Page 42 of The Main Event

I realized after the fact that I might’ve stuck my foot in it. “I like Lux,” I assured him. “She seems pretty cool. I appreciate a woman who knows who she is and makes no apologies for it.”

“Like Daisy?”

I froze and carefully averted my gaze. “What about Daisy?”

“I’m just curious if you like her mouth. Her tongue isn’t as razor sharp as Lux’s—I believe one town can’t survive under the weight of two of those tongues—but she’s pretty self-assured.”

“Daisy is an employee,” I replied. “I’m not allowed to like her.”

Jesse straightened before lowering himself to the bench next to me. He’d convinced me to take a break from the Hunter’s gym and try the one downtown, and I wasn’t sorry. Not only did working out away from the hotel give me a chance to avoid Tammy—she wasn’t being pleasant after our flop of a meeting the previous evening—but it also gave me a chance to avoid Daisy for entirely different reasons. I was keen on both options right now.

“What do you mean you’re not allowed to like her?” Jesse demanded.

Of course he would pick up on that one word. “I mean that I’m her boss. You don’t date employees unless you want to get sued.”

“Daisy isn’t the type to sue,” Jesse replied. “She just doesn’t have that in her internal makeup.”

“It’s my rule for a reason.” I reached for another weight, but Jesse stopped me with a light tap on the shoulder. “What?” I demanded, my agitation coming out to play.

“Talk,” Jesse prodded. “It’s obvious you have a lot on your mind. You can trust me.”

I doubted a great many things right now, but my inclination to trust Jesse wasn’t one of them. “Everything is weird,” I said finally, allowing my misery to seep out. “Nobody in my family is talking to me. They all think they’ve somehow been ripped off because my grandfather left the hotel to me.”

“Do they even want to run a hotel?” Jesse asked. “No offense, but I’ve met your father, and he’s not the sort of guy who is going to make a Salem hotel soar. He has no imagination, and you need that here.”

“They don’t want the hotel,” I replied. “They think there’s money associated with the hotel. My grandfather left me everything you see.”

“So, you’re rich?” Jesse asked on a laugh. “That must feel nice.”

“I’m pretty far from rich. The money my grandfather left me, which wasn’t much, is just enough to cover the first leg of construction for the hotel,” I explained. “The money is actually tied to that renovation. Ithasto be spent on that.”

“Oh.” Jesse bobbed his head in understanding. “I get it. Although, wait, I’m not sure I actually get it. How is that hotel not making a huge profit?”

“Because he hasn’t been charging that much for rooms. He hasn’t been keeping up with hospitality price increases.”

“Can’t you change that?”

“Not without the renovations, and then we lose an entire floor at a time to those renovations. I need to keep the books balanced enough to pay all the workers and get us through the renovations.”

“Which leaves no money for a salary for you,” he surmised.

“Some,” I hedged. “I can survive since I’m staying in one of the rooms and not going anywhere. It’s just going to be a tight year.”

“And then what?”

I blinked. “And then what what?” I asked finally.

“What are you going to do when the renovations are done?” Jesse replied. “Are you going to stay and run the hotel?”

“I can’t help thinking that’s what my grandfather would’ve wanted,” I replied. “I just don’t know if it’s what I want.”

“What do you want?”

“That’s the problem. I can’t answer that question. I really don’t know what I want. I know what my father trained me to want. It’s not this hotel.”

“Oh.” Realization washed over his features. “Your family wants you to sell the hotel.”

“Right now, the hotel and the money attached to the renovation were left to me and only me,” I explained. “They’re not happy. They think I somehow did something to coerce my grandfather into leaving me the hotel even though we hadn’t been close for some time.”

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