Page 51 of The Last Resort
“I said the Wi-Fi signal here is terrible. I can barely get one bar, so how is it that you are able to work?”
His cheeks flushed red. “Do you remember that bit last night when you discovered that my real surname is Royal, and my family owns a lot of hotels and resorts? Okay. Yeah well … we have our own commercial satellite. I’m hooked onto its signal now.”
She’d grown up surrounded by well-to-do people but had never met anyone who could actually afford their own communications satellite.
So that’s what billionaires spend their money on. Fancy tech toys.
He might be wealthy, but Matthew had the good manners to appear embarrassed over his misstep. “I’m sorry I didn’t realize you were having internet issues. Let me patch you in.”
Nope. I still can’t get my head around this. How and why do they have their own satellite?
“How are you allowed to have a satellite?I thought only governments and evil billionaires were allowed to do that. Oh, yes, I forgot the billionaire bit.”
He raised his eyebrows at her last comment. “I don’t know all the politics behind it, but we launched the project through the European Space Agency. The satellite handles a lot of the Royal business traffic across all the various countries we operate in, but we are also looking to use it in places like this one. The lack of reliable signals impedes our ability to operate in some locations. We’ll have a second satellite launching late this summer. I’m hoping that Royal Resorts Aspen will be the first US based site to link directly to our satellites. That way our guests will have strong internet and phone signal.
Satellites. As in plural, that’s serious money.
Rachel laughed. “It’s kinda nuts that we can get in touch with the furthest reaches of the planet from here, but we can’t get a coffee delivered from town.”
She spun her laptop round and pushed it toward him. “Please, Mister Royal, would you kindly hook me up to your rocket ship.”
The heat had gone out of her fight. Rachel was talking to him once more.Thank heavens.It was a welcome change to how the day had started out between them, but Matthew was still wary. She was against his plan and hadn’t hesitated to tear it—and by default, him—apart in public last night. The injury to his pride hurt almost as much as his stomach did.
He didn’t give a damn about the coffee or the internet. He wanted them to find a way to communicate with one anotherwithout it ending in a yelling match. This went deeper than simply the fate of the old ski lodge.
I can’t think about that now—about us. Still, the doubt of whether they’d ever repair this gaping wound in their relationship nagged at him.
They worked on in silence for a time, but he was now very much aware of how silent things were, of the distance between them.
I wish we could go back to being what we were before.
The bud of romance had been ready to blossom between them, now he feared it was lost. Crushed somewhere under the snow. He lowered the lid of his laptop, quietly watching as Rachel continued to work.
At some point she must have finally realized what he was doing and looked up from her keyboard. “What?”
“Do you really think my design looks like the Death Star?” he asked.
She puffed out her cheeks. “I didn’t mean that it was ugly, or evil. What I was trying to say is that the design is not sympathetic to this place.”
People kept throwing that remark at him, but no one had actually bothered to say what they meant by it. How was he to design something when he didn’t know what the people of Aspen wanted?
Rachel held up her pointer finger. “Let me show you. Once you understand then I think you and I can get down to work and come up with a plan.”
She disappeared from the room, returning a few minutes later carrying a cardboard box with tattered edges which she dropped onto the table. It landed with a thump.
“Gary Brocks found this when he was cleaning out one of his father’s cupboards. It’s the original blue prints for the Green Tree Resort. Along with a ton of photos. I’d started scanning the blue prints but hadn’t got around to the photos.”
They gathered around the box and quickly emptied its contents onto the meeting room table. The aroma of old paper and dust had Matthew turning away to sneeze. It took a few seconds for his nose to stop itching.
“Sorry about that, the pages are pretty dusty. I wiped them down as best I could, but forty-eight years of being stuffed in the ceiling of a garage will do that to old designs,” said Rachel.
It was strange to be able to talk design to her. Matthew hadn’t met many female architects during his career. Few seemed to take the path into designing hotels and resorts. From the way Rachel had spoken last night, he doubted she would find much joy in such tasks. Apart from the fancy lobbies and grounds, most hotels and resorts were little more than cookie cutter projects.
Which is why this one had been so compelling to him—it had offered him a rare chance to strike a blow for something different in leisure and travel design. Something unique.
“Okay, so what exactly are we looking for in here?” he asked.
The soft smile on her face had his cock twitching in his pants. Matthew did his best to ignore his body’s not-so-subtle hints for sex. Things between him and Rachel were complicated enough at the moment, he didn’t need to throw lust into the mix.
