by Harper Lin
I turned slowly to the girl at the desk, my eyes still trying to take everything in. The sight of the desk broke the spell. The conversion to a hotel hadn’t been able to preserve all of the house’s grandeur after all.
I followed Matt over to the desk where a pretty girl in her early twenties stood with a bright smile on her face. “Your name, please?”
“Matt Cardosi.”
“Do you have a luggage ticket?”
I gazed around the room some more as they handled all the boring details of the checking-in process. Now that I wasn’t feeling so much like I’d walked into a fairy tale, I noticed the places where the building’s opulence had made concessions to the business needs of a hotel. While they’d kept the glamour of the entrance with period chairs and décor, I could see where they’d made a lounge area with comfy-looking contemporary furnishings in the back. And the elevator off to the side was decidedly modern looking. But I didn’t care, because the place was gorgeous whether parts of it were modernized or not.
“So I have you down for a couples massage on Sunday morning. Is that right?”
“You planned for us to have a couples massage?” I cut in before Matt could answer.
He smiled a smile that made my insides feel all mushy. “I have lots of things planned for you this weekend. Just wait and see.” He slipped his arm around my waist and pulled me close, putting his lips to mine in a kiss that probably wasn’t quite appropriate for the setting.
I giggled and pulled away. “Stop it!” I blushed and glanced at the girl at the desk. She must have been well trained because her expression was totally neutral and her eyes were glued to the computer screen in front of her.
“Yes, a couples massage on Sunday morning,” Matt said.
She smiled and nodded, clicking a few things on the computer. “Do you want me to review the rest of your bookings with you now, or should we keep those a secret a little longer?”
“Can I come back down later and go over it?” I asked.
“You sure can.”
“Actually, do you have a pamphlet or anything that lists all your amenities?”
“Of course! Let me just grab one for you.” She bent down behind the desk. “I know they’re down here somewhere. There will also be a book in your room listing all our offerings. It’s nice because it has bigger pictures and longer descriptions, but the brochure is good to have handy too. Oh, there they are! It looks like we have just a couple left, but I’m sure we have more in the back.”
Before she could stand back up, a door in the back burst open. “Whitney! What are you doing down there? There are guests at the desk.”
“Yes, I was just getting—”
“Have they even been greeted properly?” He turned to us with a cloying smile and a suddenly smooth tone that was a world away from the way he’d snapped at Whitney. “Welcome to the Alford Inn. My name is Garrett, and I’m the manager here. I’m terribly sorry for my employee’s rudeness.”
“Oh, no, she’s—” I started to defend her, but Garrett cut me off.
“What name are you checking in under, please, sir?”
“Whitney already started checking us in,” Matt said, his voice low and his jaw tight.
“Excellent then. You can see why I’d be confused when I saw you standing there while she crawled around on the floor.”
Whitney, who had stood back up right after he appeared out of nowhere and started barking at her, flushed a dark red that was visible even on her caramel-colored skin.
“She was looking for a brochure about your amenities for me,” I said, trying to make the situation better.
For some reason, that seemed to make him more upset. He glared at Whitney. “You didn’t tell her there’s a book in the room? No one knows how to do their job around here!”
At the rate she was blinking, I knew she was about to break down.
“Yes, she told me about the book, but I asked for a brochure, so she was getting me a brochure,” I snapped.
“Well!” He straightened his vest and glanced around like he was looking for something else to criticize. “If she had just told me that up front, we wouldn’t have had this little incident, would we?”
I took a breath and opened my mouth, but Matt saw it coming and stopped me. “Now that that’s all worked out, how about we finish checking in.” He looked at Whitney—who was still fighting back tears—and smiled. “Whitney?”
Garrett stood back and gestured at the computer like she was somehow deficient for not teleporting the two-foot distance in the half second that had gone by since Matt spoke.
She stepped forward and took her place back at the computer. She scrolled her mouse and clicked a few times. “So, like I said, you have a couples massage scheduled for Sunday morning—” Her voice was almost whisper quiet now and had none of the enthusiasm it had contained just minutes earlier.
“Speak up so they can hear you!” Garrett spat as he hovered just over her shoulder.
I gave him the smile I reserve for my very most difficult customers at the café—the ones who ordered a macchiato and complained that it didn’t have enough milk in it then argued with me when I suggested that perhaps they’d prefer a cappuccino or latte instead of a drink that, by definition, had just a little bit of milk in it. “She’s actually fine. We both have excellent hearing, and I have a bit of a headache right now that makes loud noises rather painful.” I was lying, but I would do whatever it took to get him to leave her alone.
His mouth twitched, like it was resisting what he was trying to get it to do. Finally, he managed to say, “Good job, then, Whitney,” before turning on his heel and disappearing back through the door he’d come from.
As soon as the door clicked closed, I saw Whitney’s chin tremble for a second before she bit her lip and held it still. “Thank you,” she said quietly.
“Is he always like that?” My voice was at a near whisper because, just from what I’d seen, I wouldn’t have put it past him to be listening at the door.
Her shoulder twitched. “Sometimes. Sometimes he’s really nice though.”
Now I bit my lip to keep myself from going off on a tirade about what I thought of him and the situation and what she should do about it. It wasn’t the time or place.
Matt, apparently sensing my discomfort, put a comforting hand on my lower back, and I leaned into him.
“Okay, you guys are all checked in.” Whitney picked up a little envelope and handed it to Matt. “Your key cards are inside. You’ll be in room 345. That’ll be on the left-hand side of the hotel, in the new portion, toward the back. You can get there by taking either of the lobby elevators or by going down the hall, turning right past the bakery and gift shop, and taking the elevator at the end of that hallway. Would you like a bellman to show you the way?”
“I think we can find it,” Matt said, smiling. “Thank you for all your help. You were very gracious.”
She smiled sadly and batted her eyes, fighting back more tears. “Thank you. Whenever you want to come down and review your bookings, you can. Enjoy your stay.”
“Thanks, we will.” Matt and I stepped away from the desk. “So which elevator do you want to take?”
I shrugged. I wanted to explore the whole hotel at some point but didn’t see the point in traipsing off to find a different elevator when there was one right in front of me. “This one’s fine.”
We got on the elevator, and Matt pushed the button for the third floor. Just as the door started to close, I heard a man’s voice talking to someone as he approached down the hallway.
“I was thinking we’d have dinner at one of the hotel restaurants tonight. What do you think?” The voice sounded strangely familiar, but the door closed before I could get a look at who it was.
I blinked a couple of times and looked at Matt. “Was that… Mike?”
Matt looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “I don’t think so. Why would he even be here?”
I couldn’t think of a single reason w
hy he would.
Chapter Three
Our room was in the newer part of the hotel that lacked the Gilded Age glamour of the old part but still was probably the nicest hotel I’d ever been in. And while our room was pretty much the farthest it could possibly be from the front desk, there was a reason for that. It was on one of the back corners of the U-shaped hotel and had windows on two sides that looked out on a breathtaking view of the mountains. And, based on the plaque outside the door, it was one of the rooms celebrities stayed in when they came. That’s the kind of hotel it was—the kind that movie stars vacationed at.
Matt flopped down on the couch and turned on the TV while I wandered around the room—it was big enough to wander around—and looked at everything. The bed had fluffy pillows covered with silky pillowcases. I reached under the duvet to check, and the sheets were just as silky.
In the bathroom, the high-end toiletries nearly distracted me from how soft and fluffy the towels were. And the fact that there was a massive free-standing bathtub with bath bombs and little packages of bubble bath around it. And the fully tiled shower with a rain head. I wasn’t going to be fooled by that though. I’d stayed in enough hotels where the water pressure was barely enough to wash my hands, let alone my thick mop of hair. I turned the shower on, just to see. It had actual water pressure. Enough to wash my hair in less than half an hour.
I was officially in love with this hotel.
“What are you doing in there? Are you taking a shower?” Matt called from the other room.
“Nope, just checking the water pressure,” I said, walking back out and crossing the sitting area to go toward what looked like a balcony on the far side of the room.
Matt gave me a look like I was crazy.
“If you had thick hair, you’d understand.”
He still looked at me like I’d lost a few marbles. I ignored him and pushed open the sheer curtains covering a set of French doors. I opened the doors and stepped onto the balcony. Somehow the view was even more breathtaking from out there. I could see for miles. I walked over to the thick stone railing and looked down the side of the hotel. As far as I could tell, our room and the ones above and below it had balconies.
I walked over to the other side of the balcony. From there, I could see across to the other side of the hotel’s U and down to the courtyard at its bottom. A massive balcony off the hotel lobby spanned the space just beyond the courtyard. It had scattered chairs for guests to lounge in and watch the sunset and a section of tables that I guessed belonged to one of the hotel’s restaurants. Between me and the courtyard was the entrance to the underground spa. As gorgeous as the room was, I really wanted to go explore the hotel and see that spa.
“Let’s go explore!” I said, popping back into the room.
Matt didn’t budge. “Hold on.” He pointed at the TV with the remote. “Look at this. They have a whole channel about the golf course.”
“I want to go see the spa.”
“There’s one about the spa too.” He changed the channel, and the cave-like entrance to the spa popped up on the screen.
“But we could see it in person.”
“They have one that’s just about the restaurants too.”
“I’m going to go explore the hotel.”
As I expected, Matt popped up. “Okay, I’m coming.”
We took the elevator closest to our room down to the first floor and started to wander back toward the lobby. The gift shop was across from the bakery. The French bakery. With the famous French pastry chef. And Pâtisserie Alford in big gold letters across the transom above the door and front window, with Jacques de Gaulle, Chef in slightly smaller gold letters underneath it. It looked just like a real French patisserie, like you’d find on a romantic vacation in Paris. Or any other trip to Paris, but I had romance on my mind. I couldn’t help but stare in awe.
“Do you want me to take a picture of you in front of it?”
I looked at Matt, suddenly breaking out of my fantasy of being on a Parisian street corner. “What? No!” I said emphatically as my brain tried to get me to say the opposite.
The corner of Matt’s mouth twitched up knowingly. “Go on, stand by the door.” He was already reaching into his pocket to pull out his phone.
“Matty, no, I—”
“You know you want to,” he teased.
Yes, I did, but—“I don’t want the people who work in there to think I’m crazy.”
“There’s no one in there. Just do it real quick, and I’ll get a picture.”
He was right. There was no one at the counter. But that didn’t mean they weren’t inside somewhere watching. Still, it was Jacques de Gaulle’s bakery. “Okay, just be quick about it.” I dashed over to the front of the bakery and posed while Matt snapped a few pictures then went back over to him to look at them.
“Happy?” he asked as he scrolled through them.
I was. They were actually good pictures of me, and he’d gotten the name of the bakery in the shot.
“Want to go in?”
“I want to look at the window first.” It was beautiful. Down one side was a full rainbow spectrum of perfectly executed macarons, then the rest of the case was filled up with beautiful mille-feuille, chocolate and fruit tarts, eclairs, cakes, and more.
“Looks fancy,” Matt said beside me.
“Looks delicious,” I countered.
“Ready to go in?”
I could have stood there and stared at the window all day long, but I wasn’t going to be able to eat any of it if I didn’t go in. Besides, there were more delicious-looking pastries inside for me to drool over.
If I expected someone to greet us when we walked in, I was going to be disappointed. No one came out from the back when we walked in. I took the opportunity to peruse the display case. There were so many things I wanted to try. I’d had most of them before but never ones made by Jacques de Gaulle.
“Is there a bell or something?” Matt leaned over the counter. He was obviously not as interested in examining the display case as I was.
“Maybe they’re in the back.” I moved over to the macaron case. They were on their own, separate from everything else. Like the window, they were arranged by color, in rainbow order. I mentally debated between picking out the ones that looked most delicious and starting out by trying those or just starting at the top left corner and working my way through them in order.
“Hello?” Matt angled his head to try to see through the window in the door to the back.
I decided to pick out the macarons I wanted most. I would never be able to work myself through all of them, and I’d probably get sick from all the sugar before I even got to the yellow lemon-flavored ones that looked so good.
“Anybody back there?”
Matt would probably want to try a chocolate one. I, of course, wanted to try the coffee-flavored ones but was also intrigued by the lavender-coconut ones. I wasn’t sure that I would like them, but if they were made by a world-renowned pastry chef, they couldn’t be that bad.
Matt walked over to stand beside me. “I don’t think anyone’s here.”
“Someone must be here. It’s open, isn’t it?”
“They must not want to sell us anything then because they’re not coming out.”
“I’m sure they’ll be out in a minute.” I had to admit, the strawberry cheesecake ones looked good too.
Matt peeked over my shoulder. “What are those? Some kind of sandwich cookies?”
“They’re macarons. They’re amazing. They’re delicate and chewy but crunchy and—”
“Macarons? You mean macaroons?”
“No, macaroons are the coconut ones. These are macarons. They’re French.”
“They’re really good or something?”
“They’re outstanding. The shell—that’s the cookie part—has a little bit of a crunch, and then it’s soft and chewy in the middle. And then you have the filling. That’s usually something creamy, but you can see those have a kind of ja
m in the middle.”
Matt nodded. “And they come in different flavors?”
“Yup. See, they have raspberry and rose”—Matt made a face, but I kept going— “and chocolate and lime. Pretty much any flavor you can imagine.”
“Sounds good. I’d try one.” He looked around the bakery again. “Too bad there’s no one here to sell us one.”
I had to admit, it was getting a little ridiculous. Someone definitely should have shown up by now. Even if they were working in the back, they should have at least checked for customers.
“How about we go over to the gift shop and look around for a while? Maybe someone will show up by then.”
I was reluctant to leave the wonderland of pastries, but it didn’t do me any good to stand there and stare if there was no one to get anything out for me.
I agreed, and we walked across the hall to the gift shop, which was full of souvenirs from the hotel and the Berkshires in general, as well as products made in the area. Among the baskets and wall hangings and hand-sketched postcards of the hotel, I found a macaron cookbook written by Jacques de Gaulle. It was the only one they had out, and while I knew they might have more in the back, I didn’t want to give anyone else the chance to snap it up if they didn’t.
“You planning to start making macarons?” Matt asked.
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“For the café?”
This time, I shook my head rapidly. “Nooo,” I said, drawing out the word.
Matt’s eyebrows rose.
I shook my head again. “They’re too finicky. I mean, they’re not hard, and they’re still delicious even if they go a little wrong, but to get them right every single time—and they have to be right to sell them—things have to be more controlled than they are in the café. I’d probably start making the meringue and get distracted by a customer and end up with it completely over whipped. And then if it was too humid one day, the shells might not dry out right or—”
Matt stared at me, obviously having no idea what I was talking about.
“Never mind. There are a lot of variables that affect the end result, and I’d rather just leave it to the professionals.”