Page 31 of Ms. Fortune
If keeping him in my bed meant keeping him around for just a little while longer, I was happy to offer my body in exchange. Not that sleeping with the enigmatic man was a chore. It was the opposite. It was the one indulgence I didn’t deny myself.
When I made it back to the kitchen, Banner was elbow deep in a mixing bowl, whipping up a batch of frosting. I lifted an eyebrow and asked what she was doing. She told me the chef had asked her to help pull together dessert since she was familiar with baking. She swore she’d done it for years at the family’s restaurant. I wanted to remind her that I’d never seen her step foot in the back of the house and that she’d already brought me several pies. I kept my mouth shut because she seemed happy, getting her hands dirty and being praised by the young guy I’d hired to work in the kitchen. It’d been a minute since I’d witnessed her smiling and relaxed. She looked how she used to look when we had been younger and before we started making decisions that would change our lives forever.
I left them to their own devices and went out onto the deck to make sure the outdoor area was set up for the return of all the guests who’d spent the day on the slopes. I helped make a boozy spiced cider and a kid-friendly hot cocoa. After all of that was situated, I took a moment to look out over the vista as the sun was going down and soaked in a rare moment of realizing I was living my dream and then some. I’d never thought I would make it here. Not with my parents and my terrible luck constantly working against me. Each breath of chilly mountain air reminded me that, regardless of the challenges I’d already faced and no matter what obstacles might come, this place and moments like this were worth fighting for.
The tranquility was broken by the arrival of a rowdy bunch of snowboarders ready for après-ski. The bar was in full swing in minutes. I stayed for a round of tequila shooters, then went to find Risky to see how he was doing with the heater.
Thank goodness he was a quick learner. I rarely had to redo any of his repairs or call in a professional if it was a task he’d already messed around with. He was no longer incompetent, and almost came across as a real handyman. He’d been run as ragged as I was this first week of high season. He never complained or griped about all the work that was waiting from sunup to sundown. He seemed to enjoy the madness just as much as I did, even if it was miles away from his previous occupation.
I didn’t know when he found the time to do anything else, but he swore he was getting closer to nailing down who had been behind the accident. He got the name of the person who had been driving the SUV, and a sour look would cross his face whenever I asked for an update. I got the feeling that whatever answers he was pulling out of the dark didn’t thrill him. The times when I pressed him for more information, he’d change the subject and act like everything was under control. Since he washandling things outside my wheelhouse, I had no choice but to let him work alone while I stayed tucked away in the resort.
I convinced Banner to stay for dinner since she’d helped prepare it. She told me she needed to get back to the baby and mumbled that she wasn’t very hungry, but she took the plate I handed her and sat in the kitchen with me and Risky after I mentioned he and I typically ate together like it was a recurring date. I knew she only stuck around so she could grill him and watch how we interacted together. Fortunately, he put up his charming and endearing facade and kept his ferocious side perfectly hidden. There wasn’t the slightest hint that he might be dangerous, and I saw Banner visibly softening toward him. And by the time dessert rolled around, she was acting like the two of them were long-lost friends.
Before I could dig into the cupcakes she’d helped make, I got called away by a young couple who needed a rollaway bed for their toddler. I dragged Risky with me to haul the cumbersome device out of storage. I thought Banner would be gone by the time we made it back to the kitchen, but when I returned, I found her with her head in the sink, violently throwing up.
I asked her if she was okay and almost teased her about being knocked up again when her garishly pale face and watery eyes stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t get a second to worry about her before wretched sounds started coming from the nearly full dining room. Risky stuck his head through the swinging door and gave me a telling look.
“We need to call the paramedics.” His eyebrows lifted, and his tone dropped to frigid. “And the police. This looks like someone deliberately tampered with the food.”
Panic clawed at my throat as I gazed at Banner, who looked seconds away from passing out. Her face was a scary shade of white, and she was sweating like she’d just stepped out of a sauna.
“What if they ate something that does more than just make them sick to their stomachs?”
I didn’t notice that Risky was watching Banner in an entirely different way than I was.
“Doubtful. That would be attempted murder.” He frowned as more awful sounds came from the dining area. “We need to get these people help as quickly as possible. And grab one of those cupcakes.”
I looked at the untouched sweets next to my dinner plate. It was the only thing Banner had eaten that he and I hadn’t. I quickly realized he thought the dessert was the culprit. I nodded and rushed toward Banner as she wobbled precariously at the sink. I knew I needed to get out to the dining room and address the situation, but I was concerned with how pale and shaky my friend was.
Once I was at her side, I patted her on the back as she bent over again to dry heave into the sink. “We’re calling for help. It’ll be all right, Banner.”
She weakly shoved her hair out of her face and looked at me with tear-filled eyes. “No. I don’t want to wait for the paramedics. I need to get home. I’m already later than when I told my parents I would be back. I’m going to leave now.”
I blinked in surprise. “You look terrible. I don’t think it’s safe for you to drive.”
She ran the faucet and rinsed out her mouth. “I’ll be fine. I had morning sickness throughout my entire pregnancy with Rosie. This isn’t any worse than that.” She paused and looked at me with naked concern. “Lucky”—she shook her head and reached up to put a hand on my shoulder—“you haven’t even had the lodge sold out for a week, and something like this is happening. This is bad. Once news gets out, who’s going to want to stay here?”
She was speaking my biggest fears out loud.
It had been too soon to run ahead full force after the accident and after someone tried to deliberately sabotage my reservation system, but I’d ignored the warnings and pushed to open the doors. I couldn’t live my life waiting for my luck to turn around. If I did, I would be stuck in the same place, with the same view and the same lackluster results. I had to roll the dice, hoping for a better outcome, even if it wasn’t likely. By this point, I was accustomed to living through any and all worst-case scenarios.
Banner sighed and stepped away. She still looked like death was knocking on the door, but there was endless compassion in her eyes. “I know how much the lodge means to you. I know it’s your dream to run this place the way your grandparents did, but maybe it’s too much for you to handle on your own. It might be the best choice to sell it and take the money. Starting over somewhere new, with something smaller and easier to manage, would still give you the opportunity to do what you love. This place has always been an albatross around your neck. You’re going to have nothing left if you keep fighting to hold on to it.”
I didn’t want to argue with her since she wasn’t feeling well. I needed to save my energy for the apologizing and groveling I had to do for my guests. The visions of money flying away and impending lawsuits were enough to make my blood run cold.
I was used to my luck making me miserable. I didn’t know how I could protect others from being dragged into the endless misfortune alongside me.
It was an agonizingly long night spent at the small, understaffed hospital and sitting through another grueling round of questioning by the sheriff. Risky’s warning that this poisoning might be considered attempted murder proved to be true. Only I was the number one suspect. No matter how many times I asked why I would want to sabotage the business I’d worked so hard to rebuild, I was hit with the undeniable fact that I’d kept the lodge running even though an unknown threat was circling. At the end of the day, I was the one responsible for all those people falling ill. I’d thought I was doing everything right, but it’d all gone so wrong. All I could do was hang my head and take the relentless berating and questioning.
The sheriff planned to keep at it all night, but Risky showed up with a sleepy-looking man in a rumpled suit who claimed to be my lawyer. His gaze was surprisingly sharp and impatient behind his gold-rimmed glasses, giving him a contradictory appearance.
Once there were reinforcements and he knew it would be more of a headache to keep me, the sheriff let me go with a low warning and a taunting, “See you soon, Lucky.”
He was probably right, which I hated down to my core. The lawyer followed us to Risky’s truck, mentioning that any legal communication coming from the guests who had gotten sickshould go through him from here on out. He suggested shutting the lodge down until it was clear how so many people had gotten sick, but I was one step ahead of him.
Even though the property was fully booked for the next six weeks, I planned to cancel and refund all the reservations. The financial hit would be a knockout. Even if I sold everything I owned, there was no possible way to make up the difference. I was going to end up leveraging the property to get my hand on enough cash to pay the staff for the season. I’d promised them steady work, and now that the mountain was alive for the winter, they wouldn’t be able to find anything else. I’d put them in an unfavorable situation, so there was no other option but to hold up my end of the employment contract.
I’d never felt so defeated.
