Hard Work

by K. M. Scott

  She stared up at me with that look of confusion in her eyes I still didn’t understand and forced a smile. Why she had to force a smile at all baffled me, though. As we silently walked down to the lobby, neither of us saying a word, I ran through the evening we’d just spent together and wondered what had gone wrong.

  We’d had an incredible time together, hadn’t we? I’d thought we did while she was moaning my name and begging me not to stop.

  Great sex. Check. Hell, it had been mind-blowing. Hadn’t it?

  Sweet afterglow time together lying in each other’s arms like women loved? Check. We’d even had a few laughs as we came down from that great sex high.

  So what the hell had happened between when we drifted off to sleep and when we woke up a few minutes ago?

  Right before we reached the check-in desk, I said quietly, “You’ll be up again next weekend?”

  Becca nodded but didn’t look at me when she answered, “Yeah. I’ll be back here on Saturday morning.”

  She checked out with Mandy and we walked out with her bags to her car, still saying nothing. I loaded them in her trunk, becoming more than a little put off by how cold she was acting. Sure, we’d had a rocky to start, but I really thought we’d broken through some kind of barrier in Becca’s mind when we got together last night.

  Apparently, I had been wrong.

  Without even a kiss, she gave me a simple goodbye and got into her car. Before I knew it, I stood there watching her driving away. Confused about what had happened, I shrugged and slowly made my way toward the front porch of the inn when my phone began to ring. Looking down at the screen, I saw it was Stacey, my ex from California.

  I rolled my eyes and sighed. What could she possibly want? I hadn’t left anything of mine with her and had nothing of hers, so it wasn’t like we had anything to settle. I hesitated before pressing the answer button but did anyway.

  “What is it, Stacey?”

  “Zane, honey, I’m so glad you answered. I know we haven’t talked in like, forever, but listen, I’m in town for my sister’s wedding in Boston, and I want to see you. I know we didn’t exactly leave on the best of terms, but maybe you could make an exception for me? Pretty pretty please?” she cooed, the flirtiness in her voice a clear sign she was laying it on thick.

  I hated when she called me honey. It never failed to grate on my nerves, and she should have remembered that. I cringed as soon as I heard her say it in that annoying cutesy girl voice. It didn’t make me want to listen to another thing she said, much less see her. How had I not realized for so long how annoying that affected tone of hers was?

  “Stacey, I’m pretty busy,” I said flatly, not in the mood for another woman leading me on.

  “Too busy for me? I can’t believe that.”

  Then I realized how good it would feel to show her I had moved on and had found someone a thousand times the woman she was in the brains department alone. It had hurt more than I wanted to admit when I found out she’d moved on from me within a month of my leaving California. It was a shit move, and I wanted her to know I hadn’t been held back because of it.

  More importantly, I wanted her to know that I was better off without her.

  “I don’t know, Stacey. I’ve kind of got my hands full with work up here.”

  “But Zane, don’t you want to see your favorite girl? I know you miss me,” she said in that sugary sweet voice she always put on during sex.

  “What do we even have to talk about, Stacey? I feel like we left things on a pretty final note.”

  “Oh, come on. Please? For me? Think of all the stuff we have to catch up on. I’ve been trying this new workout routine, and I know you want to see the results,” she purred into the phone.

  Stacey only had one move. Sex. Typical for someone who only had her looks to carry her since she lacked the brains and intellect to attract someone. So she used her body to get what she wanted. It had worked for her pretty well her whole adult life.

  And it had worked like a charm on me.

  “I guess. I don’t know how much free time I’ll have for you. Things are pretty busy here at the inn.”

  “Oh, stop it. You and I both know you don’t care if shit is busy in that dump. You’ll make time for me. I know you. Just hand off all of that managerial crap to some assistant or whatever they have up there in the sticks. It’ll be great. A nice little getaway reunion for the two of us. We can even spend most of our time away from that place since I bet it smells like old people and sadness. Is there even Wi-Fi there?”

  “Yeah, Stacey, of course, there’s…ugh, nevermind. Fine. You know where I am.”

  I ended the call not happy that I’d see my ex but at least pleased that she’d see when I had no interest in getting back together with her that I’d moved on. But the next day I woke up to my phone vibrating with a text message. I hoped it was from Becca, but a glance at my phone told me it was Stacey.

  Hey, Zane! I won’t be able to make it up to you until the weekend. Sorry! I’ll see you then!

  I let out a sigh and ran my hands through my hair as I tossed the phone away from me. I really didn’t want Stacey around while Becca was there. I considered texting her just not to come since the last thing I wanted was her crashing what I was trying to do.

  But I knew her too well. She’d just show up on her own and ruin everything. Better to control the situation myself and keep the two women far away from one another.

  The next few days dragged by as I waited for the weekend, but I focused on being kind to the staff and mainly keeping to myself. I worried about Becca and Stacey being at the inn at the same time and how to perfectly manage it and didn’t want to take it out on everyone else, so better to hide away as much as possible to avoid biting someone’s head off. By the time the weekend came, I was a bundle of nerves and more than ready to get out of my office.

  Stacey arrived first and didn’t see me on the stairs, but I saw her when she walked in. As tan as ever with platinum blonde hair that fell to nearly the small of her back, she certainly turned heads in a fire engine red dress that hugged her body like a second skin and barely reached the middle of her thighs.

  In all honesty, she stuck out like a sore thumb against the quaint backdrop of the inn. She didn’t look any different than I remembered her, but there was something about her that didn’t seem as attractive as it always had to me. I didn’t feel that intense need to have her naked under me, and as I heard her voice, she sounded slightly annoying. As she addressed Mandy at the check-in desk, I realized for the first time what an utter bitch she could be.

  “Listen, whoever you are, I know the owner, Zane,” she said when Mandy politely explained to her that we didn’t have any rooms available for her.

  “Yes, of course Mrs…” Mandy said in her sweet voice.

  In fact, the business had been doing well, and we were at full capacity. Nothing Mandy said to her was wrong, and she’d told her the truth in her usual professional way.

  “Just find him. I’m sure he can clear up your stupid mistake.”

  “Yes, Mrs…”

  “It’s miss, thank you very much. I’m not some old hag like the rest of the people here. Seriously, is this a hotel or a retirement home?”

  “Sorry, miss,” Mandy said, looking wounded by her swipe at the inn.

  Feelings of protectiveness rose up in me at Stacey’s rudeness, and I walked over to get her away as quickly as possible. “Mandy, I can handle this.”

  “Hello, Mr. Gilford. This woman says she knows you, but I’m sorry to inform you that there are no rooms available. Everything is booked until Monday, including Becca’s room. I really don’t have a way to move anything around without canceling someone else’s reservation.”

  Before I could get a word in, Stacey interjected, “Then I’ll just be staying wherever Zane stays, right, honey?”

  I didn’t feel like getting into a discussion about it in front of my employee, so I quickly ushered her away from the lobby as she mutt
ered, “Jeez, that one is kind of an idiot, isn’t she?”

  Rolling my eyes, I worked to contain my irritation and suddenly wished that I hadn’t agreed to have her come at all.

  “Can you help me with some of this? Jesus!” she whined from behind me as we started up the stairs.

  I grabbed two of the four bags she had with her and began lugging them up to the second floor. Christ, it felt like I was carrying suitcases full of bricks, which told me I’d probably grabbed the two that were full of shoes she wouldn’t even use that weekend. Only a goddamned centipede would need that many pairs of shoes.

  The door to my room barely closed behind us before I turned around and saw her standing naked in front of me with a fuck me expression on her face.

  “I missed you so much, Zane. As soon as I knew my sister’s wedding would be nearby, I knew I had to see you again.”

  She lay down on the bed and beckoned me closer. I sat down, not interested in doing anything with her. Gently pushing her away, I said, “So what happened with that guy you were with? Does he know you’re naked here on my bed offering me sex?”

  Stacey ran her hands down the front of my pants and palmed my cock through the fabric. “Don’t be like that. You know how it is with us. We can’t deny what our bodies want. You know that.”

  What I knew was she wasn’t the woman I wanted anymore.

  I stood from the bed and tossed her dress on the bed next to her. “I have to get back down to the lobby. This place can’t seem to go ten minutes without some problem or another popping up. Stay here and don’t leave. I’ll bring us up some food, and we’ll have a bite to eat.”

  Her mouth dropped open in shock, but I didn’t wait around to hear a response. Just like when she moved on after I left California, I didn’t care enough to bother.

  A few minutes later, Stacey showed up in the dining room and sat down at table with me. My heart began to slam into my chest in terror that at any minute Becca might walk in and see us together.

  Stacey immediately began to prattle on about some new makeup line she’d found while I’d been away. Something about it being vegan or some inane shit like that, like always. It was never a real conversation with Stacey, never anything of substance. Just crap. She would go on and on about the shallowest nonsense anyone had ever heard, and I would zone out and think of the football game from the night before or anything else until she eventually stopped.

  I hardly listened to her as my brain whirled at the situation that might blow up in my face at any time. Just then, I looked up and saw Becca being shown to her seat at her usual table across the room. The look on her face told me she was more than a little surprised to see me sitting there with another woman.

  Fuck.

  I saw Becca trying to be sly about spying on us, but she wasn’t the type to hide her emotions very well, and I could read her like a book. She kept looking over at the two of us, and I knew what she saw bothered her.

  Fuck. Everything I had worried about all week was slowly happening before my eyes.

  Looking across the table, I interrupted Stacey in the middle of whatever she was saying. “We need to go upstairs.”

  She shook her head and wrinkled her nose. “What? Zane, are you even listening to me right now?”

  “Yeah, sure, let’s go.”

  “What was the last thing I said?”

  “Something about makeup or whatever. Come on. We need to go upstairs. I have something I want to show you.”

  She nodded with a sly grin, thinking I wanted her when all I wanted was to get the hell out of there. We stood up, and I could practically feel the jealousy wafting across the room from Becca as we walked over.

  This wasn’t going well.

  I had to say something to her. I couldn’t just walk out of the dining room with Stacey hanging all over me without saying hello to Becca. We walked up to her table, and I saw just how bad things were already. She pretended she didn’t see us coming toward her, but I knew her well enough to know that she never missed a thing.

  Worst of all, her expression said she wasn’t just angry. She was hurt.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Becca

  Legs. That’s all I saw. Legs that went on forever. Legs that made me look down at my own as I sat at my usual table in the dining room and cringe at how incredibly average length my legs were.

  I’d always thought my legs were my best part of my body, but one look at the legs on the blonde with Zane made me doubt what I’d believed since I was a teenage girl. So much for decades of confidence.

  How strange that a single person could make an accomplished woman with a fair amount of self-confidence feel so much less simply because she existed. Other women didn’t typically intimidate me, but I couldn’t deny it. Sitting there looking at Zane with the tall blonde with those legs and a body that surely had to have been bought and paid for bothered me.

  There was no way breasts sat that high and large naturally. They defied gravity and basic physics altogether.

  I thought a few more nasty thoughts about her, mostly focused on the fact that she didn’t even look like a real human being and more like some tacky Barbie come to life, before silently scolding myself for acting like the kinds of women I disliked and looking back down at my menu. I wasn’t a catty woman or the type to put another woman down just to make myself feel better. It simply wasn’t my way, and I didn’t approve of women who tore one another down like that.

  After all, Zane wasn’t mine. I had made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t every single time he had tried to be. Well, every single time but that last one. Against my better judgment, I’d slept with him, and the very next time he knew I’d be here, he trotted out her?

  How dare he treat me like some school girl whose emotions had no meaning to him? It was crass, and I had no time for crass. I wanted to kick myself for having slept with him the weekend before. I had known it was a dumb move then, and he proved it to me every minute he sat there with that life-size Barbie.

  As the waiter asked me for my order, I gave it to him hastily and could have sworn I saw pity in his eyes. I looked around, and it felt like the entire room, especially the staff, was looking at me. What a sucker they must see me as!

  At a place like the inn, gossip traveled fast, and they probably knew Zane and I had something going on. I shook my head to dispel the thought. No, we hadn’t.

  Zane and the blonde stood to leave, and I looked over, trying to glean how serious they were from body language alone. When had all this with the new woman happened since I had thought he’d been chasing me?

  What a fool I’d been! Had I just been something to pass the time while he waited for this woman to show up?

  Before I could get too deeply into those thoughts, Zane and the woman approached my table, forcing me to deal with them.

  “Hey there, Becca.”

  I gave him a small smile and a nod, not wanting to betray how I felt, even as I wanted to smack his face.

  “This is Stacey, an old friend of mine,” he explained with a smug smile. How had I ever even thought that smile was charming?

  His old friend Stacey giggled and playfully slapped Zane on the shoulder as she purred, “Old friend, my ass. We were together for two years, and in all that time I don’t recall us ever doing anything friends do together. Maybe friends with benefits, but not friends.”

  I looked up at him as I tried to mask the emotions that began to bubble up inside me. Anger, jealousy, and hurt all blended into a Molotov cocktail of feelings that threatened to explode from me if I didn’t keep them in check. I pushed them down and focused on keeping my cool. Zane Gilford had just proved to me that he wasn’t worth me getting all emotional over, least of all in public, and I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of letting him know I was upset.

  Zane cringed and laughed nervously. “We’ve known each other for a long time. She lives in California, so when I came East, we broke up.”

  I didn’t say anything and did my
best to keep my face emotionless as Stacey responded by squeezing him tightly to those fake breasts of hers and kissing him hard on the cheek before saying with a huge grin, “But now that I’m on this coast for a while, that whole breaking up thing won’t be lasting very long. Right, Zane?”

  He didn’t say anything, so she looked at me and smirked. “We just can’t stay apart. Besides, why would we want too, right?”

  I held in the murderous rage that coiled inside me as I looked at him and said, “Well, when you have time, Zane, I’d like to discuss the campaign. I’ll be here until tomorrow afternoon, but then I have to head back to the city for an important meeting.”

  Zane nodded, but as he opened his mouth to answer, the annoying blonde interjected, “Well, I’m not sure he’ll be able to make that appointment. Sorry, sweetie. We have a lot of lost time to make up for. That might be something you need to reschedule with his staff. Granted, they aren’t very competent, so try and speak slowly for them.”

  My hands curled at my sides. I hated hearing her insult the staff I knew to be good people who tried hard to run the inn and keep it like it had been under Zane’s mother.

  Quickly, Zane said, “I look forward to hearing your ideas, Becca. I’ll let you know what time I’m free tomorrow morning.”

  Without another word, he hurried the two of them away. I got a quick glance over the shoulder from Barbie on his arm that told me exactly what the two of them were off to do. Clearly, they were both in a hurry to get upstairs and get out of their clothes.

  I shouldn’t have been so damned foolish to believe that Zane Gilford could be anything but the kind of guy who flaunts a woman like that in front of the one he’d spent the night with just a week before. I sat staring at the food on my plate, but I had no interest in eating anymore.

  Why did any of this bother me anyway? I didn’t want to be with him, so I shouldn’t have been so hurt by his behavior. Still, I shouldn’t have slept with him. I knew that the next morning. But I couldn’t help but be filled with immense regret over that.