Keely at the computer. “We’re equipped for this. All the previously occupied cabins were completely flipped by eleven today. You grab the key stacks. I’ll run down the lists. No one’s getting reassigned.”
“Got it!” Keely bobbed away, sending her curly blond ponytail a-flutter.
Lisa gave the head of the line a neutral smile and slid the identification he’d left on the countertop back to him. “Unless your name is the one on the group reservation, I don’t need that. Which company are you from?”
“Athena.”
Lisa sighed inwardly and tried to keep her expression serene and businesslike. That “phony face” shit wasn’t in the business administration curriculum at Columbia. She’d learned that at the School of Hard Knocks.
Sweet baby Jesus, I know you’re busy, but…
She’d really been hoping LaForge would arrive first so she could inoculate herself to the reality of the stressful days ahead.
Not only had Keely double-booked two corporate-sponsored retreats, but one of those companies employed an individual Lisa had been avoiding in both meat-space and cyberspace for over a month.
So, she’d been vulnerable one night a year ago when she’d been in the city with her best friend Everley. At the time, Everley had worked at Athena as a publicist, and Lisa had joined her at a hotel for the publisher’s fancy anniversary party.
Everley had ended up being preoccupied with entertaining a rock star-on-the-lam.
Never one to let her friend one-up her in the “Let’s do foolish shit” category of adulting, Lisa had ended up letting Everley’s sort-of-boss rumple her starched sheets.
And Joey Novak had an accent, too—a strong Brooklyn brogue that seemed completely discordant with his blond-and-blue coloring, rowing team physique, and fucking Burberry belt.
She should have stolen the belt when she’d had the chance. It’d looked nice wrapped around her fist.
She scoffed and pressed her palms against the counter’s edge.
Fix your brain, girl. It ain’t right.
Like cabin dust and sage smoke, she needed to wash that man out of her hair once and for all. In recent months, she’d told him it couldn’t work numerous times, both in person and electronically. If she thought sending a carrier pigeon with a message would make a difference, she might have tried that, too, just to make sure he knew she meant it.
The two of them were never meant to be a couple. Lisa was a consummate monogamist, and he… Well, Joey had a girlfriend named Athena who never seemed to let him get off. There was no competing with that, though she’d tried for nearly a year.
She’d wanted to try. As hard as he was to keep, he was an easy man to love.
She took a deep breath and massaged the kink forming at the back of her neck. That man could tie her up in knots, even when he wasn’t right in front of her. “Where’s your team leader?
” she asked not-Joey at the head of the line.
Looking left and then right, he shifted his weight. “We figured we could check in without him.”
“Did you, now?” Lisa deadpanned. One of her least favorite things to do was to explain rules and how they worked to people. “Because, sometimes, we let that happen, but here’s the thing.”
She leaned her elbows onto the counter and propped her chin up with her fist, smiling at him. “Your group’s contract says Joey Novak is your point man. So, that means he has to accept the keys and approve the opening of the charge account. Where is he?”
Lisa had her suspicions of what was going on, and her hunches were usually right in all things except romance. She was never right with that. Her being with Joey for a year added to the compendium of evidence in support of that case.
He shifted his weight and cast a glance over her shoulder to a buddy who gave him a spirited nod. Turning back, he said, “We left a little earlier.”
“Oh.” Lisa raised a brow and leaned sideward to count the bodies in the queue. About fifteen.
Athena was supposed to be sending around forty of their mid-level staff.
Lisa’s job was to refill their wells and cure their burnout before sending them back to New York City to rejoin the publishing grind.
All she could do was try. She knew she had her work cut out for her. After all, her best friend had basically been born into the business. Everley may have quit, but she was shacking up with another Athena publicist whom Lisa now considered a friend.
Lisa knew their propensities to overwork all too well.
Neither Lisa nor Raleigh would be at the Bungalows, however. They’d snuck away to Mazatlán for a few days with their rock star boyfriend and were probably burying their feet in the sand and sipping cocktails on the beach.
“Let me guess,” Lisa said with exasperation, “you don’t trust the cabin assignments.”
“We don’t want to bunk six to a unit,” the guy said.
Oh, I’d make it eight for you, sweetheart.
Lisa kept smiling.
He pointed to Keely. “She said she could help us out. Why can’t I talk to her?”
I will beat both of you silly.
Lisa maintained her smile. “Because I own this place and my signature is on that contract. Any other questions?” Lisa’s voice may have had a bit of snap to it, but her grin was still there. It must not have been a very nice one, though.
The guy cringed in that way cat-callers always did when she responded to them with “Ooh, yeah, show me your ass, baby. Let me see what I’m getting.”
He swallowed. “I…uh. Well, it’s just—”
Whatever he was trying to croak out fell to the figurative wayside when the lodge’s front door swung open and a new cacophony of voices rose up from the outside.
Oh hell.
That wasn’t LaForge. The LaForge crew was coming from Ohio, and Ohioans didn’t sound like that.
The line scattered.
“Oh, don’t run away now, Charlie,” Joey’s voice boomed from the doorway. “The party’s just getting started.”
“Don’t fire me,” the guy said in a pitiful undertone that Joey was probably too far away to hear.
Mesmerized, Lisa froze in her pose like one of those fancy department store mannequins with the metal rods up their asses.
She should have retreated to her office and left Keely to sort out the mess she’d made, but Joey had that paralyzing effect on her. Even in that faded Athena Publishing T-shirt, sagging gray sweatpants, and coordinating Air Maxes, he managed to stir her blood to a boil.
The man was well over forty. He should have looked sloppy and juvenile in that getup, but he managed to make everything he wore look like a uniform, no matter how common.
It was his confidence, perhaps—that same confidence that had had her confused about why she was taking off her clothes that night at the hotel when on the surface, he wasn’t even her type.
It was the accent. It was the damn accent.
And then it just became everything else about him.
“All of you, go sit the fuck down. Hold your collective breath and hope I don’t do a slip-and-slide job on the cabin assignments and match you up with your mortal enemies.”
No one said a word.
No one moved anything except their gazes, which darted from one person to the next in the group, and Lisa couldn’t tell if the glances were consoling ones or ones filled with terror.
“Okay, then.” Joey picked up the list and gave the paper a brisk snap.
The mob scattered. Athena staff members sought out seats on the worn sofas or else pressed themselves against the walls near the fireplace.
Joey shook his head, then treated the group to one of those long administrative stares that were usually so effective at making asses clench.
The room was so quiet that Lisa could hear the buzz of the tiny battery in Keely’s brooch.
Joey turned to face the B.B. desk crew.
Keely gave him an apologetic wave and a muttered, “Sorry about that.”
Lisa, of course, wasn’t going to risk showing that man so much as a hint of softness, or they’d be having the same damned argument all over again—and she still hadn’t fully recovered from the last time. She rolled her eyes at him.
Discreetly, though, because she was a professional and she certainly wasn’t going to let that ungrateful crew think they weren’t on the same accord. When it came to the opinion that the staff of Athena was behaving like utter donkey scat, she and Joey most certainly agreed.
“We’ll just need you to sign this form,” Keely trilled. “And I need to make a copy of your I.D.”
Joey handed it over to her without a word.
While Keely was in the office making the copy, Joey murmured out of the side of his mouth, “Did you get me a Christmas gift?”
Lisa had wanted to.
While out thrifting for breakroom furniture, she’d stumbled upon a signed print of an aerial image of Ebbets Field. It hadn’t been particularly expensive, but it was personal, and people who were breaking up didn’t give each other gifts like that.
It was probably still behind the counter at the shop. She’d asked the clerk to hold it for her.
She steeled her spine. “Yes. I told the housekeeping staff to spray extra pine tree essence onto your sheets.”
“Pine makes me sneeze.”
“I know.”
“Don’t be like that.”
“I’ll stop as soon as you stop being you.”
Keely returned before Mr. Had-an-Answer-for-Everything could shape that filthy mouth of his into a retort. Arguing with him was like rolling dice. Most of the time, she could keep up with him, but occasionally, he was so ruthlessly logical that further engagement on her part came across as hopelessly juvenile.
“There you go, Mr. Novak. Is everyone here and ready to get down to the business of rest and relaxation?” Keely did a joyful little shimmy.
The side of Joey’s mouth twitched in that way it always did when his brain couldn’t quite decide whether he should laugh or grimace.
Lisa had seen that warring expression on his face countless times during the period they were together. He’d never been as good as she was at faking anything. She’d envied him that.
Joey barely looked at the list. “That’s probably everyone. I’ll check in with the human resources contact at Athena to see who actually confirmed their RSVPs last night, but I’ll give any stragglers a couple more hours to get here before I do. I’ll get this bunch sorted so I can get them the hell out of your rec area.”
“I appreciate it,” Lisa said.
“I can be very generous, Ms. Cartwright. Remember?” He padded away, zipping his fleece hoodie up to his neck as he strolled.
I haven’t forgotten.
Out of the corner of her eye, Lisa could see Keely looking on curiously.
Lisa made a good show of appearing busy. She straightened a stack of regi
stration forms on the desktop. Yet again, she had to fake that she was unbothered and didn’t care. “People are waiting for their keys, Keely.”
“Oh!”
Keely tapped her brooch and scurried after Joey.
Lisa suspected that would be exactly what she’d look like if she’d let Joey keep her dangling indefinitely on the hook—scurrying after a man who was incapable of settling down.
CHAPTER TWO
She had to be joking.
Finch had driven all that way from the city by herself, white-knuckling the steering wheel the whole miserably long and lonely route, and a woman wearing a flashing tree bauble was telling her that she was sharing a cabin with, among others, a gentleman named Ralph Fletcher.
The problem was that Finch didn’t know a Ralph Fletcher, which meant that he didn’t work at Athena. She knew everyone there, at least by name.
Actually, there were two problems.
Apparently, the blonde with the bauble read “Finch” as a man’s name.
Finch supposed that was a reasonable mistake to make. If the employee list Athena sent over didn’t have gender identities itemized, the staff at The Burnout Bungalows may have made some assumptions.
But the problem with assumptions was that they usually made an ass out of someone.
Usually, that someone was Finch.
It was just the way the universe was aligned or something. Or the bad luck that came along with her being a middle child.
She didn’t know.
She’d given up on trying to make sense of anything.
The bauble stopped flashing.
“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy,” the blonde whispered in a panic, sifting hurriedly through a pile of papers on the counter. “I don’t know if there’s anyone we can move. Oh boy.”
“Me not being a boy is the issue at hand.”
Most of the time, Finch would have just gone with the flow. She had six siblings, four of whom were male. On and off throughout the never-ending renovation of her childhood home, she’d shared a bedroom with one brother or another as a matter of necessity. She’d had her own bed, so it hadn’t been all that bad.
