“Let’s stop for a bit,” Croft called out when we reached the first rest stop. “Even if you have plenty of water in your bag, I still want you to fill up, replace what you’ve used so far. You can’t count on finding water further down.”
I lined up at the water spigot, finding myself standing next to Nancy and Tim, the couple from our resort. They both had slightly giddy expressions on their faces. “This is so much better than I thought it would be,” Nancy said, hopping a little in her hiking boots. She was shorter than I, her brown hair up in a ponytail making her look much longer than I figured she really was. Her eyes were lit up in excitement.
“I know,” I told her, immediately feeling at ease—something I typically found hard to do with other women. Maybe it was something about her excitement, her obvious warmth. So different from the girls you call friends, I thought to myself, trying to tamp down the sad feeling that immediately accompanied my thoughts. “I’ve done quite a bit of hiking, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen better scenery.”
“We hike a lot, too!” She bumped Tim with her shoulder. “I had to drag him into it kicking and screaming, but I think I’ve converted him.”
At the front of the line now, Tim grabbed her bottle to fill it before doing the same with his own. The simple act of kindness, the subconscious taking care of another person, sent that same little shot of sadness through me.
“If I wasn’t on board before, I am now.”
I followed them to a fallen log where we sat and stretched our legs, sipping our water as the sun rose higher over the canyon walls.
“Do you get out on the trails often?” Tim asked, draping an arm around Nancy’s shoulders.
“As often as I can, when work lets me.”
They made sympathetic faces. “We’re well familiar with that.” Nancy looked around the vista regretfully. “Even when we find the time to get away from work and out of the city, we have nowhere like this to enjoy.”
“Where do you work?”
“Manhattan. We’re both in finance.” Nancy rolled her eyes at me, grinning. “Sounds boring, right? Well, it is.”
I laughed. “I’m in finance, too. I’m a lawyer for a development firm in Vegas.”
“Banking for us.” Tim closed his eyes, leaning his head back a little so the sun’s rays hit his face. “When you spend three quarters of your life in an office, you need a break like this. I think I’d have an ulcer by now if we hadn’t picked up the hobby.”
I nodded, thinking about how much better I felt after a hike. Something to thank Rick for, I thought. No matter what else happened, he gave you this.
“You must be able to get out all the time, living around here,” Nancy said. “How many times have you been to the canyon?”
I scuffed my boots in the dirt. “Only once, and I didn’t get below the rim at all.” I thought about that trip with the girls, standing on the glass walkway on the West Rim with all the tourists, Mary bitching incessantly, nowhere near the massive, breathtaking beauty of the North or South Rim. Could I even consider that a visit, now that I knew what it was really like down here?
“Really?” Tim looked incredulous. “If I lived in Vegas, I think I would be here every weekend.”
“I hike a lot near the city,” I said, feeling strangely defensive. “Red Rock Canyon is pretty nice.”
Nancy’s face fell. “Oh, we wanted to see that, but we couldn’t fit it into the schedule.”
“You’ll have to do it next time.”
She nodded, her gaze flickering back over the canyon. “I’m going to have to start planning our next trip immediately. I think it’s the only way I’ll be able to handle going back to work after this.”
After that, Girard got everyone up and going, reminding us that the rising sun was going to bring more heat, which we would only feel more the lower we descended.
“I think everyone is doing great so far,” Croft told us as we gathered on the trail. “I’m confident you can all make it to the next stop. Unless anyone is feeling tired…?”
Not a single hand shot up, and I couldn’t blame the group. I felt like we had barely scratched the surface.
We descended lower into the canyon. Girard had been right, I could already feel it starting to get warmer. I would have to remember to drink my water. I had a tendency to get too involved in the view when I was hiking and lose track of the time.
“It’s something else, isn’t it?”
I looked up to see Rick falling into step next to me. I swallowed, very much aware of how near he was on the narrow path. “It’s amazing.”
He nodded, his eyes sweeping across the vista. “I’m glad I came.”
I nodded, though his eyes weren’t on me. “This isn’t something you’d want to miss.”
We hiked on in silence for a few moments, and it struck me that I didn’t feel awkward in the slightest. I had spent so much of my time in Rick’s company either feeling angry or embarrassed. It was nice to just be for a few minutes, without any baggage.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked.
No. Because I couldn’t stop wondering what in the hell you’re doing here.
“Not bad. How about you?”
He chuckled softly. “It sure beat the hotel in Vegas. There were no hordes of frat boys tramping up and down my hall in the middle of the night. There wasn’t even any neon outside my window.”
I winced. “I’m sorry you had to leave the Musgroves.”
He shrugged. “It was for the best. But it was definitely nice last night to get out of the city.”
I nodded. He had a point. I had spent a good part of my near-sleepless night wondering at the silence, at the bright glow of the moon outside my window. I’d gotten up, careful not to wake my dad, to marvel at the number of stars I could make out in the sky above. It had gotten so used to the bright lights of Vegas blocking out the night sky, I had forgotten there were so many stars up there. Everything about the resort, from the location to the decor to the architecture and design, was peaceful, serene. Exactly the kind of respite I needed from the constant go-go craze of the Vegas Strip.
“That’s what we should be designing,” I said suddenly, stopping in the middle of the trail. Rick stopped next to me, taking my elbow to guide me out of the path so that Tim and Nancy didn’t crash into us.
“What?”
“An oasis. A retreat.” My brain was spinning—it seemed so obvious now. All of our attempts to be unique, to come up with something new and different, had felt forced. Because we weren’t looking far enough outside the box. What was the difference if our hotel was art deco or mid-century modern? Rehashing old Vegas design schemes wasn’t innovative. We were building a boutique hotel in an up and coming neighborhood, far from the Strip. Why were we trying to bring the Strip to the hotel? We needed to go in a completely different direction.
Rick bent down a little to peer into my face. “Annabelle? What are you thinking?”
“Nancy and Tim just told me that they came here to get away from the chaos of their city and their jobs,” I told him. “They don’t want to spend their whole vacation in casinos and watching shows and being immersed in a city.”
“Okay…” I could tell that he wasn’t following me yet.
“And think about how much better you felt when you got here yesterday—how much easier it was to think, to relax.”
“Yeah…”
“Well, we can’t be the only four people who feel that way.” I gestured at Tim and Nancy’s retreating backs. “We’re building a hotel in one of the most exciting cities in the world. But it’s also smack in the middle of some of the most beautiful natural scenery in the world.”
He looked around, his eyes narrowed. “True.”
“So what if we actually do what the Covington Group asked for? What if we try for something truly unique?”
“Something more like the Vista,” he said, eyes still narrowed. I could tell his brain was starting to spin the same way mine was. “An oasis. A r
etreat.”
“Exactly. We make the focus on calm, relaxation. A little escape right there in Vegas.”
“Somewhere people can still experience as much of the frantic city as they want…but come back to a retreat when they’ve had their fill.”
I nodded, feeling almost as excited as I had when the sun started to paint the sky an hour earlier. “An amazing spa. A healthy, luxurious restaurant—”
“With locally sourced food.”
“Exactly! Well, as much as we can get in the desert I guess.”
He laughed and my heart clenched—I hadn’t heard him laugh quite like that in years. Ever since I had seen him that first night in the elevator, there had been a wall around him. Sometimes it came down a bit, like it had at dinner last night. But I think hearing him laugh there in the canyon was the first time he’d really sounded like himself, like the Rick I remembered. Free and unencumbered by anger or bitterness.
“We could make the desert part of the design scheme,” he said. “I had pitched a landscaping plan that included a lot of xeriscapes, but Mary knocked it down pretty swiftly.”
I rolled my eyes. Xeriscaping was the practice of using native plants and landscaping practices to minimize water use and better irrigation. Of course Mary had dismissed the idea in favor of lush green lawns and tropical plants.
“Annabelle?” my dad called from down the track. I suddenly remembered where we were, realizing that the entire group had passed us now and were many yards down the path.
“Coming!” Rick and I called together, and set off down the trail.
The interruption didn’t distract him. “We should make a big push for local resources, even beyond the food. The staffing and shops. The restaurant. We should be promoting what the area has to offer.”
“Yes! I can’t believe we didn’t talk about that sooner—that entire area is starting to build up with all of these unique shopping and restaurants. We absolutely should be utilizing that—celebrating it.”
“This is pretty far from where the team has been heading,” Rick pointed out, grabbing my shoulder to keep me from tripping. I was so caught up in the ideas that were rushing through my mind that I barely noticed the warmth of his hand through my jacket. Barely.
“You think they’ll go for it?”
I frowned. “I have no idea, to be honest.” I thought about their reactions if I pitched this to them. Mary would, undoubtedly, declare it boring. Liz would think it too lowbrow. But I knew that neither of their opinions really mattered if I could get Emma on board.
“I think I can get them,” I said, hearing the determination in my voice.
“You won’t have to do it alone.”
I paused for just a second, letting my eyes drift up to his face. He was looking down at me, his expression both familiar and foreign. It wasn’t until I had blushed and looked back to the trail that I realized I had seen something similar in his face that day at the office, when I went off on Liz about my dad. Respect.
I pushed the thought to the back of my mind so I could concentrate on his words. Rick was sounding almost giddy about the prospect. “My design would need some revamping,” he said. “I mean, I think the biggest bulk of work would be for Jim. He’d have to change all the soft furnishings and interior stuff.” He snorted a little. “But the work will be good for him. Get him out of his love haze a little.”
I laughed. “I can help him. I’m actually pretty good at that kind of thing. And all I’ll really have to do on my end is make sure that the financials still match up.” I had a sudden idea. “Actually, I have some stuff already prepared that might help.”
“You do, huh?”
I didn’t want to tell him about the Greece hotel. Things might feel more comfortable between us at this specific moment, but that dream was still way too personal to share with anyone. Especially Rick.
“It’s a little side project I’ve been working on, for fun,” I said. “Nothing serious. But I do have some design plans that we could incorporate. It would at least give us a starting point for the interiors.” I bumped him a little with my shoulder. “You’re the one who would have to start from scratch.”
“Not really from scratch. Some adjustments should do it. I could really focus on clean lines,” he said, sounding excited again. “Really open, almost stark spaces in the common areas.”
“Which is totally your wheelhouse,” I said without thinking. “I mean, look at your design for that hotel in Barcelona. Once you strip away all the extraneous stuff, your design really shines.”
It was his turn to stop dead in his tracks, blocking the trail. Luckily, this time, there was no one behind us. “You saw my Barcelona design?”
I wasn’t sure how to read the look in his eyes as they searched my face. “Well, yeah. I mean, it was in the portfolio Charlie put together when we hired you.”
“Oh.” He didn’t say anything else. Didn’t move, either. Finally, he shook his head a little and continued.
We walked in silence, and I wondered what I had said to ruin the mood. He didn’t seem angry at me, not in the slightest. It was more like…confusion. But he had stopped throwing around ideas about the hotel.
“Why didn’t you ever go,” he asked suddenly.
“Go where?”
“To Barcelona.” He waved his hand as if to encompass something larger. “To any of it. To Europe.”
“I’ve been to Europe lots of time,” I said, feeling bewildered. His voice was strange. Upset. “You know that.”
“You went to Europe in high school and college,” he said, his voice lower now, so I had to lean in a little to hear him. “And you hated it.”
“I didn’t hate it—”
“You were supposed to go back.” Now he sounded almost angry. At me? I couldn’t tell. “I heard you, at the Harvilles. You told Jim that you never went back.”
I gaped at him, shocked that he had been listening. More shocked that he had remembered. “Yeah, well,” I shrugged lamely. “Things changed.”
He didn’t respond for a long moment. We were starting to catch up to the others, and I felt a sudden rush of panic. I didn’t want to catch up to them. Didn’t want to distract him from this line of thought. There was a part of me that didn’t want to hear what else he had to say, that didn’t want to discover why he sounded almost offended by my lack of travel. But there was a smaller, louder voice deep inside my head telling me that I needed to hear this. That this might explain so much that I had been desperate to know ever since he showed up in that elevator.
“Why?” he finally asked, his voice soft. “Why didn’t you go?”
I took a deep, shuddering breath. There is was, then. A simple request to be honest, to lay my cards out on the table. Why hadn’t I gone?
“Because I didn’t see the point.” My voice was barely more than a whisper. “After you left.”
I heard him draw in a sharp breath, almost a gasp. I couldn’t look at him, too scared to see what would be in his eyes. Pity? Guilt? Before he could say anything, Croft was calling our names.
“You guys should see this.” He waved us over to where the rest of the group had gathered around something on the ground. I finally looked up at Rick, but his eyes—hard, narrowed—were on Croft.
“Be right there,” he called back, quickening his pace, leaving me there on the path. My stomach dropped, some hope I didn’t even know I had deflating in my chest. Slowly, I followed him over to the group, taking a spot by my dad, far away from Rick, as Croft went into some explanation of the ancient archeology site we were passing.
I barely heard a word he said. My words kept replaying over and over in my head. How could I have been so stupid, admitting that? I might as well have told him that I never got over him. Oh, by the way, Rick, I still dream about you all the time. I compare every other guy I date to you. I don’t think I’ll ever really find someone to be happy with again.
I blinked back tears, my eyes on the dusty ground. When it was time to start movi
ng again, I stayed glued to my dad’s side, refusing to look for Rick.
And he never came to find me.
Chapter Twenty-one
On Tuesday morning, my dad and I sat down for one last breakfast together at his favorite restaurant in the Bellagio. The food was amazing, as always, but I couldn’t make myself enjoy it. I was dreading him leaving.
“This trip went way too fast,” he said, his voice sounding sadder than I had heard it in a long time. I reached across the table for his hand, and he immediately wrapped mine in both of his.
“I wish you could stay.”
“I do, too.” He swallowed, looking away, and I felt tears pricking my eyes. My dad rarely got emotional.
“I’m glad you came, though,” I said, my voice thick. “I’m really glad.”
“Me, too, pumpkin.” He finally looked me in the eyes, and the expression there made me want to burst into tears. He looked proud of me.
It wasn’t like I had never seen my dad proud of me. When I got the scholarship to Cranbrook, he had literally told everyone he encountered for a week—from customers at the shop to grocery store clerks. Every time I went home during college, I would run into someone who seemed to know as much about my school successes as I did—Your dad said you made Dean’s List again, Annabelle! Congratulations!
But this was something different, the way he was looking at me now. Like his pride over my scholarship and grades had been superficial in a way. Now, he was looking at me like he was proud of who I was, not what I did.
“Oh, Daddy,” I whispered, squeezing his hand. “We’re never going to go so long without visiting again, I promise.”
“I believe you, sweetheart.”
And that was about the best praise he could have given me.
I paid the check for our breakfast and we stood, linking arms as we headed out of the restaurant. “I’m going to miss the food around here,” he said, patting his stomach with his other hand. “I probably gained ten pounds.”
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