Hard Work

by K. M. Scott

  For the first time in my life, I asked her the question I imagined I could have asked any number of people who knew me over the years. “You don’t like me very much, do you?”

  She looked at me without much expression on her face before taking a deep breath and setting down her coffee down on the table to give me possibly the most honest answer I’d ever heard. “No, not really. I thought I did for a while there when you were so nice to everyone, but after today, that seems like it was all an act.”

  Her brutal honesty landed like a hard slap to my face. It was surprising to hear it from anyone, nevermind the young girl who checked people in at the front desk.

  “I did ask. Well, I guess you know what this is all about for me then,” I said, feeling defeated.

  Had I been the only one who had thought for a moment that I could have been better? Was I that far gone?

  Mandy took another sip from her coffee and said, “All I know is this, Mr. Gilford. Your mother was a wonderful woman who truly cared about people. She cared that they enjoyed their time here. She cared when one of her staff had a problem or when something good was happening in our lives outside of our jobs. She cared. I’m not sure what you care about, but it’s nothing here. That’s for sure.”

  I sat there wishing I could say she was wrong, but she wasn’t. I looked around the dining room, letting the memories of when I was a child at the inn come back for a moment and smiled sadly as I looked back at Mandy.

  “You know, when I was a little boy, maybe five or six, the idea of this all being mine was the best thing in the world. I’m not sure when that changed, but I didn’t want this from my mother. I’m not the right kind of person for this place. This inn deserves someone who loves it and wants to see it shine. That’s not me.”

  “You know who is?” she asked pointedly.

  I knew before she answered her own question.

  “Becca. She’d be perfect for this place.”

  She was right.

  “You know what? You’re right. She loves this place like my mother always wanted me to love it. Too bad she isn’t the one who gets to have it.”

  The desk clerk nodded. “Yeah. Too bad. The place is always nicer when she’s here too.”

  I knew what she meant and smiled as I stood to leave. “It is. It was nice talking to you, Mandy. Even if you don’t like me very much.”

  She tipped her coffee to me and offered me what I thought was a small and sincere smile as I left to go back to my room.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Becca

  The drive back home from Vermont seemed to take forever as I alternated between crying and shouting as I headed down the interstate. The other drivers must have thought I was insane as I screamed everything I wanted to say to Zane and a few things I wanted to say to that overly tanned, Barbie doll of a girlfriend of his. By the time I reached home, I’d lost my voice and I had no more tears left. I had only enough energy to climb into bed and pull the covers up over my head in my best attempt to forget everything that happened with Zane.

  While I lay there as recriminations played on a loop in my head, I made a plan. Dive straight back into my work with a renewed vigor. It was the best kind of therapy and not only was it free, but it also put money back in my pocket.

  Bright and early the next morning, my feet hit the pavement and I pressed my nose tightly to the grindstone. I got through three projects in record time, and my clients raved they were stunned that I had powered through with such great work so quickly. I smiled and accepted their compliments, but on the inside only I knew there was truly no other option for me.

  For the second time, I had allowed Zane Gilford to hurt me, and I couldn’t just sit around moping about it. I had to power through by whatever means possible.

  One night, I sat in my living room staring out at the skyline of New York City and the memory of gazing at the Vermont sky, clear of artificial light and studded with bright stars, rushed back into my mind. Choking back the tears, I pushed away thoughts of The Gilford House Inn.

  That’s how it always was with me. Better to ignore the pain and just shove it down. Who had time for sitting around crying about things anyway? Still, I silently chastised myself for believing that Zane Gilford could have been anything other than what he always had been back when he left me high and dry all those years ago.

  An unfeeling jerk and an asshole.

  And I’d let myself get fooled by him for a second time.

  Just like that, I found myself falling back into the memory of how it had all ended the first time with Zane. I’d done a great job of compartmentalizing those memories and hiding them in a box deep inside, but it seemed they wanted to come back anyway. Memories had a way of sneaking up on someone like that, and I was no more immune than anyone else.

  The sun beat down on us while Zane and I walked along the sand, a pretty romantic time for two people who’d started out together with a quickie at a friend’s party. I never thought I’d see him again after that night, but Zane Gilford had pursued me like a man on a mission. Texts, calls, flowers—he’d done all the right things to get me to fall for him.

  And fall for him I did. Hard and fast. Before I knew it, I couldn’t think of anything but him. He seemed just as into me too. We never said we loved one another, but we certainly acted like it.

  That late August day, we headed up to Santa Monica Pier and ate way too much junk food as the sun set. Things had been going so well, and I thought we were getting ready to take another step forward by telling one another how we truly felt.

  We didn’t that night, but I had a feeling it was just a matter of time. Then one night he just didn’t call. I called him and got his voicemail and figured he just fell asleep.

  Three days later, my confusion morphed into worry. What if he had gotten into an accident? How naïve I was then. Never the one to jump to the conclusion that someone would intentionally hurt me, I paced back and forth for hours in my room wondering if something terrible had happened to him.

  A few days later, our mutual friend who had thrown the party we met at told me that he had moved to San Diego.

  I returned to my senior year in college that fall brokenhearted. I never meant enough to him to get a decent goodbye. If we’d had some huge fight, maybe I could understand leaving without even a goodbye, but everything had seemed so perfect, even up until that last day we spent together.

  Yet the next time I saw him all those years later, somehow he found a way to worm back into my heart. I had actually started to care for Zane Gilford again, despite what he’d done that summer. I hadn’t admitted it to him or anyone but myself, but I honestly felt like something was growing between us. I wouldn’t have slept with him if I hadn’t been feeling something and if I hadn’t sensed some genuine change in him. He seemed so much nicer to his staff and had even seemed to care more about the inn. I knew it wasn’t a guarantee that he would fall madly in love with the place, but the effort I saw him exhibit had been enough to tell me he was on the road to change.

  God, I had been so foolish! Everyone else saw him for exactly who he was, but I’d convinced myself he could change. So stupid.

  Lifting my glass to my lips, I finished my drink and poured myself more wine. Tonight looked to be a full bottle night.

  * * *

  Buried in work, I sat at my desk and regretted the amount of wine I drank the night before, hating Zane even more and blaming my monster hangover on him. I heard a gentle knock on my door and looked up to see my assistant Amy peeking her head in.

  “Hey, Becca. Do you have a minute?”

  “Sure. Come on in. What’s up?”

  Amy took a seat in front of my desk, and I got up to sit in the one next to her after grabbing us each a diet soda. She may have been my assistant, but I hated talking to her from across my desk in such an official capacity all the time. My mother had always told me that when it came to business, not everything always had to be so businesslike.

  She’d been with
me since I started my agency four years ago and had grown to be more like a sister than just an assistant to me. It was often strange trying to make new friends as an adult in a huge city like New York, and I had been very grateful to meet Amy, someone I could go for drinks with and talk to even if we weren’t at work. She had a healthy respect for me as her boss, but it was never awkward between us, especially when we were off the clock.

  “Thanks, Becca. Listen, I wasn’t going to say anything, but you’ve been moping around the office for days, and I can’t just sit out there pretending like I can’t tell,” Amy said bluntly as she set the perspiring soda can down on a coaster on my desk.

  “I don’t know that I would say moping exactly. I mean, maybe a little off of my game, but moping?” I said, looking away as I took a sip of soda.

  “Becca, your whole vibe is off, and you know I can read the vibes from a mile away. I know you like to bury yourself in work when things get tough, but you have to open up, girl. I keep asking why you’re going out of town so often and you do the coy thing with me, and now you’re back in town and sad. Things aren’t adding up here, honey. I know Dustin is being his usual jackass self, but there’s something else, isn’t there? I don’t want to push you to open up. Well, actually, yes I do, but only because I know it will be good for you. Come on, let it out. Dr. Amy is in the house.”

  Amy and her vibes. She never failed to cut to the heart of the issue at hand.

  Chuckling at her bluntness, I nodded. “Okay, well, there’s this guy I’d been seeing in Vermont.”

  It seemed like such a silly jumping off point, but isn’t that how it had all began in the first place? I detailed for her the events of the past couple of months and explained the history between Zane and me. I didn’t leave out any details, even the painful ones like how just a week after sleeping with me he paraded that blonde with the legs that went on forever in front of me. She didn’t interrupt once, and I was again reminded that I should start talking to people about things instead of trying to bottle them up all the damned time.

  When I finished, I took a long drink from my soda and asked, “Well, that do you think?”

  “I think I can’t believe you’ve been holding out on me for months, Becca! We’ve talked about you and this holding everything in thing. It’s going to give you a stroke, you know.”

  “I know, I know. I just didn’t want to explain the whole Zane thing and how we knew one another before and everything. I wasn’t sure about him. That’s the only reason I kept things from you.”

  Amy smiled and patted my arm. “Relax, Becca. It’s fine. I understand. But you know what I always say. A leopard can’t change his spots. That man is obviously no good, honey.”

  I nodded and reclined back in my chair, feeling slightly more relaxed now that I had gotten this whole Zane thing off my chest. Amy just stared and waited with those big brown eyes of hers as I said, “Even with all the changes I was beginning to see?”

  I wanted so badly to believe that the front desk clerk, Mandy, had been right about me having a positive effect on Zane. It seemed like such a silly thing to get my self-confidence wrapped up in, but it meant something to me to know that he had been trying, especially if it was for me.

  After blinking a few times and shaking her head, causing her dark curls to bounce to and fro, Amy said with all her cynical heart, “So now we’re acting under the impression that men can be changed? Honey, they’re going to take away your feminist card. People don’t change. They just get worse as they get older. You and I both know that. And the idea that a man can be changed, I mean, come on now.”

  “But what if he was a good guy underneath all that bad guy stuff?”

  Even I knew how sad that sounded as soon as the words left my mouth. When did I become such a pathetic romantic?

  Amy just shook her head. If she was judging me harshly, she was kind enough to keep most of it inside as she answered, “He must be pretty damn incredible in bed if you’re willing to make all these excuses for him.”

  “He is,” I admitted as I felt my cheeks heat up. “I wish to God he wasn’t, but that man is incredible between the sheets.”

  Amy nodded wisely like an old sage. “I see. That’s what this is all about. You’re being ruled by your hormones. You need to start thinking with your head, girl.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t. At first, I thought he was an ass like he was back when, and then as time went on, he seemed to get nicer, and I guess I began to think maybe we could be together like we were when we were happy before. Then I saw him with that woman and everything that happened all came rushing back. I hated how I felt, but I was jealous.”

  Amy looked at me with skepticism in her dark eyes. “I don’t know what to say other than go with your gut. It’s never done you wrong, so go with what it’s telling you now.”

  Go with my gut. Too bad my gut remained tied up in knots, even now days after seeing Zane with another woman.

  “You’ve got this, Becca. No matter what, no guy gets to bring you down. You know that.”

  “I know. I guess I just needed to hear it from someone else,” I said quietly.

  She smiled and gave my arm a sympathetic squeeze. “I better get back out to my desk. You want to go out for a drink after work tonight?”

  The pounding in my head made her offer sound perfectly awful, so I smiled and begged off. “Another time. But thanks.”

  “Anytime, honey. My shoulder’s always here for you.”

  She left me sitting there knowing full well that her advice on following my gut had been right on the money. If I had listened to it in the first place when it was telling me that nothing had changed in Zane, none of this would have happened.

  God, I really was stupid when it came to him.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Zane

  After a few days of not getting a call back from Becca, I decided I needed to up my game. I wasn’t going to get her back sitting by the phone pining for her, and there was only one way to truly get her back. So I packed up my car and took off for the city.

  I figured it would be nice to escape the judgmental glares of people at the inn anyway. The staff had guessed pretty quickly what had happened, and they’d made it abundantly clear that they all preferred Becca to me by a long shot.

  As the miles passed, I realized I hadn’t given Becca the credit she deserved. She’d driven all those times to spend working to make sure my business did well. After sitting in traffic for an hour and a half on a highway that resembled a parking lot, raging against whatever construction was holding us up, I realized that alone merited more respect than I had given her, not to mention everything else she’d put up with.

  I hadn’t been her only client, surely, and she’d been making the trek up from the city to work hard for the inn and me. I’d seen her exploring all the parts of the place and familiarizing herself with the staff, making a real effort to do an amazing job, and I had put her down by letting Stacey come to the one place Becca truly loved.

  The music blaring into my car never drowned out the voice in my head that kept reminding me what a total and utter jackass I’d been all those years ago and yet again. I’d had a shot at a terrific woman who seemed to be starting to want me back and what had I done?

  I’d bungled it. That’s what I’d done.

  I tried my best to convince myself that rushing to the city to sweep her off her feet would win her back for sure, but something inside me worried that it wouldn’t be enough. That nothing could be enough this time.

  She probably thought I’d gone upstairs with Stacey to sleep with her. Of course she did. Why wouldn’t she with Stacey hanging all over me like some cheap date?

  Fuck. If only I had told Stacey to stay away.

  Damn. I didn’t want to think about that anymore.

  I remembered what she’d said to me that day on the bridge, about what kind of guy I was and how she knew all about my type, and I realized with frustration that she’d been right.
<
br />   And it was me who’d proven that to her.

  I needed to fix my mistake and seeing her was the only way I could do that.

  Her business card told me where I had to go, so I headed there. I opened the glass door to her office and saw a woman with curly brown hair sitting at the front desk. She gave me a smile and said, “Hello and welcome to Fox Advertising. How may I help you today, sir?”

  Looking around at the comfortable waiting area, I noticed every inch of the place said Becca had been involved in making it welcoming with the brown and white upholstered chairs and matching sofa that made it look more like a living room than an office. The soft scent of lavender that I had come to identify with her floated through the air, and the space felt almost homey with its warm yellow walls.

  I smiled back as I approached the receptionist’s desk and said, “I’m looking for Becca Fox. Can you tell me where I can find her?”

  “I’m sorry, but Becca isn’t coming in today. I’d be happy to take any message you would like to leave for her. Otherwise, I can absolutely set up an appointment with her later in the week.”

  Waiting until later in the week wouldn’t do. “I have to speak to her. It’s very important,” I said, turning on the charm I needed to work on this woman.

  “She’s not here, sir. I am sorry.”

  “I know, I believe you. It’s just that it’s really very important that I speak with her.”

  “Is this regarding a campaign she’s working on for you?” she asked.

  “Yes, well, no…I mean…” I stuttered out, not coming off as impressive as I wanted to. “Could you please just give me her home address? It’s imperative that I speak with her today.”

  It was a long shot, and it fell mightily short as she shook her head and frowned. “I’m sorry sir, but I don’t even know who you are. I can’t give you Becca’s home address. It would be unprofessional and unsafe, to say the least. Can you see how it would be wrong to give out someone’s address to a stranger who walks in the door and doesn’t even look like anyone you’ve ever seen here before? This is New York, you know.”