Epilogue
I watched her from across the dining room. She hadn’t noticed me yet, but when my girl was focused on something it was tough to get her to look away. Which was okay by me, because I loved to watch her work.
She looked down at the new menu cards through her new eyeglasses, the ones she insisted she didn’t need but finally got. She looked adorable when she was wearing them, especially when I came to bed to find her still awake and reading. Perched on top of the thousand pillows she liked to have stacked around her at night, she’d sit primly on a mountain of white, wearing her glasses and one of my old T-shirts, spreadsheets and trade magazines spread out all around her. Sometimes when she read, the tip of her tongue would stick out. Did she know she did that? Did she know it drove me wild?
Sometimes she knew. Like when I was buried deep inside of her and she was hot and wet all around me and she’d dig her nails into my backside, just past the point of pain, knowing I’d fuck her faster and harder if she did it. Drove me wild.
My girl was wild. And loud. And obnoxious. And irritating. And bossy as all get out. And I wouldn’t have her any other way.
“Hey, Hotel Boy,” she called from across the room, and I grinned just hearing her voice. “Get over here and proof these with me.”
“Coming, Bossy.”
And she had been. This morning. All morning. Every morning. When she was in town, that is.
Clara had quit her job, and while her boss tried like hell to get her to come back she was steadfast in her decision. And while she did spend the rest of the summer with me, helping our team to implement all the changes she’d initially gotten started back in the spring, by September I could tell she was getting antsy.
“So I’d get to pick and choose the jobs I do, when I want to do them. I mean, I’d have real freedom to set things up exactly the way I want.”
“Sounds great.”
“No really, what do you think?” she asked, chewing on her thumbnail nervously. She’d approached me with the idea of going back to work in a freelance capacity. Simply put, my girl had made such a name for herself in our industry that she literally had owners beating down her door to work with her. Even with the hit job The Empire Group had tried to put out on her, her work spoke for itself. But she didn’t want to make that decision without me.
It wasn’t easy for my girl to loop people in, she was so used to doing things her way and her way alone. She’d made decisions for years based solely on her own needs, but she was trying like hell to include me in everything now, and I loved her even more for it.
“I think it sounds great, really I do,” I said, leaning over to kiss her soundly. “I’ll miss seeing your face first thing every morning, but this sounds like a great opportunity.”
“And my boobs second thing,” she said, leaning over to kiss me back just as soundly.
“If you’d just sleep naked, then I could sometimes see those even before I see your face,” I growled, pulling her down onto my lap.
That discussion had ended a few seconds after that. But she went back out onto the road a few weeks later, and so far it was working out pretty great.
Bryant Mountain House was slowly and surely making headway. We’d implemented almost every change Clara had recommended and it was coming along nicely. We were closing down part of the hotel after the holidays and we only had to make minimal adjustments to the staff. Caroline and her team had already begun the room renovations and even I had to admit they were looking great. And just a few tweets from someone like Jack Hamilton had put our hotel on the map for an entirely new group of travelers. Who knew?
And here we were, a week before Christmas. Holidays were still difficult for Clara, but she was trying really hard. We spent Thanksgiving together in Manhattan with Natalie’s family (a fight that Trudy was still sore over), and Clara did okay. Slowly but surely, we were making new memories together to replace the ones she’d missed out on for so many years. And we made sure to celebrate each and every holiday so far with as many I love yous as we could say.
I missed Ashley. Of course I missed Ashley. She’d been a part of my life longer than she hadn’t been. But where our relationship had seemed easy and almost fated, my love for Clara was work, but the very best kind. We challenged each other, we fought hard, but we loved harder. And the payoff? Christ, she was worth everything.
“Did I tell you Roxie and I found some old menu cards from the twenties? We used them as the base for these, but just as a base. We weren’t going to start serving grapefruit and tomato juice at dinner, I mean, who does that?”
“The Bryants did, that’s who,” I said, looking over her shoulder at the menu cards. “Grapefruit juice was a great palate cleanser.”
“That doesn’t explain the tomato juice.” She looked critically at me, one eyebrow raised, like she was ready to start an argument. I was ready if she was.
“It was Prohibition, the tomato juice was likely laced with basement hooch.”
“Speaking of the basement, we gotta get back down to that boiler room sometime, Hotel Boy.” She grinned. “I love the way you look when you’re holding your wrench.” Then she leaned over the table, pretending to fiddle with the placement of the salt and pepper shakers but really, she was just making sure I saw her ass in that tiny pencil skirt she was wearing. And speaking of the twenties, were those stockings she was wearing?
My girl, she drove me wild.
“Meet you there in twenty minutes.”
She turned around, heat flashing in her eyes, and shook her head. “Make it fifteen.”
Can’t argue with that.