Or rather, she probably had no reason to pack any other way; it wasn’t like she was going to need all her heavy winter gear when she got to Vegas. It could get a little chilly there in the winter, especially when the sun went down, but it didn’t get nearly as cold as Utah, and she definitely wasn’t going to be skiing or anything like that.
For a moment, I wanted to ask if she was going to miss the snow. But that was silly to ask, and anyway, she probably needed to go catch her flight.
But still, she lingered there. “I just wanted to say thank you again for everything,” Bailey said seriously. “It means a lot to me, knowing that I can count on you around the resort. And with everyone else.”
I shrugged. “Just doing my job,” I said, trying not to be awkward.
“I know,” Bailey said, looking like she was going to say more. But then, she shook her head. “Anyway, I’ll be back as soon as I can. But maybe we can chat while I’m gone? Like on the phone or through the computer or something. I know you’re going to be busy. And I mean, I will be too…” She trailed off, looking sheepish.
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything. More than anything, I wanted to kiss her, but I was still thinking of the kiss the previous day as a goodbye kiss, and I didn’t know if I could go through another one of those without stupidly blurting out my feelings for her.
My feelings for her. Oh man, what a mess. I had never meant to get this tangled up in thinking about her. But I couldn’t help it, I liked her. She wasn’t Beth, but she sure was special. Hard-working, good at what she did, empathetic, and sweet. She had Ethan and I both wrapped around her little finger. And the fact that Ethan liked her so much only moved her even higher in my esteem.
But I couldn’t have her. I knew that. I was almost hoping that she would find someone else in Vegas and never come back, even if it meant I had to have an altogether too difficult conversation with Ethan about it.
“Have fun in Vegas,” I told her. “And if you want to, you know, date other people while you’re there, I hope you know that that’s fine with me. I don’t care what you do.” The words came out all wrong, but I was surprised to see anger flicker across Bailey’s face.
“Why, because ‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’?” she asked scathingly. “I’m not that kind of girl. I’m not going to go out and get drunk and sleep with a bunch of strangers just because it’s Vegas. Some of that novelty kind of wears off once you’ve lived there. And to be honest, I was never all that interested in that in the first place.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said, wincing. Jesus, it was as though I had called her a whore. I really hadn’t meant to insult her. “I just meant, if you find the right guy there, you know like a businessman or something, you don’t have to wait to tell me about him face-to-face. In fact, if you’re coming back here, I’d rather know that ahead of time, before, I don’t know, I run into him at the resort or something.”
Bailey stared at me. “If I find the right guy,” she said flatly. Then, slowly, she grinned at me. “If I find a businessman or something?”
I pressed my fingertips against my eyelids, sighing heavily. “Look, I know you deserve someone better than me. You and I come from different worlds, Bailey. And what we’ve had here, it’s been nice, but I get it. You’ve got to go back to the world you came from. Call this a winter fling or something. Don’t worry; you’re not the first person to dabble in the joys of the seasonal lifestyle before going back to the real world.”
Bailey blinked and then grabbed my lapels, pulling me into a rough kiss. Our teeth clacked against one another’s, and I probably could have made her let go of me if I had really wanted to. But I was so surprised by that reaction to what I was saying that I just let her go with it for a moment.
When she pulled back, she was staring fiercely into my eyes. “Adam, this wasn’t some stupid seasonal fling,” she said. “And I don’t know who the hell told you that you weren’t good enough for me, or that we were from different worlds, although I have my suspicions, but I don’t give a damn about any of that. I’ve never been interested in the businessmen or the guys around the casino. Half of them are too cocky, or too stupid, or too boring. And the rest are just jerks. I like you. And there’s no such thing as ‘better’, as far as I’m concerned.”
I stared dumbly at her, still trying to process her words. But I didn’t even know where to begin.
Bailey laughed and shook her head. “This is supposed to be the point where you tell me that you like me too,” she suggested. “Or maybe kiss me again. But if you’re not going to do that, the least you could do would be to promise me that you’re not going to find some other seasonal fling to take your mind off me for the rest of the winter. I’m asking you to wait for me. Because I sure as shit am going to be saving myself for you.”
I continued to blink at her, wondering if she could really be saying what I thought she was saying. “What about Ian?” I asked.
“I wanted to tell you this days ago, but when I told him that he needed to lay off with interfering with the mountain, I also told him that he’d better quit interfering with you and me,” Bailey said. “He’s not super stoked about us still, but he’s just looking out for me.”
She paused, looking uncertain. “And I know that he’s been causing a lot of drama between us, and I know it’s not really fair for me to ask you to just deal with all of that. I hate that he’s made you feel like you’re not good enough for me. But he’ll come around. And if he doesn’t, I really don’t care, because I want to be with you anyway. So he’s just going to have to deal with it.”
I frowned, wanting to argue. But it was hard to do so when she sounded so damned sure of herself. She wanted this. And I wanted this.
So I did the only sensible thing; I pulled her into another kiss. This one was gentle and sweet. I pressed my lips to hers, brushing my tongue lightly across her lower lip, practically begging her to let me deepen it. She complied, tilting her head to the side as she opened her mouth to me. Our tongues twisted with one another’s and she moaned, the vibrations instantly shooting through my body as light pulses of lust.
We made out for a few long minutes, neither of us willing to let the other person go. I finally broke the kiss, nuzzling along her jawline. “I wish you didn’t have to leave right now,” I said quietly, the words spilling from me before my brain had caught up to them. An embarrassed look crossed my face. What a silly thing to say.
But Bailey sighed. “I wish I didn’t have to leave either,” she said. “And honestly, if Ian hadn’t taken the earlier flight, I might be tempted to just stay here. But this is the last flight tonight, and all the flights are pretty much booked up at the moment since everyone is going home after the holidays.” She leaned into me. “But I’ll be back. As soon as I can.”
“I’m going to hold you to that,” I said seriously. I wanted to kiss her again, but I knew that she really did need to catch her flight. And if I didn’t let her go soon, I wasn’t going to at all. “Ethan still wants to ski with you, so make sure you get back while there’s still snow on the ground,” I warned her.
Bailey laughed. “One or two weeks. Maximum,” she reminded me, and this time, it almost sounded like a vow. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
“Good,” I said, finally letting her go.
She smiled up at me, and I could tell that there was more that she wanted to say. But then, she bent down and grabbed her bag. “Well, I should probably get going,” she said, all businesslike once again. “But I look forward to seeing the weekly reports from you.”
I snorted at the overly-professional goodbye and lifted a hand in farewell. “I’ll call you,” I promised her.
Bailey nodded, giving me one last quick hug before she turned and walked briskly into the airport. She didn’t look back. I didn’t expect her to.
I hated to watch her walk away like that, but I felt reassured that she would be back soon. I smiled a little too myself. What a
cheesy goodbye. Almost like something out of a movie. I got in my car and drove back to Brooks Resort, trying not to think too much about it.
That afternoon, we were scheduled to have an all-employee meeting. And now, given that I was Bailey’s eyes and ears on the ground, I knew that I needed to attend. I wondered what Mike wanted to talk to everyone about, anyway. We had just had the other all-employee meeting about Ian last Friday, and I thought we had gotten everything out of the way then.
Mike nodded at everyone as we filed into the room. “I just wanted to make sure that we were all on the same page,” he said as we took our seats. “It’s been a pleasure having Bailey around here since the acquisition, but now that she’s moved on to other projects – “
“Wait,” I interrupted, unable to help myself. I fought not to feel embarrassed as everyone turned to look at me. “She hasn’t really moved on to other projects. She just has to take care of some stuff back home. But she’s planning on being back in a week or two, she said.” I looked around the room, hoping that Kayla would back me up.
Mike cleared his throat uncomfortably. “She’s taken herself off general payroll and cleared out her office,” he said, shrugging apologetically. “As far as I know, she considers her work here done, is confident that we can run things in her absence, and isn’t planning on coming back. Now…”
He started talking about how we shouldn’t be worried, that basically things were going to go back to being done just the way that they had been under the previous owner. But I could barely hear him. Bailey had told me that she was planning on coming back. That it would just be a week or two. That she was going to save herself for me. That couldn’t have all been lies, could it?
But I had to believe Mike if he told me that she was off payroll and out of the picture. She and I had been avoiding the difficult conversations ever since she had bought this place, and there was no reason to think that things had changed now. Maybe that was the deal that she had struck with Ian; I could keep my job here if she got the hell away from here?
I remembered what Ian had told me before, about how if he saw me talking to Bailey again, he would make sure that I would never work in this state again. I got to keep my job here, but Bailey wasn’t allowed in Utah anymore. Was that how it was? I didn’t like to think that was the case, but it did make a certain amount of sense.
Whatever had happened, whatever the reasons for Bailey’s quick departure and lies about her return, I couldn’t help but feel my chest constrict. I knew that I never should have gotten involved with her in the first place. I had given her too much of myself, without even clarifying whether we were in a relationship or not.
And we never had been. Just like I’d tried to say at the airport, this was just some seasonal fling. And now it was over, having not even lasted the season.
What more did I really expect?
47
Adam
It had been two weeks since Bailey, the new owner of Brooks Mountain Resort here in Park City, Utah, had gone back to Las Vegas. In that time, there had been quite a few changes to the way that things were running. She had originally left Mike, the general manager, in charge of things in her absence, and everyone had expected things to continue to operate just the way that they had before Bailey had bought the place, since the mountain’s previous owners had been pretty hands-off.
But then Mike had gotten into a skiing accident, and although fortunately he was mostly okay, he had given himself a nasty concussion and torn some ligaments in his knee, and after the surgery, he was on strict orders for bed rest.
Somehow, I had been the person who stepped up to be in charge of things.
Oh, I knew how it had happened. There had been a long conference call with Bailey, me, and the heads of the various departments around the mountain. She told them that she had already entrusted to me the task of writing her weekly reports. But now, somehow, I was running the weekly meetings and really running the place in her absence.
What was stranger, though, was the fact that I kind of enjoyed it.
I never would have foreseen myself in any sort of managerial role. I mean, I was sort of a one-man department, as the mountain’s sole mechanic and maintenance person. Gretchen was my liaison with the rest of the mountain, though, writing down complaints from the guests and things like that. So technically, she was kind of my manager in all but title.
I had generally kept to myself, working hard to clear my task list each week. There was plenty for me to do around the resort. But I guess the fact that I went all around the resort, working in the condos and on the lifts, among other things, was something that made me stand out for this position, as far as Bailey was concerned.
That and the fact that I had been there for a while now. I definitely wasn’t one of the seasonal workers who came in for a few months at a time and then left again. I was here year-round, and had been for my entire life. My whole life was invested in the resort.
And that was what made it easy to accept the position Bailey had asked me to take. It had nothing to do with the kisses that we’d shared while she was here in Park City. It had nothing to do with her promise, when I dropped her off at the airport, to save herself for me.
Because the more time that passed since her departure, the more I realized I had been stupid to expect anything from her. She was gone, and she wasn’t coming back. Oh, she was still the owner of the resort, and that meant that she would probably be back at some point, just to check on her investment and see how everything was doing. But she had taken herself off the payroll like she wasn’t planning to actually work there anymore, and she hadn’t booked a return ticket.
When she had initially left, she had promised me that she was only going to be gone for a week or two. Just long enough to sort out her brother, Ian’s, situation with the family casino business. But it had been two weeks, and there was still no sign of her return. I had to get over that naïve hope that I’d had that she and I could make something work between the two of us.
I didn’t know who I had been trying to kid, anyway. I wasn’t fully over Beth, my deceased wife, and I never would be. Hell, every time I looked at our son Ethan, I had to think about her. I could see so much of her in the young boy; her curiosity, her chattiness, her easy amusement. I knew she would have been proud of the comments on Ethan’s report card from the first half of the school year. I could practically smell the decadent holiday cookies that she would have spent the month of December concocting.
I wasn’t ready for a new relationship, and I probably never would be. And even if I had been, Bailey deserved someone better than me. She was smart and rich and well-traveled. She shouldn’t tie herself down with some blue-collar mechanic who had barely ever left Utah.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved my job and my home and everything that I had built in my life. But that honestly made it even worse. I wasn’t going to try to better myself to be with Bailey. I was who I was, and it just wasn’t enough for her.
But for now, looking around the conference and counting all the familiar faces, it was time to turn my attention back to the resort. “Thanks for coming to the weekly meeting, everyone,” I said, nodding at the rest of the staff. “And now that we have the holiday season fully behind us, I just want to thank everyone again for all the hard work and long hours that you all put in during the busiest busy season that we’ve ever had.”
There were some laughs around the room, and I grinned at them, scanning the list in front of me to remind myself of what I had planned to talk about that day. I moved easily through the agenda, fielding questions when they came up, and then turned the floor over to everyone else for general comments and queries on things that I hadn’t mentioned.
Jen, one of the front desk assistants stood up. “Just wanted to let you know that a couple of the heaters in the lodge seem like they’re on the fritz,” she said. “We’ve had a couple guest complaints about draftiness.”
I frowned and jotted a note for myself, nodding at her. �
��I’ll check it out,” I promised her. “As soon as this meeting is over, in fact.” I didn’t have any idea what the problem could be, and I only hoped that it wasn’t anything too time-consuming to fix.
I didn’t want to admit that I was stretching myself too thin, but to be honest, I kind of was. Bailey had hired me an apprentice to help me out around the resort with the basic maintenance stuff, something that I had begrudgingly accepted. I liked having full control of how things were taken care of around there, but at the same time, I knew there was no way that I could take on the administrative duties that Mike had been managing, plus write those weekly reports for Bailey, plus get done everything that I normally did around the resort. So it only made sense for me to get a little help.
Another reason that I should probably just have said no to Bailey in the first place. But it was damned difficult for me to tell her no about anything.
Still, the easier the heating fix was, the better. For a moment, I almost wished that Ian was still running around, interfering with Bailey’s running of the resort. He probably would have just ordered new heaters, and the problem would have been solved. Except that then, I’d be in charge of changing out the heaters in probably every building in this place, I thought to myself, a crooked smile on my face.
“Anything else?” I asked, looking around the room. But no one spoke up. I nodded. “All right, then. Get back to work, you lazy bums!”
There was more laughter, and everyone dispersed. I was headed towards the door myself when Kayla caught my arm. “Hey,” she said. “Just wondered if you’d talked to Bailey lately.”
“Regarding what?” I asked. “I mean, I’ve talked to her a few times. Why?” I didn’t mean it to sound rude, but I didn’t know how much Kayla knew about Bailey and I. Not that Bailey and I had really had a chance to talk about ‘us’ since she had gone to Vegas. She was up to her neck in work with the casino, and I had my hands full here as well. We had chatted a few times, but our personal chats had been limited to a few quick minutes before we’d segued into talking about more important things, like the resort.
One Shot At Love: A Billionaire Single Father Romance Page 27
