Page 55 of Never Been Witched (Starfall Point #3)

Collin

Two days later, Julie was waiting for him outside the Cowslip Suite with a grim but determined look on her face. In fact, she had an entire housekeeping squadron waiting with her, all with grim but determined looks on their faces.

“Good morning, ladies. I don’t need backup for this.” Collin inclined his head to the trio of housekeepers, each dressed in comfortable brick-red winter-weight scrubs they’d all agreed upon for “non-occupation dates.”

“No, but I promised the ladies here that when the Haircut eventually got herself ejected from the hotel, they would be allowed to be part of the process,” Julie said.

“You knew that Paige would eventually get herself ejected from the hotel?” Collin asked.

“Yes, and that we would be allowed to be part of the process,” Hester Murphy, one of the older housekeepers on staff, repeated. “Miss LaGravenesse has not made friends here. Not like Alice.”

Collin considered that for a moment. Paige had been uncharacteristically quiet while he and the coven recovered from their confrontation with Margaret, explained to Celia how yet another body had ended up near Shaddow House, explained to poor Jeff what had happened to his mother.

Fortunately, Celia and Jeff were inclined to believe Ben’s medically qualified assurances that Margaret had died of a heart attack.

Jeff seemed more embarrassed that his mother was lurking around Ben’s place.

He’d chalked it up to her trying to get a look inside Gray Fern or Shaddow House.

Collin had been distracted by helping their friends negotiate these real-world, non-magical problems. He’d almost forgotten that Paige was still around. Clearly, Paige hadn’t been on her best behavior in her boredom.

“Understood,” Collin said, raising his hand to knock on the door. “Ladies, if we could move about this as quickly and quietly as possible, I would appreciate it. I’m not asking you to protect her dignity… Just try not to throw any physical punches.”

“Understood,” Hester replied, echoing his tone. She turned to her coworkers. “Plan C, girls.”

“Plan C?” Collin asked as he knocked on the door. “How many plans were there?”

“You think this is the first time they’ve had to do this?” Julie asked him.

Collin shrugged. He hadn’t told Alice that he was planning to remove Paige today.

He knew that at this point, Alice didn’t want words from him.

She wanted action, and that was fair. He’d been too indirect in his interactions with Paige.

He’d tried to be kind, but all he’d done was give Paige a vague hope that maybe someday…

And now he was paying for that lack of clarity and, well, his cowardice.

Alice was paying for it too, and if he wanted any sort of future with her, he was going to have to make things very clear.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Paige shrieked as Julie and the housekeeping squad marched into the room as a unit.

As he looked around the sparsely furnished space with its barely dried (not orange) paint, he wondered why Paige had bothered.

She would have had more comforts in the guesthouse.

Here Paige had no decorations, no place to sit, not even a nightstand.

The bed didn’t have a headboard, just a hastily constructed frame and a mattress.

It had been a misguided flex, Paige trying to show Alice that she could get Collin to do whatever she wanted.

And she’d paid for it with days in a room without so much as a closet bar to hang her precious clothes.

“Your stay with the Duchess Hotel is at an end, ma’am,” Julie told her with no small amount of professional glee.

The housekeepers had already located her suitcases and began unpacking the drawers of the tall, fluted maple dresser Alice had chosen for the room.

“The staff will help you pack up, and your transportation will be ready shortly.”

“What are you talking about?” Paige demanded. “Collin, what is going on?”

“You’re leaving, Paige,” Collin told her. “Right after you return my mother’s engagement ring, which is to say, right now.”

“What? Why?” Paige huffed. “I just got here. And we have so much to talk about.”

Somehow, the housekeepers managed to sweep the bedroom and the bathroom of Paige’s belongings before Collin could even reply. “You’re no longer welcome here.”

“Since when? My family has always been welcome on your properties, you know that. You wouldn’t turn away a LaGravenesse. You wouldn’t dare —where are you going with my things?” she yelled at the housekeeping staff as they carried her bags out the door.

Julie smiled sweetly as she walked out after them. “Thank you for staying at the Duchess. Now, please get the hell out and never darken our doors again.”

“I’ll have you fired, you little bitch!” Paige yelled. But Julie had already left the room.

“No, you won’t have her fired,” he barked at her.

“Your days of terrorizing people in my name are over. You’ve gone too far now, Paige.

We won’t even talk about manipulating my staff into putting you into this room far before it was ready for occupancy, and putting what I’m trying to do here in danger.

That’s just window dressing on the bullshit you’ve been trying to pull.

You put that boy Josh—someone I care about—in danger. ”

“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “A little old lady wanted to talk to him about breaking one of her windows. He and his doctor daddy had been dodging her.”

“Bullshit,” Collin replied.

“Seriously, I was just trying to protect your image here, locally,” she insisted. “Being a part of the commun—”

“Bullshit,” Collin said again.

“Fine, fine ,” Paige grunted. “I was down at that piddly little bakery, trying to find something gluten-free, and that old woman heard me complaining on my phone about the mousy little frump you’ve got shacked up with you.

She asked me for a favor, and in return, she would make sure Alex or whatever her name is would leave you alone.

Big deal. I just asked a kid to help me carry a bag to the hotel.

It’s not like I gave him drugs or something. Why are you being so dramatic ?”

“If I had any idea that you knew your actions would put Josh in danger, the police couldn’t help you.

Because I would let Mina have five minutes with you,” Collin told her.

“As it is, I can only suspect that you were trying to mess with Alice. Now, you’ve intruded on my hospitality and my life long enough. I want you gone. Now.”

“Oh, Collin, don’t be silly,” she giggled, stroking his shirtfront. “You’ve said this kind of thing before, and you’ve never meant it.”

He removed her hands from his shirt and pushed them away. “I assure you I am being very serious. I have called my helicopter. I only call my helicopter when I’m serious.”

As if on cue, he could hear the beat of rotors in the distance. Whatever he was paying Julie, it was not enough.

Paige rolled her eyes, and she strode toward the door.

“Paige,” he called at her. She turned, an expression that was simultaneously smug and hopeful on the face he’d once adored. He held out his palm. “My mother’s ring?”

“Why?” she demanded. “We both know I’m going to end up with it eventually anyway. I’ll just take it to my jeweler and have it sized.”

“Paige,” he said again, his hand still out. “Now.”

She huffed out a sigh as she dug a ring box out of her purse and handed it to him. Collin opened the box to make sure she’d actually returned his mother’s ring and not some other bauble. To her credit, it was there. “Thank you.”

“After all these years, you think you can just end things?” Paige demanded as she followed him out of the suite.

“You know we’re supposed to end up together.

I’ve let you run around and have your freedom, your fun, but your family and mine have expectations—and it’s time we met them.

I know who you are, Collin—who you really are.

Not this polished-prince act you’re putting on for the yokels, but the real you and the stupidity you’re capable of.

Do you think that sweet little schoolmarm is going to put up with the bullshit I’ve seen from you?

She has no idea what you’re capable of.”

“I’m not that person anymore,” Collin said.

“I’ve heard that from you before too,” she shot back, following him down the hall. “Tell me a new one. Look, we belong together, because I’m the one who will accept you, love you, no matter what. I’ve put too much time and effort into—”

“You don’t love me . I don’t love you ,” he told her.

“You’ve been a friend to me over the years.

I don’t know what we are now, but I know we’re not friends.

We don’t really want each other. We just don’t want to let go of the idea of each other.

But it’s time. What you did was really dangerous and could have gotten Josh killed. ”

“You’re exaggerating,” Paige’s voice was strident, bouncing off the lobby ceiling in an eerie mockery of Victoria’s final agonies in the hotel hall. “Don’t do this, Collin. Please, I love you!”

He exited the lobby to the left, toward the helipad, which was simply a nice, stable, flat piece of un-landscaped lawn that served as a landing space for high-profile guests and Medivac flights alike.

“If I thought that was true,” Collin said, pausing at the door to the west lawn, “I would be so sad for you. But it’s not true, you know that.

You don’t love me. We’re both just scared of what we are without this lie to fall back on.

I’m trying to figure that out for myself. And it’s time you did the same.”

“Don’t you spout that therapy crap at me,” Paige seethed. “I know who you are , Collin Bancroft. And I know what a disappointment you are to everybody who knows you.”