Page 14 of The Seascape Between Us

“Are you telling me those bathrooms date back to the fifties?”

“Sixties,” I corrected, not that he was listening.

“I don’t know why I’m asking.” His nose wrinkled with disgust. “I saw the bathroom in my room.”

“It was clean.”

He rolled his eyes. “Well, thank god for that.”

I almost told him that the shower and tub insert had replaced the original ten years ago, but I doubted he’d be impressed.

“The roof needs to be replaced,” I admitted. “I was planning to do it after the summer season. I’ve patched anywhere that was leaking.” The leaks I knew about, anyway.

“I’ll have Finn come down for an inspection. He did one last year, but I want to know exactly what I’m dealing with, so I’ll have a better idea of everything that needs to be done. I want to plan for a grand re-opening, something flashy that’s going to show that the Seascape has been completely overhauled before we’re too far into the summer season.”

“We’re booked pretty solid, starting the first week of July.”

“That only gives us six weeks.” Grey rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “It’s going to be tight, but not impossible.”

“There’s no way in hell you can update thirty-four rooms in six weeks.”

“In my experience, you can accomplish anything if you throw enough money at it.”

I rolled my eyes. “No doubt.”

“We’re going to need to get started right away. We’ll have to reschedule any guests you have between now and the opening. I can have Cooper,” he gestured to the office door and, I assumed, the desk clerk beyond.

“Carter,” I corrected.

“Whatever, I’ll get him started on calling guests this morning. In the meantime, I want to run some numbers with my people.”

“I can put together the financial reports—”

“No need to worry your pretty little head with all those numbers. I have people for that.”

My grip on my coffee cup tightened. I was half-surprised it hadn’t shattered to dust in my hand. “So, what am I supposed to do?”

“I could use a coffee.” His dark eyes held mine, a cold and humorless smile stretching across his face. “I take it black.”

He turned back to my computer screen, and just like that, he'd dismissed me from my own office as if I were one of his lackeys. Though, for all intents and purposes, I supposedly was.

I stood and left my office, closing the door behind me, then leaned back on it and shut my eyes, doing my best to smother the anger humming beneath my skin like an electric charge.

Grey wasn’t selling the hotel, and I should be grateful. He had money to invest and bring it back to its former glory. Again, I should have been grateful. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d made a deal with the devil himself all those years ago when I let Oliver buy into my hotel, and now the devil had come to collect his due.

Chapter Six

Grey

Three days cooped up in Daniel’s depressing, windowless office, and I could feel myself getting antsy. Restlessness buzzed under my skin, and I couldn’t stop bouncing my knee under the desk.

How in the hell had Daniel worked in here for the past seventeen years? The small, square room—honestly, my closets were bigger than this—was made smaller still by the stacks of file boxes pushed up against the dull walls. Daniel’s filing system, apparently. God, no wonder he walked around with that pinched, slightly constipated look on his face.

Between the lack of natural light, cheap furniture that had probably been new when the hotel first opened, and that ugly pale yellow wall color, I could feel my mood plummeting the longer I stayed there. Had someone intentionally painted the walls that yellow ivory color, or had the walls started out white and yellowed over time? Whatever the answer, the result was terrible.

I probably would have told Daniel that, except I’d barely seen him since I’d told him my plans for the hotel. After asking him to bring me a coffee three days ago, he left his office and hadn’t been back—with my coffee or at all.

I’d, of course, seen him around the hotel, talking with staff and on the phone with guests. I was ninety percent sure Daniel had made those calls to reschedule the guests booked for the next six weeks instead of Carter, who I’d asked to handle it. And Daniel must have seen me going through the hotel with Finn since he’d sent me an email the next morning asking to see Finn’s report.

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