Page 168 of In Spades

I certainly wasn’t complaining. The sooner I got through the rooms, the sooner I could get home to Will.

The curious looks hadn’t gone away. Other staffers still gossiped about how I landed a billionaire. I overheard a landscaper telling someone that I had signed up to be a mail-order bride. I wasn’t totally sure how that whole arrangement worked, but it seemed like a logistical nightmare.

Besides, Will and I weren’t even engaged. I was far from being a bride.

I looked at my watch. Only twenty more minutes until my shift was over. I ran through my mental to-do list while dropping a stack of neatly folded towels onto the bathroom vanity.

I needed to stop by the grocery store on my way back to New Bern. I needed to run a load of laundry so I could pack the kids’ clothes. Their Christmas break was almost over. It was our second to last night at Will’s house, and I knew it was going to be impossible to get them to leave.

Logan and Will had been working night and day on the Stingray. It only gave me a mild heart attack when the two of them took me into the garage and told me the plan. They didn’t ask how I felt about the plan. They told me what the plan was.

I only threatened to choke Will a little because the second I saw the light in Logan’s face, I fell further in love with Will. I hadn’t seen that kind of light in Logan in five years.

When they needed to go to a junkyard to pull parts or hunt something down on Craigslist, Will and the four kids piled into his truck and made an adventure out of it.

Five years ago, life threw me into an insta-family. Sure, we were already related, but our world had turned upside down that day, and I’d been given more responsibility than I knew what to do with.

Little did I know, four months ago, the five of us would become six, and things would be complete.

Will and I had talked about it. Moving in together wasn’t an option at this point. His house was too far away from the kids’ schools and the inn. An hour-long commute wasn’t realistic in the long run.

But the school year would be over in a few months, and we had decided to revisit that conversation over the summer.

A little normalcy and stability would do us all good before any other significant changes.

According to him, having the kids over for their winter break was the most fun he’d had in years. I would have called his bluff, but I saw the way he lit up around them. The way he jumped at the chance to get involved with whatever they were interested in.

For Logan, it was fixing up the Stingray.

With Hunter, they talked about books, books, and more books.

Kylie had opened up and told him that a boy at school she liked had asked her out. That didn’t fulfill Will as much so much as it sent him into an overprotective tailspin. The two of them spent hours doing a full internet deep dive on the poor kid.

Much to his dismay, sixteen-year-old Josh Tanner had never been arrested, done anything on the DarkNet, or worked for any of the “acronyms”, as Will called them. On top of that, he was a straight-A student. There was literally no reason for Will to dislike the kid, but he was determined to dig up some dirt.

Will said he wouldn’t get caught, but I drew the line at hacking the boy’s phone and laptop.

The only thing that could get him out of his chivalrous big brother spiral was Zoey grabbing his hand and demanding his full participation in playing beauty salon. My six-year-old sister was a beast with some nail polish, and Will’s hot pink manicure was proof of that.

He was such a good sport.

And oh God—the sex. I never wanted to sleep alone again. Going back to my sofa bed was going to be absolute torture. Not only because his mattress was literally heaven, but because waking up safely tucked inside his arms was my favorite thing in the world.

I turned the lights off in Room 326 and moved the cart one door down.

I smiled every time I cleaned this one. I wondered if the guests staying in Room 328 knew that it was the room where two people from different sides of the tracks met and fell in love.

On more than one occasion, I was tempted to write our story down and hide it in there. Maybe someone would read it and be brave enough to fall in love too.

I tapped out three quick knocks followed by, “Housekeeping!” When there was no reply, I yanked on the master key clipped to my badge reel, and unlocked the door.

The roll of trash bags in my hand fell to the floor. “What the…”

Flickering candles and red roses covered every surface. Will stood in the middle of the room with his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

He never looked like what I imagined a billionaire would. Instead of suits and patent leather loafers, he preferred Levis and Ariats. The bill of his ball cap was tucked into his back pocket.

I didn’t mind one bit.

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