I wave goodbye to her and feel a bit stupid for doing so, then find a place to hole up near the door. I pull out my phone and see I’ve got a message from an unknown account on Facepost.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I murmur as I open the app.
Baby, please stop blocking me. I’m running out of email addresses.
Fucking prick…
I don’t even read the rest of his desperate plea. He did end up at Alexis’s place; I’ve seen her pictures on Instaframe. She messaged me there, too, but I haven’t had the guts to open it. I thought Alexis was not just my executive assistant, but my friend. How wrong I was…
“Hi there.” A pompous, masculine voice rips me from my screen.
I look up to see that before me is a classically beautiful man in his early forties. His brown hair is slicked back, his eyes aresparkly blue, his jaw is clean and sharp…and he’s wearing a black sweater in fucking June.
“Hi,” I say, stuffing my phone in my pocket.
“Sorry for dropping eaves, but I heard you’re the new owner of the haunted hot spring,” he says, extending his hand for a shake.
“Yeah, I am. Sylvia,” I say, accepting the offer.
“I’m Mark Torres, the owner of Silver Mountain Resort,” he says, giving me a winning smile with overly sharp canines. It probably makes other girls’ hearts patter, but it gives me a bit of the creeps, like he’s a wolf baring his teeth at me.
I shake the thought away and smile. “Oh, great. So nice to meet you.”
I want to make a good impression. I want to fit in. I don’t want a bunch of conflict as I’m trying to put my life back together and build myself a decent future.
Especially if the hot springisactually haunted…
He steps into my space and I release his hand. “Owner to owner, could I offer you some advice?”
I try to shift back, but I hit the glass behind me. “Uh, yeah, please. Offer away.”
“Sell that dump.”
I chuckle. “Why? Because it’s haunted?”
He leans down and his eyes narrow on mine, taking on a predatory quality. “No,” he says quietly. “Because if you try to take any of my business, I will fucking ruin you, professionally and personally.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end and blood rushes to my head. “If you’re trying to intimidate me—”
“Sylvia, your drink,” Irene calls, interrupting us. There’s a severe look on her face and she shakes her head at me subtly.
Mark looks over at Irene and smiles. “Just welcoming our newest community member.”
Irene gives him a wrinkle-nosed smile that looks more like a snarl. “I bet you were.”
He winks at me before turning away, his blue eyes sparkling with malice. “See you around.”
I hope not,says the crazy girl, who wants to take over once more.
But I know it’s inevitable that we’ll cross paths again. This town is too small to completely avoid him.
Irene approaches me with the latte. “Making friends already, huh?”
“I don’t know if I’d say that,” I say, accepting the drink.
“Tell me if I got it right,” she says, looking at me hopefully.
I take a sip. Hot nutmeg and cinnamon hit first, then undertones of fall gourdy goodness and sweet, rich oats.
