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Wes
*This is Gonna Hurt*
I’ve always thought it was so cheesy when hot women walk through doors in slow-motion in commercials and movies or whatever, all backlit with a halo of sunlight, because that’s not a thing that happens in real life. Not in Belford, Oregon, anyway. Until now. There’s no music playing here in the spacious lobby of Calloway’s Mountain Lodge, but if there were, there would be a record scratch, followed by stunned silence. Heads turn. A soft breeze blows from inside, somehow, and Lily Barnes’s shiny blonde hair flutters gracefully around her face. I swear, her bleached-white teeth sparkle as she smiles at me, and I can’t look away, even when she looks up and around at the high cedar post and beam ceiling. Even as she stops to admire the huge stone wood-burning fireplace, like it’s the exact perfect thing she needs in her life right now.
Her blouse is buttoned all the way up, just as I’d told her Patty Triplett is wearing her blouse today. But everything else about Lily looks like the Hollywood version of what Patty Triplett is trying to be. She looks glamorous—although Lily Barnes looks glamorous when she’s wearing an oversize gray T-shirt with an angry duck on it—but she also looks approachable. And she strides over to me, holding a file folder that she hands to me, along with a pen.
“Hi,” she says. “I need you to sign these.” Then she turns to Patty and Roger Triplett and their broker, smiling and offering her hand to shake. “Hello. I’m so sorry to interrupt. I’m Lily, Wes’s assistant.” Interesting that she doesn’t offer her last name. “I had to get him to sign some papers, and I was just dying to come visit this place again.”
“Again?” I blurt out at the same time Patty asks, “You’re his assistant?” As if it’s so impossible that Lily could be anyone’s assistant and not an executive or an airline stewardess from the 1960s.
“Lucky me, right?” she says to Patty. To me, she replies, “I came here once with my mother, when I was a kid. Not too long after it opened, I think, in the winter.” She looks around. “It’s just as beautiful as I remember. I always meant to come back here. I have wonderful memories.”
“That does sound nice,” Patty says. “Do you live around here?” she asks, disbelieving.
“I do now,” Lily responds, all chipper. “Grew up here, lived in New York and LA for a few years.” She slips her arm through Patty’s. “I’m dying to see the view from the deck,” she says. “So gorgeous. Have you been out there yet?”
“Yes, but let’s go have another look.” Patty glances back at her husband as Lily leads her to the back deck. “See you in a bit.” I hear her ask Lily if she thinks the floors need to be refinished.
Thirty seconds after meeting her, she’s asking Lily for her opinion.
Suddenly, I feel like buying new car insurance.
Roger and his broker watch them go and then give me a sideways glance. I look down at the file folder and pen in my hand and hold it up. “Better go sign these papers,” I say. “Let me know if you need anything.”
“Could you give me your assistant’s number?” the broker mutters.
I don’t verbalize my answer to that question, but he gets the idea.
“Guess we’re buying a resort,” Roger says, grinning.
Four hours later, after Lily has toured the entire lodge with Patty and talked-up Ashland’s Shakespeare Festival over a long lunch in the restaurant, she is now convincing Patty that Ashland is the next Napa Valley while I frantically scroll through my emails to make sure we haven’t missed anything important by being out of the office. This is one of the bigger deals I’m closing of late, so I can justify spending a few hours with these people, but not at the risk of slacking off. I know Lily had the calls forwarded to her cell phone, but I don’t see how it’s possible she managed to stay on top of everything while also dazzling my client. And yet—it seems as though she has.
I overhear Patty and Roger suggesting that Lily and I join them for wine tasting at one of the local vineyards when I excuse myself from the table to go out to the lobby to take a call. It’s Jasper’s assistant Tina, and she only calls me when he needs to talk to me right away. “This is Wes,” I say when I reach a quiet corner.
“Hey, sweetie. I’ve got Jay calling from Seattle. Can I put him through?”
“Yeah, put him through.”
I clear my throat and try to sound like a guy who definitely did not have his mouth all over this man’s daughter’s naked body yesterday morning.
“Wes?”
“Hello, sir.”
“I’m about to step into a committee meeting, but I learned about an upcoming foreclosure at an office park in Central Point. I think it’s a good fit for the Barnes Group’s own portfolio. Tina will be emailing you the information shortly. Look into it, will you?”
“Sounds good. I will do that and get back to you.”
“How’s Lily working out so far?” he asks.
“Lily?” I ask, trying to sound like a guy who absolutely did not make out with this man’s daughter in his living room yesterday.
“Your new assistant… I heard Tina say she’s not at her desk this afternoon. Did she not show up for work today?”
“No, she’s here, actually. I’m at the resort in Ashland with our clients, and I asked Lily to meet me here because Mrs. Triplett was getting cold feet. I had an instinct about her and figured she’d respond to Lily’s encouragement.”
“And?”
