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ChapterFive

Nate

The way he said Mr. Buxton before storming out of the dining room had an embarrassingly strong effect on my body. I pretended to scroll on my phone for a few minutes until my reaction calmed down and then finished helping Lilah reset for the morning.

“So you want to sell?” Lilah asks as we close the doors to the dining room and make our way down the hall.

“You heard that?”

“It helps that I was trying extremely hard to eavesdrop. So yeah.”

I laugh at her easy honesty.

“I have no idea how to run a hotel, and this place needs so much work. It would be better off in the hands of someone who knew what they were doing.”

“You could learn, like Rémy said.”

Okay, so she really did hear all our conversation.

“That would take forever.”

“So it’s not that you wouldn’t want to, it’s that you think it would take too long to learn?”

“No. Well, in some parts, yes. But…”

“Do you have another job to get back to?”

“No.”

“A house, wife, husband, kids?”

“No. I sort of moved back with my mom.”

“Sooo, what’s stopping you from giving this a go, then?”

“Crippling fear that I’ll fuck it up,” I reply with a laugh, as if I’m joking. But in truth, that is the only reason I can think of right now.

“You should always do what you’re afraid to do,” she says, and I stop walking. “It means you care enough to succeed.”

“Did you just come up with that?”

She laughs. “Nope, it’s an Emerson quote. Or the first part is, the second bit is just something Rémy throws in whenever he says it, but in his French accent, it sounds way smoother.”

I bet it does. I could listen to him talk for hours. I don’t tell her that, though.

She turns toward the front door where the moonlight is sending soft streams of colored light through the stained glass into the hallway. “I better be going. It’s getting late and I’m back here for breakfast.”

“Sorry to keep you.”

“No, it’s fine. You helped me reset the dining room, so I’m getting out of here a bit earlier tonight. Besides, I only live fifteen minutes down the road. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Yeah, see you then.”

She leaves, and I head back to my room, sleep coming easier than it has in a year.

The old estate feels even emptier in the early hours of the morning. Rémy said he’d be in the kitchen by five. It’s ten minutes to five, and I’m trying to look busy flipping through the bookings in the old leather diary. The reception desk is just inside the main doors and to the left. It’s got only what it needs, I guess, with the diary, a landline phone, and a cabinet attached to the wall with the room keys on display. There’s a hook for sixteen in total, and only six are missing. The books show another five guests are checking in today, and two on Sunday. The dining room was pretty packed last night as it was with people coming in from other places nearby, so I guess this place is doing better than I thought.

I hear a noise down the hall and follow the sound through the dining room, pushing open the swinging doors that lead to the kitchen to find Rémy standing on the other side of a long stainless steel bench, wearing a black tank top that shows off his toned arms perfectly.