by Brooks, Abby
“And,” Lucas said. “It’s not uncommon for some our employees to stay in the resort while they get settled in the area. We deduct costs from your paycheck and offer an impressive discount. When you work for the Huttons, you’re part of the family. If you need a place to stay, you have one.” He explained the details and costs and my eyes widened in shock.
While staying with Mom cost significantly less than staying here, sleeping on a foldout bed that doubled as a kitchen table appealed to me about as much as going back to Galveston and begging Nash to let me move back in with him. “Those numbers are hard to resist.”
“You haven’t even seen the rooms yet.” He smiled and it was like the sun breaking through the clouds and dancing across the waves. Warmth brightened his face and settled comfortably in my soul. “Come on, let me show you where you’d stay.”
Lucas offered me his hand. I took it, his skin rough and worn against mine. This man knew hard work. For as comfortable as he looked behind the desk, I wondered how much time he actually spent there. I imagined him with a hammer in his hand, or a shovel, or a saw, his body glistening in the sun while he worked.
The image sent a surge of adrenaline into my belly, reminding me to stop imagining him as anything but my boss. Or my boss’ brother. Either way—the fact that he continued to be naked in my imagination had to cross a line…somewhere. The only man I was allowed to react to at all was Mr. X and that was only because he was more like a journal that talked back than an actual human being. Nameless. Faceless. Bodiless.
Safe.
Lucas led me upstairs to show me the rooms they offered to employees in need. They were small and on the third floor of the main house, but sunlight filtered through windows with exquisite views of the beach. Simple yet lavish furnishings made the small spaces seem luxurious. The rooms had balconies. They were also small, but there was enough room to sit outside and drink coffee, and, if I was careful, to do my morning yoga.
“We don’t have many rooms open up here.” Lucas pointed to a closed door. “I’m in that one right now. My sister’s in there. And the two brothers you haven’t met are there.” He pointed to three doors in turn. “If you decide to stay at The Hut, that one would probably be yours,” he said, pointing to the door next to his. The thought of falling asleep with little more than drywall and two-by-fours separating me from Lucas was enough to make me smile. He glowered at me and walked away, leaving me to trail after him like a lost puppy.
While Lucas led me around the rest of the complex—pointing out the bar, the kitchens, the yoga studio, the meditation room—that still-small voice inside me whispered. Do it, Cat. Do it.
When he showed me the massage area, that voice stopped being small. This was it. Whatever it was that I had been holding out for, it was right here. Lucas watched my reaction, his gaze laser-focused and direct. I felt the weight of it as I wandered the well-appointed room, daydreaming about all the good I could do in a space like this.
When I turned to him and caught his eyes, that still-small voice gasped. This! it yelled, though I didn’t understand what it meant.
“Have I sold you, yet?” he asked.
“Does that mean I have the job? Because I was sold before I walked through the front door.”
“That’s funny. You were hired the minute your resume hit Wyatt’s desk. The interview was just a chance to make sure you weren’t a serial killer hiding behind a stellar background.”
“And an hour was all you needed to know that I’m not a killer?”
Lucas laughed, a low sound, warm and sensuous. “I’m an excellent judge of character.”
I stammered out a reply, something that would surely embarrass me if I could think straight enough to know what I said. As things stood, I was pleased to have managed to say anything at all.
He guided me back to the main house where we set up a date for me to come back and fill out my new-hire paperwork. He walked me to the front door and then paused. “It was truly a pleasure meeting you, Cat.” His eyes traveled across my face and held me in place.
I dropped my gaze to give myself a moment to breathe and then smiled up at him. “You too, Lucas. I’m very excited.”
“You should be.” He placed a hand on my arm. “We’re very excited to have someone like you join our family.”
His touch was fleeting and gentle, but it felt like the onset of a storm. A flash of lightning with the long rumble of thunder rolling behind, the beginning of something violent and beautiful.
We said our goodbyes and I climbed into my Jeep just as my phone pinged. Excitement danced in my belly as it always did now that Mr. X and I were emailing. The excitement sputtered out when I found a text from Chris, informing me I was a hooker for finding a job as glorious as this one. Apparently, he had done a little research on The Hutton Hotel and came to the same conclusion I had: this was one hell of a place to work. I shot off a reply.
I just finished the interview. How would you know if I had the job? Maybe I bombed.
Chris responded a second later.
This is you we’re talking about. Of course you got the job. Bitch.
I shook my head and then opened Mr. X’s last email to me, sighing as I read it again. The man had poetry in his soul, that was for sure.
My smile came easily as I drove back to where Mom’s RV was parked, daydreaming about my future here in the Keys, deciding what I was going to say in my next email to Mr. X, while remembering the rough feel of Lucas’ hand against my own.
Chapter Thirteen
Lucas
“Well?” Wyatt asked as I stepped into the office. “What did you think?”
For a moment, he looked like our father, standing near the windows, backlit by the sun. I blinked and the moment was gone. Running a hand along the back of my neck, I squinted at him as I worked on a sore spot in my shoulder. “Of the masseuse?”
“No. Of the broccoli.” Wyatt laughed and sat behind the desk. “Yes, of course of the masseuse.”
“She seems great.”
And by great, I meant amazing. Beautiful. Witty. Driven. Kind. Intelligent. Her laugh was pixie dust. The smile on her face etched itself into my brain. The wind had blown her hair into her eyes and she’d brushed it away. I had stood there, staring, wondering what it would be like to touch her. Was her skin as soft as it looked? Were her breasts as perfect as I imagined? What would she look like, sprawled underneath me, pleasure contorting her face? I couldn’t look at Cat without resenting every stitch of clothing covering her from view. Her body lit mine on fire and it was all I could do to maintain an air of professionalism around her.
“Great?” Wyatt leaned his elbows on his desk. “We get an applicant like that once in a blue moon and all you can say is that she seemed great. You’ve been gone too long, brother. If you knew the kinds of people I’ve had to turn down…” My brother rolled his eyes and shuffled papers, a crease appearing between his brows. He pinched his forehead with his thumb and forefinger and sighed. Stress clung to him, tension tightening his normally open features. Maybe that was why he looked so much like Dad moments ago.
I took a stab at what bothered him. “Were you and Mom able to work through that accounting error? Is it as bad as it seemed?” Dad had been in charge of the money before he passed. Either his brain was more pickled than we ever knew, or he had gotten into some shady shit because Burke Hutton had been too smart to have discrepancies like the one I found floating around.
Wyatt let out a long breath. “It’s bad. It won’t kill us, but we need to go through everything with a fine-toothed comb. If we find more errors like that…” He stared at his feet and I could almost read his mind, a series of ever-worsening curses flung toward our father. Even in his death, he managed to hurt us.
“So, I was right about Cat, wasn’t I?” Wyatt asked after a few minutes. “She’s exactly the kind of person we want working here.” He peeked at me, a smile quirking his lips, and the ghost of our father left his face. “Please tell me you didn’t
do that thing you do.”
“That thing I do?”
Wyatt folded his arms behind his head and smirked. “Yeah. You know. That thing where you get all intense and glowery and intimidate the hell out of people?”
“Glowery?” I asked. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I assumed they beat it into when you joined the Marines. Even I have the urge to scream ‘Sir, yes Sir!’ at you from time to time.” He lifted a hand in mock salute and squared his shoulders before laughing lightly and resting his elbows on the desk.
“We made an appointment for her to come in next week and fill out all the paperwork.” I smiled, knowing he’d be thrilled by my news.
Wyatt stood, bobbing his head. “That’s fantastic. Just based on her experience, she’d be a solid hire, but I can’t shake this feeling that she could be so much more for the hotel than just a masseuse. You know Mom’s always looking to put more focus on the health and wellness side of things. Maybe Cat’s the piece that’s been missing.”
“Maybe she is.”
His words hung in the air between us.
Maybe Cat’s the piece that’s been missing.
He was right. I didn’t know how, but he was right.
Wyatt stared out the window for a few seconds before turning back to me. “You offered her a room, right? Sounds like she’s living through a rough patch.”
I wondered about the rough patch but didn’t ask, even though I wanted to. Her problems were none of my business. At least that’s what I kept telling myself as I battled the strongest urge to protect her from whatever she was dealing with.
Pushing away the strange thoughts, I refocused on Wyatt. “She tried to turn us down, but once she saw the numbers she changed her mind.”
“Mom will be pleased.”
Right around the time The Hut moved out of the bed and breakfast arena and grew into a full-blown resort, Mom suggested opening the rooms in the house for employees in need. Dad cursed her for years over it, but she stood her ground. He swore up and down that they were losing money hand over foot because of her generosity. And maybe they were, but her argument held weight, they had money to spare.
“She should be,” I said to Wyatt and then crossed the room to lean over the desk. While he filled me in on the mess Dad left behind, my thoughts wandered back to Cat, replaying each and every moment we spent together. Monday couldn’t come quickly enough. I wanted to know more about her. Hell, I wanted to know everything about her. I didn’t think I had ever met a woman so beautiful. So poised. So…
“Hey.” Wyatt leaned forward to catch my attention. “You in there?”
“Yeah. Sorry. I got lost in thought.”
“You think?” Wyatt pushed off the desk and stared out the window. “How long do you think it’ll be like this?”
“Like what?”
“All of us here. Working together.”
I stared at his back as I tried to find the answer. How long could I stay here? With Dad gone, it was easier to breathe, that was for sure. But he was still everywhere. In the accounting. In the buildings. In the stories I had to tell Cat. He was built into the history of this place. Being with my family felt good, especially after everything I went through last year, but how long could that last? It had been years since we all lived together and each of us had been busy building our own lives.
“How am I supposed to know that?” I finally answered.
“I don’t know.” Wyatt shook his head and crossed his arms, dipping his chin. “It’s good having you back. All of you.” He turned. “Mom hasn’t smiled this much in a long time.”
I knew Mom wanted her children to come home. She wanted us to take over parts of the hotel. She wanted us to run The Hut as a family. It sounded good…and bad. Could my brothers and I drop our lives to come home? Could Harlow stop wandering? There could be healing here, but there could also be destruction.
“I don’t know, man,” I said to Wyatt. “We’ll take it one day at a time, I guess.”
He blew a long breath through his nose, stared me in the eye, and then swiped the papers off the desk and continued explaining what he found.
Chapter Fourteen
Cat
I spent the weekend getting to know my mom again. We’d stayed in touch over the years, talking to each other at least once a week, but living with someone makes it impossible to smooth over the prickly bits the way you could over the phone. She had changed. A lot.
Age sat heavily on her shoulders. She moved slower. She groaned when she changed positions. She sighed deeply at times, and didn’t seem to know she was doing it. Gray tinged her hair, her skin, her spirit. But her face lit up every time she looked at me and I regretted not visiting sooner.
As I pulled up in front of her RV after my second meeting at The Hutton Hotel, she sat in a white plastic lawn chair, staring at the sky, her face slack. The moment she heard my engine, she pivoted, pressing her hands into the chair to stand. The most beautiful thing about my mother had always been her smile—a trait I hoped I’d inherited—and she flashed it at me as I killed the engine.
“There’s my Katydid,” she said as I turned off the Jeep and hopped down. “Get everything squared away? Are you officially an employee of The Hutton Hotel?”
I nodded and ran a hand over my hair to tame the flyaways caused by the wind. “Who knew it took so much paperwork just to start working for someone? I think I’m responsible for the death of a small forest.”
Mom studied my face for a long moment. “Was your seething warrior there?” A glimmer of her younger self twinkled in her eyes.
“Mom!” I grabbed our second plastic chair—this one much newer, purchased just for me—from its place near the RV and set it next to hers. “My seething warrior? Really?”
“Oh, come on. Let an old woman live vicariously through her beautiful daughter. Did he pull you close? Were deep, meaningful looks exchanged? Was there, perhaps, dare I say it, bodice ripping?”
I rolled my eyes and settled back into the chair, drawing in a deep breath of fresh air. “You spend too much time alone, you know that?”
“I do.” Mom smiled sadly and then waved her hand. “But my life was my choice so I’m not complaining. Now. Details.” She looked at me expectantly and I laughed.
Mom had never mentioned being lonely before. I always assumed she was happy with her life. “Actually,” I said, “his almost-as-cute younger brother was there instead.”
“Bummer…?” Mom’s face was a question mark.
“You are something else, you know that? I was a tiny bit disappointed when Lucas wasn’t there, but Wyatt is very easy to be around. I like the Huttons, or, at least the two I’ve met.”
Mom tried on their names, rolling them around in her mouth like she was tasting wine. I watched her, trying to put a finger on all the ways her face had changed in the last year. “What?” she asked. “Lucas and Wyatt Hutton. Very strong. Traditional. Keep talking.” She grinned and I saw my mom again.
“Anyway,” I said on a sigh. “It’s probably for the best that Lucas wasn’t there, you know? It’s too soon after Nash and I’m not gonna lie, the physical chemistry is off the charts between us. He intimidates the hell out of me, which I thought would be a turn off.” I gave my mom a tentative look. “It’s not,” I admitted. “Not at all.”
But, since my physical side seemed to be broken right now—what with the absent orgasms and all—pursuing anyone for that reason was a foolish endeavor. I couldn’t tell Mom that, though. Nor could I tell her about the poetic stranger I’d been emailing. Of all the people in my life, my mom would understand, but I just wasn’t ready to talk about Mr. X yet. Talking about him would make him real, and I’d have to accept that while I was slowly falling for a man I had never met, I was intensely attracted to my boss’ brother.
Every time I thought of Lucas, my stranger’s words hummed through my mind. The physical and the mental, twining together. For some reason, pursuing Lucas felt like an aff
ront to Mr. X, even though we hadn’t exchanged names.
“You’re being too cautious.” Mom eyed me as if she could see right into my head and knew exactly what I was thinking. Knowing Mom, she probably could. She read me better than anyone. “There’s no harm in looking, Katydid. Not much harm in touching either.”
“Mom!” I pushed out of my chair while she cackled merrily, pleased to have shocked me.
“The whole world is caught up in timing, as if there’s a perfect time for everything to happen. Like we can schedule ourselves right down to the minute. It’s not natural. If the right person appears in your life, does it really matter when?”
What if there’s more than one? What if the right person is actually the right people? What then?
The thought hit me so hard it almost jumped out of my mouth, but I caught it and swallowed it down. “You want something to drink?”
Mom shook her head and started a discussion about dinner. All weekend, moments like this had kept me from telling her I’d decided to stay at The Hut. As much as I didn’t like sleeping on the fold out, I loved spending time with Mom. Over the years, I had forgotten how easy it was to drop all the pretense and just be with her. But, if I waited any longer to tell her, it would be cruel.
“Hey, listen,” I said and then trailed off as the smile brightening Mom’s face slowly disintegrated.
“I’m not going to like this, am I?”
“How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Take one look at me and know exactly what I’m going to say?”
“For one thing,” Mom said. “I don’t know exactly what you’re going to say, only that I won’t like it. And for another? You have the worst poker face I’ve ever seen. You wear your heart on your sleeve. It’s one of the things I love the most about you.”