Loved Me Once (Love, Romance and Business)

by Gail Hewitt

  The driver knew the way to Lake View, and they were soon on the Thruway, headed north. The day was even more gray than it had been earlier, and a mixture of snow and sleet blew horizontally toward the window on which Maggie had somewhat childishly leaned her head, glad of its coolness against her burning skin.

  There was a noise of electronically garbled voices from the front seat. The driver responded, sounding irritated, then glanced in the rear-view mirror. "That was the dispatcher. We're just beating the worst of the weather, and I'll have to drop you off and head out immediately."

  "Fine," Maggie said, leaning forward, her laptop almost pitching onto the car floor. She'd been intending to make a list of what she needed to do now, but her head wouldn't seem to function. She knew there were people she should call, people who could help her network. There was her resume to update, and she'd need a new photograph, one that made her look more seriously professional. Maybe she should even start talking to realtors; any new job might take her out of New York and there was no point in trying to hold on to a place — however much she liked it — that she might never have the chance to use again. And maybe she shouldn't have been so quick to accept what the SunTrust mortgage loan specialist had told her, maybe another bank would give more-favorable consideration to a loan.

  Her head began to throb. She just couldn't think about it now. That would have to come later. She depowered the laptop and slipped it into its case, then leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes.

  Maggie's View Of Lake View

  Maggie awoke, puzzled momentarily as to her whereabouts. Then she realized she was still in the car's back seat and the day had grown even more gray. The snow was now falling steadily. She looked at her watch — almost half past four. The car was stopped at a small stone building next to which stood one uniformed security guard. The sign on the building identified it as the Lake View Lodge Entrance Checkpoint. Her driver and the guard were talking. "You'll be one of the last through until this is over," the guard said. "And I wouldn't linger, Charlie, unless you want to become a guest. This is about to get really nasty."

  A blast of sound made the air vibrate as something flew overhead, alarmingly low.

  "They're still letting copters land?" Charlie asked.

  "Must be some muckety muck with more pull than sense. We get a few of those here. Usually people who come to the political conferences." He looked down at his checklist. "So this is Miss McLaurin? First-time guest here for a seminar?" He leaned over and peered through the open front window at the rear seat. "Enjoy your stay, ma'am. Sorry we can't provide better weather." He waved them on, and the car began to move slowly along a gently curving drive crowded on either side by snow-crusted evergreens. The road had been scraped, but not recently, and it was already icing again. Then the road turned abruptly to the left, and Maggie was looking at an almost solid wall of rapidly falling snow.

  "In good weather you can see the entire valley from here," Charlie told her.

  "So you come to Lake View often?" She didn't really care, but he was obviously making an effort, and she didn't want to let him down by showing no interest. It wasn't his fault her head was dead.

  "Yes ma'am. We get a lot of calls to bring people here. There's one couple and their granddaughter that I've driven here at least a dozen times."

  "Amazing," Maggie said absently.

  "Well, not really," Charlie said, taking her seriously. "That's what this place is known for — the same people keep coming back. I've had passengers whose great-great grandparents vacationed here in Victorian times, and the family's never stopped coming and now the current crowd is bringing their grandkids."

  "Amazing," Maggie repeated. "It seems to have a lot of land."

  "Yes ma'am, it does," Charlie assured her. "Several thousand acres — it's a nature preserve kind of place. Of course, it's also got the old hotel buildings, a large ornamental garden, and a couple of good-sized lakes."

  The presumed view disappeared as the snow-laden evergreens again closed in upon the road, then they passed by a small trellised summer house, barely visible even though it sat only a few feet from the road.

  "What was that?" Maggie asked.

  "One of the little Lodgettes – that's what they call 'em. There are dozens scattered around the place, mostly in the gardens or overlooking the lakes, even a handful on top of the mountain ridges. Some of them are just barely big enough to hold one person, some can handle a dozen people. They're like little garden houses, I guess you'd say."

  Then the evergreens retreated, and the car was moving along an open stretch of road that wound across rolling terrain toward what from here looked like nothing so much as a fortified town seen across an Italian landscape that happened to be covered in snow. Even in the flat, fading light, Maggie could see that porches and turrets figured prominently in the design scheme, along with what must be hundreds of windows of varying sizes and shapes, many now brightly lit, giving the hotel the air of a fairytale castle.

  "Must be the helicopter people," Charlie said, nodding in the opposite direction toward an artificially flat area, floodlight-illuminated, with several people milling about and a small caravan of automobiles lined up on an adjacent road. "Dumb, arriving that way in this weather."

  "At the least," Maggie agreed. "I wouldn't want to do it."

  "Some people just gotta, gotta, gotta have what they want the second they want it. No idea of putting off what they want when they can figure out a way to get it. Even nowadays when you'd think some of 'em would have learned more sense." The driver turned and looked over his shoulder as if fascinated by what he saw. "Still, be interesting to know who's got the juice to arrive in a Sikorsky S-92. You can haul ten people around in that baby."

  "I can barely see that it's a helicopter in this snow. How can you tell what kind it is?" she asked, peering over her shoulder at the floodlit scene.

  "Its size. And its shape. It's pretty obvious."

  "I'm impressed."

  "You have to know about a lot of things like that in my business," he said cryptically.

  They were getting closer to the rambling building, and she pulled a couple of bills from the side flap of her case. Normally, given the service charge, she'd tip only $50, but the weather was awful and Charlie had been nice and normal on a day when that was exactly what she needed.

  As they pulled under the enormous porte-cochere, two young men in uniform began moving toward the slowing vehicle. It had barely stopped when the first opened her door and extended a hand to take the laptop, while the second went to the rear of the car with Charlie to get her luggage. "Is this all?" she heard him ask. Evidently most arrived at Lake View with considerably more.

  "Yeah. Say, who's the idiot who flew in on the copter just now?"

  Maggie turned around in time to see the bellman scowl. "I get your drift, and I see way too many guys like you. You get the scoop and then IM your news buddies in the city and they pay you for the tip."

  "Yeah, so? Who's the guy?"

  "Some business type. Nobody I ever heard of. All I know is the group is staying in the Executive Lodge."

  "Any particular reason a group stays there rather than in the main building?" Charlie asked conversationally.

  The bellman continued to look at him suspiciously. "Maybe having some kind of private meeting, I guess. Who knows?"

  "Well how would I . . . " Charlie began, only to be interrupted by the red-faced young man he was interrogating.

  "Look, you want to know anything else, ask the desk. Not that they'll tell you anything."

  "Well, thanks for nothing," the driver muttered.

  Maggie put one of the fifties back into her bag. If Charlie sold information to the paps, he was already getting a tip of sorts, and — given what had happened today — she probably needed the money more than he did.

  "Thank you for the safe ride," she told him when he came to where she stood. "I appreciate it."

  "Thank you, Miss McLaurin," he said, pocket
ing the fifty. He looked out across the snowy landscape and back at her. "You're absolutely sure you want to stay? I ask 'cause if I leave you here, it's likely you may not be able to get out for days."

  Maggie shrugged. "I'm sure. The seminar I'm giving lasts two-and-a-half days, but I appreciate your concern. You'd better go now."

  "I won't argue with that," Charlie told her, extending his hand. "If you need me again, just call this number and ask that they send Charlie C. They'll know who you mean." He handed her his card.

  It was odd that — in spite of her recently acquired knowledge of his secondary business, which she considered highly distasteful — she felt bereft as she watched him leave, as if his was the last friendly face she'd see here, which was silly. It was just her mood. Her mother — in the days when she was still her old self — would have said she was overreacting to the day's events, but then her mother, never having held a job, had never lost one. Maggie, of course, had herself lost only two, but each was supposed to have been the career job, not the long-term stopgap they'd turned out to be.

  The bellman did not refer to Charlie's interrogation, but began instead to comment on the weather. "I think you barely made it here, Miss. Word is they're going to close the road in a couple of hours, and they say we should expect a real blizzard tomorrow." All the while he was talking, he'd been leading her to the small foyer outside the held-luggage room. There he scribbled on an ID tag, tore it in two, attached the bottom half to her bag, and handed the top half to her.

  "Thanks," Maggie said, taking the ticket. "I appreciate it."

  "Once you've checked in," the bellman continued, "they'll call us from the desk with a room number, and we'll take your bag up immediately. The claim tag is just in case the bag is misdelivered. Not that it happens often, but you never know, do you?"

  "No," Maggie agreed. "You don't. Where do I register?"

  She reached the front desk just behind a cluster of women trying to straighten out room assignments. It was obviously a group, albeit a disparate one, and Maggie automatically began to match them with the notice board showing the week's sessions. There was no way they were among her seminar participants – only one or two of them looked vaguely corporate and two others appeared to be barely out of their teens. She didn't think they were sales executives, and definitely not Internet data analysts. Which left only the remaining alternative: Planning the Perfect Wedding. She glanced at their left hands. Those she could see sported engagement rings but no wedding band, and she realized her guess had been right. A member of the hotel staff began ushering them into what appeared to be a small sitting room across from the reception area, and Maggie moved to the desk, reservation confirmation at the ready. A reservations clerk looked at her paperwork, then gestured to a well-dressed man emerging from a nearby office.

  "Ah, yes, Ms. McLaurin, I'm Thomas Beverly, the Events Manager. Kimberly, your assistant, told us to expect you this afternoon." He input something and glanced at the screen before him. "You're in 458, a junior suite, one of our best. Bedroom with sitting area and two balconies, one overlooking the lake and the other the gardens. How many key cards will you need?"

  "Just one, thanks," Maggie told him.

  The manager pulled a card from a drawer, asking as he inserted it into an encoder, "Would you like to see your room first or the seminar facilities? I'd be pleased to give you a full tour of everything that's been arranged, as well as any of our other offerings, as I understand this is your organization's first time with us. Or perhaps you've been with us before, personally?"

  "I'm afraid not. It's a beautiful building." She looked around at what seemed to be acres of wood paneling and Oriental rugs. "And I would like to see the seminar facilities before I go upstairs."

  "It's always best to verify that everything is exactly as you wish," he agreed. "Just let me pass along the number to your bellman, and your luggage will be waiting for you when I take you to your room afterwards."

  As the manager led her through a long corridor with other corridors periodically leading off it, Maggie realized how accurate Miles' description had been. It was huge, it was atmospheric, and it was romantic. There actually were Christmas trees of varying sizes up and down the corridor. The open fireplaces in various nooks and crannies along the way held logs that were really burning. Before one of them a young couple in après-ski mode was wrapped in a fervent embrace. Just up the way, two women — one wearing pants and jacket from the current year's collections, the other in elegant designer cashmere — were sitting before another fire, sipping tea and laughing quietly. Carols played softly somewhere in the distance, and Maggie suspected it was a live performance.

  "Nice holiday atmosphere," she told him, professional instincts activated in spite of her devastating day. "I can see why so many participants wanted to come, in spite of the time of year and the economy."

  Mr. Beverly beamed. "We pride ourselves on our ability to provide a consistently enjoyable experience to every guest, whether he or she is here for personal or professional reasons. As for the time of year, this is one of the few weeks in which we accept corporate bookings in the hotel itself, as we remain fortunately fully reserved with personal guests much of the year. Of course, we can handle corporate bookings at any time in the Executive Enclave near the gatehouse. You may have noticed it on your drive in."

  "It was snowing so hard, I couldn't see much," she told him.

  "Of course, the weather. Well, the Executive Enclave is a group of a dozen luxury cottages clustered around a seminar building holding several classrooms. The total facility — or any part — can be booked, depending on the user's purpose. And we also have our Executive Lodge, which is just up the way, at this end of the lake. It is a freestanding, single-user unit, with its own conference facilities, communications room, kitchen, dining room, parlor, and ten bedrooms. It is fully self-contained for the group requiring both convenience and privacy."

  "A versatile setup," she commented. Normally, she'd have been asking more questions, but why bother? Conference facilities might play no role in her future, especially not conference facilities of this caliber.

  Mr. Beverly slowed down. "We're going to bear right at the next corridor, just here. Then we're going to the right-hand door at the far end of the corridor. This is our Lakeside Room, very popular with seminar attendees. It has an unsurpassed view of the lake."

  Maggie noticed that this room still rated a real key, a large, old-fashioned iron affair on the oversized ring that Mr. Beverly carried. The room itself, however, was anything but dated, and — save for the water that would go into the pitchers that sat, bottoms up, between every two participants — looked completely ready, with its fresh table coverings, neatly lined-up chairs, and pad and pen before each place.

  "Nice pads," Maggie commented.

  "We find that many of our participants continue to prefer pads, but there are also ample power connections available if needed by those preferring to take notes on their laptops."

  "I appreciate that," Maggie said sincerely. She examined the lectern that sat at the open end of the U-shaped setup. The surface was the right height, and the microphone tested operational.

  "Let me show you the view," Mr. Beverly said, obviously eager to display what he considered the main feature of the room.

  She followed him to the windows, which occupied most of the wall. Heavy drapes had already been pulled, but he slid them back, and she stood for a moment, transfixed. It was now almost dark, but against the lights that dotted the grounds, the snow fell in lace-like patterns.

  "The lake's just beyond," Mr. Beverly pointed out. "Past those lights, there."

  "Very nice," she murmured. She turned back to the setup. "I don't see my materials. I specifically asked Kimberly to have everything set up tonight. In fact, I wonder where Kimberly is."

  "Let's check the media room. This, like many of our conference rooms, has its own storage area for materials and gear." He went to the end of the room, past the U-shaped
table setup, and used another key to open a double door that Maggie had assumed led to the next meeting area. When she went inside this adjacent space, she saw that it was the staging area for electronic equipment.

  "Any of this is available for your exclusive use in the Lakeside Room," Mr. Beverly pointed out. "And, unless I'm mistaken, there are your seminar materials."

  Maggie checked out the box, neatly labeled with her name.

  "I like this," she told Mr. Beverly, who beamed again. "It gives the leader a place to organize materials. Does that second door lead directly into the corridor?"

  "Yes, so it's a good alternative exit if one is needed."

  "I like it," Maggie repeated.

  They went into the corridor, where boards announced the location of sessions for other groups.

  "I see you have several other organizations here this week."

  "Yes. An interesting array, but you needn't fear that their presence will in any way impact your sessions. The only group of any size consists of those here for the wedding-planning seminar, and their meetings are too large for any of these facilities, so they're held at the far end of the building, in the small ballroom. The sales executives meetings are located here, but their schedule is entirely different. As for the Internet data analysts, they do meet at generally the same times as your group, but they're at the far end of the corridor and there aren't many of them. In any event, all of these rooms have been completely sound conditioned."

  "You seem to have thought of everything," Maggie told him, feeling relieved. Whatever had happened with Bill Holmes at lunch, the sessions were still her responsibility, and she took her responsibilities seriously. She particularly needed for everything to go smoothly this week, because she would need the confidence boost a success would bring.