Chương 1
"“Don’t touch him,” I said.
The security guard stopped with one hand half raised, and Emily’s face changed because my voice had not carried anger, only the kind of authority she had been pretending to possess all evening.
For a second, nobody seemed sure whether I was protecting myself or protecting her.
I looked at Marcus, the guard she had summoned, and nodded toward the ballroom doors.
“You’re fine, Marcus.”
He let out a breath through his nose.
“Thank you, Mr. Carter.”
Emily flinched at the name and the title attached to it.
I had known Marcus for four years, long enough to know his daughter had just started middle school and that he hated working formal events because rented tuxedos made drunk men feel important.
Tonight he looked as if he would rather be directing traffic in a thunderstorm.
Emily swallowed.
“Jake, I said I didn’t know.”
“That part is pretty clear.”
My aunt Diane finally moved.
She crossed the few feet between us with the careful smile she used whenever something embarrassing happened in public and she believed politeness could smother it before anyone noticed the smoke.
“Well,” she said, “this has obviously been a misunderstanding.”
My uncle Robert stared at me instead.
“The hotel is yours?”
“Most of it belongs to the bank if you want the less glamorous version.”
Someone near the bar laughed.
It was small and quickly suppressed, but it broke the strange spell hanging over the room.
Emily did not laugh.
She glanced toward her guests, and that told me what hurt her most.
Not that she had insulted me.
Not yet.
She was terrified that people had seen her be wrong.
“Can we talk privately?” she asked.
Ten years ago, I would have followed her immediately.
Back then, being summoned by Emily still carried some leftover childhood authority, as if she remained the older cousin who got the front seat and decided what game everyone played.
At thirty-two, I found myself looking instead at the banquet captain standing beside the service entrance.
Priya had a clipboard tucked against her ribs.
She gave me the slightest shake of her head.
Something else was wrong.
“I’m working,” I said.
Emily stared at me.
“At my birthday party?”
“At my hotel.”
Her cheeks darkened again.
Priya approached before Emily could answer.
“Jake, sorry.”
She lowered her voice, though half the room had already developed a professional interest in overhearing us.
“We need you in the kitchen for a minute.”
Emily gave a brittle laugh.
“Of course you do.”
Priya looked at her.
“I’m sorry?”
“Nothing.”
I followed Priya through the service door.
The noise of the ballroom dropped behind us, replaced by clattering dishes, running water, and somebody in the kitchen calling for another tray of crab cakes.
I had expected relief once Emily was out of sight.
Instead, my hands had begun shaking.
I shoved them into my pockets.
Priya noticed because Priya noticed everything.
“You okay?”
“Fantastic.”
“You look fantastic.”
“Thank you.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
We kept walking.
At the prep counter, Luis, our executive chef, stood over a printed event sheet with the expression of a man considering whether arson might simplify his evening.
“What happened?” I asked.
He tapped the paper.
“Birthday girl added thirty-eight people.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“Thirty-eight.”
“We contracted for eighty.”
“We currently have one hundred eighteen wristbands issued, and apparently more are coming.”
Priya handed me her clipboard.
The revised count had been written beside the original guest total.
I rubbed my forehead.
“Who approved the extra bar service?”
“Nobody,” Priya said.
“That’s the problem.”
Luis pointed a serving spoon at me.
“I can stretch dinner.”
“You said that like it physically hurt.”
“It does physically hurt.”
Despite myself, I laughed.
The sound felt wrong after what had happened in the ballroom, but it also loosened something in my chest.
This was the part of owning a hotel nobody in my family had ever imagined.
Not chandeliers.
Not suits.
Not standing around while employees called me Mr. Carter.
It was finding thirty-eight unplanned dinners on a Saturday night while somebody complained that the risotto had too much personality.
“Stretch the mains, not the appetizers,” I said.
Luis grimaced.
“I already knew that.”
“I know.”
“Then why say it?”
“Because I’m nervous.”
“That I believe.”
Priya was still studying the event sheet.
“There’s another issue.”
“Of course there is.”
“The card on file declined when accounting tried to authorize the incidentals increase.”
I stopped smiling.
“How much?”
“With the additional guests, extended bar package, extra rentals, and staffing, we need another forty-eight hundred authorized tonight.”
The original party package was just over ten thousand dollars.
It had already been expensive enough to make me wonder, when I first saw Emily’s name on the reservation, whether there could possibly be two Emily Whitmores with mothers named Diane.
Now the evening was becoming more expensive by the minute.
“Who signed the contract?” I asked.
Priya turned the page.
“Emily.”
That surprised me.
I had assumed my aunt and uncle were paying.
Through the small kitchen window, I could see a slice of the ballroom.
Emily stood with her mother near the cake table, speaking quickly.
Diane’s arms were folded.
Robert remained by the bar.
None of them looked happy.
“Give them fifteen minutes,” I said.
“Then what?”
“Then we follow the contract.”
Priya nodded and walked away.
I stayed there longer than necessary.
A dishwasher sprayed a rack of glasses.
Luis swore because someone had moved his parsley.
A server hurried past carrying clean forks.
Normal problems continued with complete indifference to the fact that my childhood had just walked into my building wearing a six-thousand-dollar dress.
I had imagined seeing Emily again more times than I liked admitting.
In some versions, she barely recognized me and I casually mentioned owning three hotels.
I did not own three hotels.
May you like
In other versions, she apologized for everything without prompting and I accepted with impressive indifference.
That version had apparently been written by an idiot.
