by Violet Paige
Kat turned around in her swivel chair to look at the keys missing from the antique hooks on the wall behind her. She pointed out three of the hooks, mumbling to herself. Then she turned back and said, “Room 16, room 12, and the Presidential suite. You know, the one next to yours.”
I could feel my cheeks going pink as my stomach turned. “My parents’ old suite,” I murmured. It was rare to find someone willing to pay for that suite these days. There were five other Presidential suites apart from mine and the one my parents used to live in, and those five were considerably cheaper, to encourage people to stay in them instead. It was bizarre that someone would choose that particular suite when the others were available. Unless the guest was another one of those tacky ghost hunter guys who was dumb enough to think he could summon my dad’s ghost by staying in his old quarters or something.
“He didn’t seem like… that type,” Kat added hastily. Obviously she sensed what I was thinking. I gave her a soft smile.
“Thanks. I hope not,” I said.
“Usually those guys have a bunch of camera equipment and stuff. This guy just had a suitcase and he was really, really tall,” she informed me. Her face lit up as she remembered more details about our mystery guy.
“Okay. Good. That’s helpful,” I acknowledged. I thought for a moment about what my next move should be. “Well, I can’t exactly follow the guy up to his room and wait for him to come out so I can interrogate him. But what I can do is go on a leisurely stroll around the resort and just see if I happen to run into him,” I mused aloud.
“Yeah! You can!” Kat agreed. She beamed at me, evidently relieved to have helped a little. I reached across the desk to pat her arm gratefully.
“Thank you. I’ll just start on that stroll now,” I told her.
“Good luck,” she whispered after me as I walked away. My mind was racing, my heart pounding. Somewhere in this building, this place I called home, there was a snake in the grass. Waiting, watching, anticipating the right opportunity to strike and rip the Peppertree right out of my hands. I wracked my brain trying to imagine what Mr. Big Money would look like. I couldn’t help but picture some middle-aged, smarmy guy with a pot belly, a pervy mustache, and an undersized suit from his glory days. He would look like some rude, obnoxious villain from an eighties movie or something, I was sure.
I walked up and down the hallways, pretending to just be on a casual tour of the building, but I had my eyes peeled and ready. I was determined to stumble across my enemy, and somehow I was just absolutely certain that I would immediately recognize him as the bad guy in my story. The villain who wanted to tear down the Peppertree and build some tacky mega-mansion in its place. Or sell the land and turn it into yet another boring, nondescript ski lodge that looked just like all the other ones. I loved the Peppertree not only for its sentimental value, but for the fact that it was unusual-looking. My dad had modeled it after this gorgeous lodge he visited in Switzerland with my mom. It was the place where he knelt down and proposed marriage to her, so it was a nostalgic sort of design on his part. Maybe I was a little biased, but I believed the Peppertree to be the prettiest and most interesting property in the whole region. And that was saying something, since our area of Colorado was home to all kinds of luxury resorts and ski lodges.
After I had explored the hallways and elevators to no avail, I decided to head downstairs to the lodge restaurant. It was a great, wide hall with arched ceilings and a wall of massive, crystal-clear windows. My father designed it that way so that guests could gaze out and admire the incomparable views of the mountains while they dined. It was one of my favorite areas of the resort, though I had to admit that the quality of the food had decreased rather dramatically in the past few years. After my father died, the talented French chef who had worked for him all my life was too stricken by grief to continue working here. He quit, and one by one his entire staff of loyal sous chefs, line cooks, bartenders, and servers all followed suit. So in the wake of my dad’s passing, I was first tasked with the awful job of filling a ton of empty positions in the kitchen. The staff working here now was alright, but they couldn’t compare to Chef Louis. No one could.
As soon as I walked into the great hall, I started sweeping around, searching the tables for a guy who might fit the description in my head. I tried to be subtle about it, but when my eyes landed on a strangely familiar face across the restaurant, I couldn’t help but gasp.
My heart thumped wildly as I tried to place his face. And then it hit me, like a ton of bricks. The man seated alone at a table across the restaurant, drinking what looked to be a glass of Scotch, was no stranger. In fact, there was a time when we were close. Very close.
The memories came flooding back to me, vague but poignant. Me, standing in my dorm room, the walls plastered with photos cut out of travel and nature magazines. The bed a mess of sheets and pillows. Tears were sticky and hot on my cheeks as I stood there with my fists clenched, looking at the man I adored, the one who broke my heart. Words were exchanged. Harsh words, the kind you can never take back.
“Your plan, the life you dream about—it’s just that. A dream,” he growled cruelly.
“A dream I will make come true!” I retorted, sniffling back tears.
“Someday you’ll wake up and understand reality. And I won’t be there to pick up the pieces for you,” he warned. “You’re always like this, Haley. Get your head out of the clouds.”
I couldn’t remember much else, it was so long ago. But I could clearly recall the image of him turning and walking out of the dorm, leaving me tearful and alone. It was a bad breakup, that much I knew for sure. And now, he was sitting in my resort, in my restaurant, drinking a Scotch like nothing was amiss.
Suddenly, my feet were carrying me across the room to him. It was as though my body had made the decision before my brain even got the memo. And it was too late to stop now, because he was looking at me with surprise, watching me as I got closer and closer. My heart was pounding, my thoughts scattering like scraps of paper on the wind. What the hell was I doing? What the hell was I supposed to say? And after all this time, was there anything left to say? After all, we had not seen each other in years, and the world had changed dramatically around us since that fateful night in my dorm room when he broke my heart and walked away.
Was I a glutton for punishment? I couldn’t fathom anything good coming from this, and yet somehow I couldn’t seem to stop myself from approaching him. God, he was just as handsome as he was years ago. No, he was actually even hotter than he was then. How was that even possible? His thick dark hair was perfectly coiffed, his suit impeccably fitted to accentuate his broad shoulders, hinting at the powerful muscle and strength underneath. Those piercing green eyes watched me, following my every step. I nearly shivered. The expression on his face was, as usual, totally unreadable. He was possibly the only man in the universe whose truth was hidden even from his eyes. Maybe that was part of why I was so drawn to him in the first place all that time ago—because he was a mystery. A code I could not crack.
I stopped in front of his table, hoping that I wasn’t blushing too hard.
“Haley Simmons,” he remarked, in that same even, gravelly voice that used to thrill me. I was taken aback to find that it still affected me the same way.
Determined to stand my ground instead of melting away like I knew he could make me do, I met his powerful gaze and smiled. “Chase Hawthorne,” I pronounced slowly. It felt weird to hold those syllables between my lips again.
“Please. Sit,” he ordered softly, and I had no choice but to obey.
Here we go again, I thought to myself.
5
Chase
“How long has it been?” I wondered out loud, drinking Haley in with my eyes. I couldn’t get over how good the years had been to her. She looked every bit as good as she did in college, but these few years had brought a kind of maturity to her that really completed her.
She was like a painting that was only improving ove
r time.
As she did so simple a thing as pull her chair out and sit down, my eyes roved all over her, picking out every subtle detail about her. The way she carried herself, whether she moved confidently, how she wore her clothes, the scent of her perfume, whether she seemed energized or tired.
“Too long,” she replied on instinct, nearly blurting the words out, and she regretted them the next second. I watched a little color come to her cheeks. “Well, a few years, right?”
In my line of work, you had to be an expert at reading people, and caught off-guard like she was, Haley Simmons was an open book to me.
She was attracted. That much was painfully obvious. I saw it in the glint of her eye when our gazes met, and I saw it in how readily she obeyed me and sat down.
I had to hold back a smile. The best part was that the natural command I held over people was one of the things she said she’d hated about me in the past, especially because of how much she valued being a driven, independent person. Despite all that, she was just as vulnerable to my presence as everyone else.
“Let me get you a drink,” I offered, not moving my posture an inch as she fidgeted to get comfortable. She was self-conscious, and I knew her mind was racing with ways to try to make herself look confident, composed, and in charge.
It took everything I had in me to hold back a smile. She hadn’t changed a bit.
“Not right now,” she dismissed reluctantly. “Believe it or not, I’m working right now.”
“Really?” I feigned surprise, raising my eyebrows. “That’s a hell of a coincidence. Are you meeting someone here?”
“Actually,” she started, smoothing out her outfit a little, “I’m the owner of this resort. So, in a sense, I’m always working. While I’m here, I mean.” She gave a polite laugh that couldn’t hide her nervousness, and I watched her finger wrap a lock of her long hair around it, twisting it and untwisting it without any thought.
So, she was a workaholic. I suspected as much by her body language, but anxiously bringing up work as the first thing she identifies herself by? That was a dead giveaway. All that tension I could sense in her was starting to make sense.
“Impressive,” I remarked. “So, you took this place over after college, I’m guessing? I always knew you had incredible potential, but I never would have guessed a big investment like this.”
She blushed a little, the validation working its charm like honey on her. “Actually, you’re only half-right,” she explained.
“You always did like catching me that way,” I remarked, leaning back in my chair and smiling smugly at her.
“I did take over right after college, yes.” She trailed off for a moment, pausing to choose her words carefully. She was clearly shuffling through emotions, and for a moment, it was genuinely hard to read her. I found that surprising and intriguing at the same time. Finally, she resumed her guarded smile. “It’s been a challenge, but I’ve never shied away from challenging situations.”
As she spoke the words, she slid forward a little on her chair, and I smiled.
“No, you never have,” I admitted. “That was something I always liked about you.”
We watched each other for a few moments in silence, the shadow of a smile on both our faces. It was like we were fencing, looking for weaknesses in each other’s armor and deciding where to move in and where to give ground.
“What about you, what brings you here?” she asked, tilting her head to the side and letting her curtain of black hair spill off her shoulder. She was teasing me with it, just like she did in college. “Besides offering drinks to your exes.”
I wondered if she remembered the feeling of me holding it tight in my fist while I pounded her from behind, bending her over her bed.
“Admiring my exes,” I fired back, “and insisting that a drink would do them some good, since they sound like they’ve been working hard.”
She laughed despite herself, uncrossing and crossing her legs. “It’s impolite to make at a pass at someone who’s on the clock, you know.”
“You’re the one who came to sit down with me before I knew you were on the clock,” I pointed out. “But I must say, you’re being a better hostess than I could have hoped for.”
“Keep that up, and you might find your suite downgraded,” she retorted, a cool smile on her lips.
“That’s okay, there’s an old friend of mine here who would let me crash in her room. I hear she runs the place.”
Her smile grew, and I decided to try her defenses again.
“How about that drink?” I offered again. “Unless my memory is starting to go already, you take a double gin and tonic with elderflower flavored tonic--subtle, though, not so strong that it’s overwhelming, and you pass on the lime garnish because it makes your teeth feel unpleasant.”
Her long eyelashes fluttered in surprise. “I’m impressed you remember so well.”
“How couldn’t I, Miss Complicated Order?” I teased her, relaxing my posture a little. I watched her shoulders go down a touch, and I could tell she was mirroring me unconsciously. I had her around my finger already.
She playfully feigned an indignant scoff. “Complicated? I remember you trying it once and liking it for yourself, Mister Plain Scotch.”
“And you never gave my scotch the same courtesy,” I pointed out with a smile, and I slid the glass over to her. “Here, if you’ve got something this good on your top shelf, you should at least try it yourself.”
She raised an eyebrow at me suspiciously, smirking. “This doesn’t count as me accepting a drink,” she warned me, and I held up an inoffensive hand.
She picked up the glass and brought it to her lips. I watched her carefully, and the blush she got after meeting my eyes just before the glass touched her lips told me she knew just how I was looking at her. She took a sip of the amber liquid and made a face, shaking her head and sliding it back to me.
“No, nope. Still tastes like smoke in liquid form mixed with rubbing alcohol.”
“That’s first-class liquefied smoke, thank you very much,” I corrected her, picking the glass up myself. I used my thumb to wipe off the little smudge of her lipstick on the edge of the glass, and she watched me swipe that off my thumb with my tongue.
The sight made her chew her lip for barely a second before she tore her eyes away from it.
“Now who’s admiring their ex?” I challenged her in a lower tone, but she pretended she didn’t hear me and just swallowed.
“What about you?” she changed the subject hurriedly. “What brings Chase Hawthorne to my little corner of the mountains?”
“You make it sound so personal. I have to admit, this place does have something of a homey charm to it.”
“Good to see you’re still as good at deflecting questions as you used to be,” she pointed out, and my smug smile broadened.
Of course, I couldn’t break the mood and tell her why I was really here. If it had been anyone else in the world, even other exes, I would have had no trouble sticking to business. Haley, however, was someone special. There was something about her that drew me to her, like a magnetism I couldn’t resist toying with.
I loved getting her worked up, and she loved it when I did so. We could almost forget we were exes.
“I’m just passing through on business,” I lied on the spot. “There’s a meeting I have to attend in Aspen, but it’s going to be crowded with people I’m not exactly keen on spending a days wrestling with over a conference table, so I figured I might as well stay somewhere nice beforehand to unwind. It’s hard to resist the snow-covered mountains when it’s this perfect outside.” While her gaze was on me, I let her watch my eyes glide down her figure and drink her in. “I wasn’t expecting things to be so nice on the inside, though.”
Her blush grew deep, and she turned her head, clearing her throat.
“Aspen’s lovely this time of year. I’ve gotten used to the pace of life in a small resort town, though.”
“You always did prefer q
uiet retreats over the party life,” I recalled. “I always liked that about you.”
“I suppose I could have chosen something quieter than running a resort if I really wanted that kind of life, though,” she admitted.
“I can imagine things get stressful, running things all the way out here on your own.” I was going to tease her out just a little further and see how far I could coax her from that shell she always hid behind. “There can be some advantages to having people just come and go from your world so quickly, though. A woman like you could see a lot of action on that front.”
Her eyes widened when she realized what I was implying, and she turned her head with an embarrassed smile. “No. I mean, no, not really.”
“That’s surprising,” I mused, narrowing my eyes. “I’d think a woman like you would be in an ideal place for a little distraction.”
“Well, work eats up a lot of time, and besides that, there’s nobody around besides college kids coming in and out, and-” She stopped herself, giving a laugh and shaking her head. “Wait, why are we talking about this?”
“I wasn’t talking about anything that serious, but now, I think the fact that you were willing to go on about it so quickly tells me work has been getting to you.”
She opened and closed her mouth, failing to find words. I grinned.
“How about that drink?”
“I really shouldn’t,” she tried to insist, but the reluctant smile on her face and the way she was running her fingers through her hair told me she desperately wanted it.
“Won’t the resort survive for a few minutes while you catch up with a paying customer who happens to be an old friend?”
“An old ex,” she corrected me. There was the faintest hint of a challenge in her voice, and it sent a shiver of delight up my back. There was a side to Haley under all that energized, high-strung businesswoman that I loved teasing to the surface.
“An old ex, then,” I conceded, not moving a muscle as I watched her.
