Page 2 of The Seascape Between Us

She reached up and patted my cheek. “That’s why you pay me the big bucks.”

Since we both knew I did not pay her big bucks, I ignored her attempt to brush off my thanks. “Seriously, I appreciate it. I can take their things to the cleaners. You don’t have to worry about that.”

“It’s not a problem. I’ll tell Sammy to put a rush on it and to call you when it’s ready to be picked up. You should know, despite comping their room, the guests are still not pleased.”

Not exactly shocking, and I didn’t blame them. “Thanks for the heads up. I’ll swing by their room and apologize in person.”

It would hardly be the first time I had to apologize to guests for something going spectacularly wrong, and no doubt, it wouldn’t be the last. Besides, I had bigger problems to deal with.

The roof. It needed replacing, but I just didn’t have the money. I’d hoped that after the summer tourist season, I’d have enough to replace it in the fall. But I could kiss that particular hope goodbye if I had to keep comping rooms.

I’d patched some of the worst of the damage last fall, hoping it would get me through this upcoming season. Unfortunately, I’d clearly missed a section. I’d have to get up there and patch it today and check to make sure there were no other cracks where water could get in. Not exactly how I had hoped to spend my morning, but I needed to get it done sooner rather than later to avoid the leak causing any more damage.

With a sigh, I grabbed my empty coffee cup and looked up at the hotel. Built sometime in the 1960s, it looked a little like a sundial. The lobby and restaurant round with the wide expanse of windows on the curved wall of the dining room offered spectacular views of the ocean. The two stories of rooms—seventeen on each floor—shot straight out from the top of the curve, each room facing the water.

I’d been running this place on my own since I was about nineteen, and over nearly sixteen or seventeen years, I just couldn’t seem to dig my way to making a profit. I’d be a liar if I claimed that I hadn’t toyed with the idea of selling it, but I knew I never would. This hotel was the only home I’d ever really known.

“There’s a man who wants to see you?”

I’d barely stepped off the ladder to find Carter, my desk clerk, hurrying towards me, his eyes wide and panicked.

I sighed inwardly.What fresh hell?

After apologizing to the couple whose belongings had been soiled thanks to the leaking roof and who generously pointed out some other issues they had with our rooms and the hotel in general—mostly that it was old and worn and they would have gone somewhere else were it not for the views—I’d climbed up onto the roof and started patching the holes.

Surprisingly, roofing had turned out to be a nice break from the day-to-day. The sun was warm, and the wind off the water was fresh. I should have known better. Lately, there was alwayssomething, and definitely no escaping for long.

“What man? What does he want?” I asked, folding down the extension ladder leaning against the side of the hotel.

Unlike June, who’d worked at the hotel longer than I had and always knew what to do in almost any situation, Carter had only been working for me for about three weeks now, and his hotel experience before I’d hired him was minimal. He promised that he was a quick learner and good with people, but anything outside the normal day-to-day tended to throw him off.

“He didn’t tell me his name.” Carter twisted his hands together like a kid called to the principal’s office. “He said he was here to talk to you about the future of the hotel, then pushed past me into your office.”

Cold washed over me, and my stomach dropped to my shoes like an icy brick. No. Itcouldn’tbe Grey. Not now. Not after all this time. If he were going to turn up again, surely, he would have last year when his father first passed away, and he’d inherited Oliver Mackenzie’s interest in the hotel.

Maybe it was Finn. He worked for Grey, managing his properties in Oceanwind Square, so Grey didn’t have to deal with his inheritance. As far as I knew, Grey hadn’t stepped foot in The Square—the LGBTQIA community his father had been instrumental in creating—or even the town of Saltwater Cove.Though I doubted Finn would have walked into the hotel and started throwing his weight around.

Finn's boyfriend, Alistair, had worked in the restaurant for nearly five years. Hell, we’d spent Christmas together with Alistair’s former roommates who were renting the late Oliver Mackenzie’s house since their own burned down last year. Not that Finn and I talked much. There’d been a big enough crowd there that day, and we didn’t need to make awkward conversation. I knew Finn was Grey’s good friend, and I had no idea how much Finn knew about the history Grey and I shared.

“He didn’t say anything else about what he wanted?” I asked.

“When I tried to stop him from going into your office, he said it was fine because he was the owner.”

Holy shit. ItwasGrey. I could feel the blood draining from my face in a slow, trickling whoosh. Why would he come here? Why now? We’d managed to avoid each other for seventeen years.

The image of his face the last time I’d seen him popped into my head, that cold sneer he’d worn while he’d looked me up and down like something nasty he’d stepped in and couldn’t quite scrape off the bottom of his shoe.

Carter frowned, as if trying to make sense of what the man waiting in my office had said. “That can’t be right, though. You’re the owner.”

“Can you put all this away for me?” I asked, nodding to the ladder, tools and buckets of roof sealer. Normally, I wouldn’t have asked my desk clerk to clean up after me, but I didn’t like the idea of Greyson Mackenzie unsupervised in my office. Hell, I didn’t like the idea of that man anywhere near my hotel.

Shit, why was he here now? What did he want? It didn’t matter; I told myself. However things had ended between us, I wasn’t some eighteen-year-old kid anymore, unwittingly being used to entertain Grey while he was visiting his father for the summer.

I’d grown up, ran my own business, and I wouldn’t be taking shit from Grey Mackenzie no matter what past we’d shared or how rich he was now. Grey might have inherited his father’s half ofmyhotel, but fuck him if he thought he was going to waltz in here and start calling the shots, telling me how to runmybusiness.

I left Carter to lug all my roofing gear back to the tool shed and made my way inside the hotel. Passing a mirror in the lobby, I toyed with the idea of running up to my room to shower and change from my work clothes, but I decided to deal with Grey as soon as possible and get him out ofmyhotel.

I strode across the lobby into my office, which was tucked in the back corner behind the front desk, but stopped dead in my tracks just past the threshold. The indignant anger I’d worked up storming from the backside of the hotel to my office seeped out of me, leaving me strangely deflated like an old balloon.

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