Page 92 of The Last Resort
“You won’t steal my model.”
He got a playful whack on the arm for his trouble. “Cheeky boy.” And then he got a kiss because she felt bad about hitting him.
Moving further along the beach, Matthew bent and picked up various rocks and other beach debris. When his arms were full, Rachel dropped her frond and took some of his treasures to lighten the load.
At the western most point of the island they came to a halt. Under the light of the full moon they set down their gathered loot. She’d always been a tactile person and having bits and pieces of any sort of trash had always helped when it came to putting concepts into reality.
Matthew piled a couple of rocks on top of one another on the sand. “That’s the existing lodge building, incorporating your original work and the amendments we agreed on,” he explained.
Rachel nodded. “Right, so the piece which has already gone to the Brocks and the planning committee for discussion.”
It didn’t look much, but it had taken a lot of work to come up with the right costings to save the old lodge. A number of the other existing buildings on the site had unfortunately been scrapped in order to bring the renovations within budget.
He raced back down the beach and retrieved Rachel’s discarded palm frond, then set to work pulling it apart. Kneeling on the sand, he fashioned it into a dome over thetop of the rocks. By the time he had finished, she could see what he had in mind.
“Is that a glass dome over the building?”
“Yes. Repurposing my original pyramid concept but using it to house the whole design. What do you think?”
“I think I owe you a really big plastic dome for the top of your new design model. That’s what I think.”
He grinned at her, and heat flushed her cheeks.
Taking some of the other assorted sticks and rocks, Rachel moved behind the palm dome and began to create another building. “The old lodge needs to be the entrance piece, the historical façade, but modern guests will want something more.”
She bit on her bottom lip. It was well past time that she set aside any thoughts of professional rivalry.
“When I told you that some of your original design was sound, I wasn’t patronizing you, Matthew, I meant it. This is the piece of your model that I think makes the most sense. A multistorey hotel behind the original resort, but as you say, all of it under the dome.”
It makes the whole concept so much more cohesive.
Working together they were creating something special. But it needed oomph.
“What would you say to putting an observatory inside this new resort?” she said.
“You mean a garden area, that sort of thing?”
Rachel laughed. “No, not a conservatory. An observatory.” She lifted her gaze to the heavens. “A proper star-gazing installation with telescopes. Something that will bring people from all over the world to see the Aspen night sky.”
The idea had popped into her head the previous evening as she and Matthew made their way back to the main house. Above them glittered a billion stars. Unfettered by the light pollution of a major city, vast tracts of the Milky Way werevisible. When the cloud cover was gone, Aspen had the same bright clear skies.
“That will cost a pretty penny to build.”
She could understand his hesitation, but if they were going to make this plan work, the new resort had to have something amazing that made people want to come.
“What made you want to become a designer, Matthew? Was this a childhood passion or did you family just slot you into the job? I’m asking because I sense in you a frustrated designer. If you could find a project that allowed you to really dream, you could be brilliant.”
Matthew got to his feet, dusting the sand from his linen pants. For a long moment he simply stared at the model they had built. A look of frustration sat on his face, or was it confusion, she couldn’t quite tell.
“I’ve been working on the new resort design for over two years. And all that time I’ve felt like I’ve been trying to put a mental puzzle together, but never got any further than the edge pieces,” he sighed. “Now I’m starting to see the details.”
He hated her question about his choice of career. Not because no one had bothered to ask him before, which they hadn’t, but because it meant having to look within himself. Staring back at him, judging him, was the Matthew Royal who had wanted a career in design because of his passion to create. He’d been full of excitement, itching to make his mark on the world.
You betrayed the promises you made. You sold your soul.
Money hadn’t been a part of the problem in his early days. All through college and university he’d created virtual buildingsthat were not bound by the limits of cost or time. It was only when he went to work in the family business, that the clash of reality and dreams had come and hit him head on.
He’d been forced to accept that what looked fabulous in AutoCAD, didn’t always make business sense. The board of Royal Resorts, including his own father, had all but laughed his early grand designs out the window of the company’s executive floor in New York. And while his more recent proposals had eventually ticked most of the financial and risk boxes, they’d left him cold.
