“That’s what I’m saying.” Charlie has no qualms about interrupting his twin brother. “If we don’t rein in spending, there won’t be a resort to have a social centerpiece.”
“Why didn’t you say anything about this sooner?” This is the part that’s pissing me off. “I wouldn’t have hired extra hands this season.”
Charlie shakes his head. “I didn’t realize the full extent of it until this morning. Since Dad died, records have been a seat-of-the-pants kind of affair, which doesn’t exactly lend itself to cogent analysis. Now that I have a capable pair of accountants trained to work with me on this, it’s all becoming clear.”
This is not the meeting I thought I’d be having when I left Jenny to work her social media magic. Now the stakes seem even higher. “Is that a report for me?”
“Yeah.” Charlie tosses the folder onto my desk. “Have a look for yourself.”
I open the folder and look through it, but the columns of numbers are inscrutable. I don’t have a talent for interpreting them the way Charlie does. He knows by now how to make the reports readable for me, but still, the numbers swim in front of my eyes. I’m going to have to go over this again when my brain hasn’t been scrambled by a discussion about Jenny London. I flip the folder shut and cross my arms over my chest. “What’s the bottom line?”
“Freeze hiring. We need to figure out where we can cut expenses. I’d suggest scaling back on Beau’s events, but—”
“Don’t be an asshole,” Beau squawks. “Don’t do it, Charlie. That’s not who you are.” He runs a hand self-consciously through his hair. “Do you know when Jenny will be back in? I think some promotion on social media could really boost attendance and heighten the sense that people are missing out if they don’t attend. The earlier in the season we start, the better, so....”
“I’ll let you know when she’s back in.” It’s the right thing to do. It’s the responsible thing to do. But part of me doesn’t want to tell Beau anything about where Jenny is or when she’s back in the office. Part of me wants to hold all that information close to my chest. The feeling of her body under my hands this morning comes back to me in a heady wave. I chose the yoga class to give her a taste of her own medicine. That went well. I look from one brother to the next. “I’m assuming you both have places to be. Was there anything else you wanted to discuss?”
They both stand there for just long enough that I know.
“Just, ah....” Beau rubs a hand across the back of his neck. “How’s it going? You know, with Jenny. Is she really—”
“Am I really what?” Jenny’s voice resounds from just outside in the bullpen and it makes us all jump. “Sorry to interrupt, but I heard my name.”
She enters the room behind the twins, and they part like the Red Sea, revealing her to me in all her skirt-suit glory.
“Beau. Charlie,” she says, a coy little smile on her face that makes me think I could kiss her.
Which is an absurd thought to have. It would have been absurd in high school, and it’s just as absurd now, but for totally different reasons.
“Hey, Gene—Jenny,” Beau says, correcting himself. “I was looking for you.”
“Wow,” she jokes. “Another Bliss brother on the hunt for me. I never thought I’d see the day.” She laughs, like this is the funniest thing she’s ever thought of. “Is this about promoting your events? I was thinking about that myself when we were out at the pool yesterday.”
Beau cuts me a look, his eyebrows raised. Pool?
“Let’s not disturb the boss, though.” The way she says it sounds almost thoughtful. “Come into my office. We can chat about a photo presence. I can take the photos myself.” She turns to leave and Beau follows her out of the office like a puppy. “However, I’ve found that sometimes guest-created content appeals to the audience and is more likely to—”
Her voice trails off as they retreat into her office, and then I hear the rumble of Beau’s laugh.
“You’re staring,” Charlie says. “You look like a man whose lover just boarded a train and he’s watching it pull out of the station.” He’s wearing his own amused grin. Usually, Charlie’s got his nose to the grindstone. He doesn’t have time to get involved in things like me staring at a woman I should have zero feelings for at all.
“Please,” I tell him. “Go figure out a way to fix our financial situation. And if it’s a bigger problem than you thought, don’t wait to tell me.”
He gives me a funny little salute and goes on his way. But even Charlie can’t resist waving at Jenny on the way out.
9
Jenny
It’s all fun and games until I sit down at my computer the next morning and download all the photos from the camera onto the hard drive. There are a lot of them to sort through. Photos of the pool, at sunrise and at sunset. Photos of the gazebo on the beach during the golden hour, when all manner of wedding photos will be taken there this season. Photos from all over the grounds of the Bliss Resort, and even a few from the club section. There are walking paths that are open to hotel guests, accessed with a key card at the gate, and in early summer they’re absolutely gorgeous.
But nothing compares to the pictures of Roman.
I’m supposed to feel the icy caress of revenge in my veins when I look at them, but instead the space between my thighs heats up. I clinch my knees together underneath my skirt.
The whole thing—or the whole nothing—with Roman escalated quickly. In a way, I’ve been planning for this kind of eventuality for years. I just never expected it to come. And I never expected him to play ball.
Curse the past version of me. I learned a long time ago to take more photos than I thought was strictly necessary. This time, I’ve gone way overboard. There are at least two hundred shots of him in the pool and looking at each one of them—looking hard, so I can assess the quality and the usefulness and the potential to be edited into something amazing—is quite frankly something I’d rather do with a vibrator in hand. How much time does he spend in the gym? I’m almost curious enough to get up and go ask him.
But not quite.
If I do that, I might slip up and ask him what he was thinking about at couples yoga this morning. The way his eyes raked over me was too hot for it to be a casual meeting between a boss and a social media manager, and yet...that’s all it was. A teasing, funny game. Roman would never do anything more than tease me. Would he?
He had to know it got me hot and bothered. He had to. The real question is, does he care? Would he ever?
A tension is brewing at the base of my spine, threatening to turn into a headache. It shouldn’t be that way, given that my new job takes place at a summer resort and everything here is designed to be welcoming and relaxing. The tension grows as I click through photo after photo, then transfer some of them into a separate folder for editing. From there, it’s on to Photoshop, and finally, at the end of the afternoon, I have both a headache and a batch of great photos to use on the company’s social media accounts.
The best one by far is a photo of Roman standing in the pool, looking off to the side with a half-smile on his face that makes me think of a lot of phrases involving stirring loins. It didn’t take much editing to achieve perfection.
It took me a ton of editing to achieve the illusion of perfection, and I’m feeling it today. I want to take my hair down out of the sleek style I wear it in at all times now that I’ve left my former self behind, but now isn’t the time.
I load the photo into the scheduling tool for the accounts. There’s a great tagline in there somewhere, about the Bliss brothers welcoming guests, and I’ve almost got it when my phone buzzes on the desk.
My stomach drops at the sight of Connor’s name on the screen.
Connor: How are things?
He used to ask me this with one hip leaned against the side of my desk. I can see it now, and I hate it.
Another message.
Connor: Not too well, I hope! ;)
I know exactly what the wink is for. It’s t
o cover our asses. Mostly his.
I reconsider the photo on the screen. It really is perfect, and it’s going to make the resort look like the kind of destination where you can find a man like Roman Bliss at the helm and at the pool. That’s not false advertising. He really does run this show, and he really does get in the pool from time to time.
This is not the kind of thing Connor has hired me to post.
With a curdling feeling at the pit of my gut, I delete the photo and find a runner-up. It’s a long shot of the pool—better than what Roman has been posting, but nothing exciting.
That’s the one I schedule instead, along with a completely professional and completely boring caption.
Then I return Connor’s text.
Jenny: Things are going just fine.
And that sets the tone for the next five days. Wake up. Dress myself to be seen by one Roman Bliss. Leave all my natural instincts in the past, where they belong. There’s no time on the Bliss Resort to be a fumbling, snorting, wreck of a girl. There’s only the coolly professional woman who should be delighting in the fact that I finally have Roman’s attention.
At least, I thought I did.
For all the electricity of his hands on my skin at yoga, he stays in his lane. Meticulously in his lane. On Saturday, he takes me to see a wedding in progress, with the ceremony at the gazebo. We stand far, far back on the walkway to the resort so we don’t end up in even the longest shots by the photographer. And not once does he touch me. He doesn’t even stand too close.
Five days in a row.
Five long, excruciating days, during which I post more run-of-the-mill images and taglines that sound like they were written by one of the temps at Global—which is to say that they’re perfectly serviceable and totally forgettable. I can practically hear them landing with hardly a sound, much less a splash. The scheduler does its job, sending the posts out into the Internet, and I do mine.
Sunday night, it hits me.
This is like tennis.
My knowledge of tennis is limited to the concept of the volley.
I sit straight up on the sofa in my employee bungalow and toss the novelty Empire Strikes Back blanket off my legs.
What the hell have I been thinking?
I started all this, parading into the office with a bathing suit and insisting that Roman work with me despite his obvious desire. That’s what it was—desire. Any other woman would be able to admit it, and here I am, trying to convince myself that in Roman’s eyes I’m the same person I was back in high school.
He didn’t know that person, and he doesn’t know this person, not fully. And that means I have an element of intrigue.
“I’m intriguing,” I whisper at my episode of The West Wing on Netflix. “I’m intriguing!” I say it a little louder, then catch sight of myself in the mirror that hangs above the television. It’s a slightly strange place for a mirror, but who cares? This is the Bliss Resort, and I’m here living the dream. I purse my lips and blow myself a kiss. “Very intriguing,” I say in my sultriest voice.
Then I whip my head around to make sure nobody has walked in and overheard me.
No one has.
If this was a tennis match—or any sort of match involving the back and forth trading of one or more balls—those balls would be in my court.
He’s been studiously avoiding crossing the line because he already took his turn. I laugh out loud. Of course Roman believes in turns. He believes in being in charge almost to the point of micromanagement. His sense of fairness is borne out of having it easy all of his life.
I flop back on the couch. It’s so fucking weird, this mix of triumph and creeping guilt.
The buzz of my phone intrudes on my thoughts.
Celestia: Hey...
That’s all I need to hear from my sister to know that she needs more money.
Jenny: Are you okay?
Celestia: Not feeling great about needing another bailout.
See, that’s the pisser. The fact that without Connor’s money, I can’t pay all my bills—all the student debt and personal loans and credit cards from trying to start a business on a shoestring—and send her any extra cash without setting up some kind of payment plan. That would be the responsible thing to do, I know. But she’s my sister.
Jenny: How much? And where to?
She names a number that would be one thousand percent impossible without what I’m beginning to think of as the Blood Money.
Jenny: It’ll be there tomorrow. I’ll pay for them to rush it. OK?
Celestia: OK.
Even so.
I stand up with a strange sense of anticipation.
The ball is in my court....
* * *
The excitement doesn’t make me feel any better about the sabotage, even though it’s the most mild form of sabotage I’ve ever seen, even in the movies.
On the one hand, Roman probably doesn’t know that I’m not doing my best. On the other, there’s no great reason why the photos are mediocre after I forced him into the pool. One hand, other hand, one hand, other hand. I’m stuck between hands when I settle behind my desk with a fresh coffee from the cafe in the lobby.
The coffee is gone too soon, but it’s too early to be without it, so I get another.
Roman bursts into the office halfway through cup number three, scaring the living shit out of me. The coffee in the mug sloshes up to the edges. “Oh my God—”
He doesn’t hear me. “We have to talk.” He’s at my desk in two steps, his hands on the surface, leaning over me. “About the social media accounts.”
My stomach drops into the hot core of the earth.
“The Instagram,” he says meaningfully.
This is it. This is when he fires me. He did notice that the photos were subpar, and I’m going to lose my fake job and probably my real one, too. Oh, Jesus. I’m going to have to go crawling back to Connor—
This is the worst.
“I’m working on the Instagram,” I tell him, trying to keep the jittery caffeine shake out of my voice. “The photos—”
“The photos don’t do this place justice.” His eyes blaze into mine.
“I can do better—”
“I didn’t give you good enough material.”
I’m…stunned. And he didn’t even swan dive into the pool in front of me. “What?”
“I didn’t give you the best of the Bliss Resort.” Roman stands up straight, a determined smile lighting up his face. The heat is back in his eyes, like it was in yoga class. “And tonight’s the perfect night to show you.”
“To show me what?” The laugh that escapes me sounds almost like a giggle. “Another yoga class?”
“Hell, no. I’m going to show you the best.” He turns to go, and I realize I’m on the edge of my seat.
“What’s the best?”
He stops just outside the office doorway and burns a trail down my skin with his eyes. “You’ll see.”
10
Roman
I gave it the old college try.
That’s what I keep saying to myself, though in college I would have pressed her up against the wall in the dive bar we used to go to on the main drag. They probably should have been shut down for health code violations, but nobody ever cared—we were more than buzzed when we walked down the rickety staircase from the street level, and more than a few guys had to be carried out.
That was never me.
But I was the kind of guy who made a move. If I have to go another day in this office without doing anything, I’ll perish from the fucking earth.
Everything that goes on at the Bliss Resort is my responsibility, but even I can’t be held accountable for the way she looks at me. It’s like those big green eyes see right through my clothes. Every time she cocks her head to the side and pauses for a moment before she speaks, I’m convinced she’s going to have cooked up another excuse to get me back in the pool. Maybe this time without the swim trunks? She never says it, but if she did, it would
be with that professional attitude, a little wrinkle of her brow as if the answer to the question is the only thing standing between abject failure and incredible success.
I’m done waiting.
I’ve been done waiting.
And I’m sure as hell not going to take this too far, because I’m beginning to get the sense that Jenny London knows exactly who she is. She knows exactly what she’s doing.
She knocks on the door of the Emperor Suite right on time, and when I open the door she lets out a huge sigh of relief. The color in her cheeks is so endearing I can’t stand it. Genevieve Starlight would never have come close to being this endearing.
“I was worried this was the wrong room.” She puts her hands on her hips and takes in another breath like she’s just crossed the finish line of a marathon. The gesture is almost...practiced. “I thought there was no way you wanted me up here, but—” Then she straightens up and looks past me, into the room. “Whoa.”
I had it set up the way we do for honeymooners. It’s one of the most expensive upgrades guests can buy at Bliss, and largely because it involves candles. Someone has to staff the room from the moment they’re lit, and we have a carefully planned check-in later in the evening to make sure they’re extinguished for the night before the guests are. I move out of the way so she can enter the room. “I hope you brought your camera with you. I wouldn’t want the candles to burn down before you can get some good shots.”
Jenny takes a tentative step inside the room, then another. “The Emperor Suite?”
“There’s a matching suite in the other wing. It’s rare for the couples to come into contact with one another.”
“Is that a real thing?” Jenny pulls the office camera from her purse and twists at the lens cap. She flicks her eyes across at me. “Couples not wanting to...come in contact?”
“Everyone wants to be the only ones experiencing royalty on their wedding night. We do our best to coordinate arrivals.”
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