CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
HAMPTON
THE MOUNTAIN AIR IS COOL and crisp, like the first bite of an apple.
It’s cold at night and — for a few more weeks, anyway — still warm during the day. Temperature swings are dramatic. Mateo told us to bring coats. Of course, Stacy pilfered ours from the Pillar Collection. Hers is simple, pretty, goes with anything. Mine is a dark gray pea coat. The fact that we both like these garments for different reasons proves to me that the Pillar Collection will work. I have expensive tastes but until recently no real eye for quality. Stacy is frugal, yet a stickler for excellence. She promises we can have both. In the long term, buying fewer clothes for more money costs less. But there’s another reason, too. She says a craftsman can always trade cost for care.
I love her concern. It vests Stacy in her role as lead designer and interim operations director of the Pillar line more than her salary ever could. In a way, the Collection is our baby. We made it together. She’ll never walk away now, or stop caring enough to make it great.
I’m on the deck when she comes to wrap her arms around me.
“I love it here,” she says.
“It’s not too shabby.”
“You’ll have to thank Mateo for making us come here.”
“He doesn’t own it yet, Stace. That guy Damon, who met us at the desk? He owns it.”
“The kid? He owns this place?”
“Not the desk clerk. The older guy who came up like a ninja and surprised you.”
“Oh,” she says, remembering. “You mean the silver fox.”
“Is he handsome?”
“Without question.”
“Should I be jealous?”
She hugs me harder. “Yes, please. Come inside and show me how jealous you are.”
That causes a stirring. But it’s simmering slowly. Right now, she’s more loving than lustful. That will come soon enough.
I chuckle. But then I kiss her, long and slow.
We look across the mountains together.
“Thank Mateo anyway,” Stacy says.
“Why?”
“For being paranoid enough to insist you go as a spy.”
“I don’t plan on doing any spying. I’m on vacation.”
“And that’s what we thank him for.”
Stacy sits on the soft deck couch. Our hands linked at some point. They don’t unlink now, as I sit beside her.
“Is this going to work, do you think?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
It’s out of the blue. But my mind wanders. Always restless. Life and business are together, now more than ever.
“The Pillar Collection. Expendable Chic selling quality clothing for higher prices.”
She seems relieved. “Oh, that. It’s already working, isn’t it?”
“As a pilot program. But people know Expendable Chic for expendability. I just don’t know how well it’s going to translate in the long term.”
Stacy leans back. Becomes the very picture of relaxation beside me. “We’ve already had this talk. Haven’t you learned anything?”
“Learned what?”
“People don’t know you for expendability, or being cheap, or low quality, or anything like that. They know you for the feelings they get. Positive self-image — that’s what your company is really about. Making people feel good. Distracting them from the drudgery, letting them feel beautiful for a change. Core values.” She pushes me. “Come on, fella. I thought you went to business school.”
“Saying those are our core values doesn’t make it true in everyone’s eyes.”
“Yeah, well.” She settles deeper into the pillows. “They haven’t seen how much you give to charity. They haven’t seen you take shopping bags full of pretty things to kids with cancer.”
We sit in the rarified air, saying nothing.
Then: “What did you think I was talking about?”
Stacy turns her head, not lifting it from repose. “Hmm?”
“A moment ago. When I asked if this was going to work.”
She laughs self-consciously. “At first, I thought you were talking about us — whether or not we were going to work, as a couple.”
I finally settle back. Stacy has this effect on me. She slows me down. Calms me. She’s my missing, comforting half. “You shouldn’t wonder that.”
“I don’t wonder it. I just thought you were saying that you were wondering it.”
“I’m not.”
“I know.”
“But you just said—”
“Don’t ask a girl how her mind works, Hampton. Half the time, we don’t know, either.”
More quiet.
“Because, you know, I bought you that ring.”
She rolls toward me. Puts one arm on each of my sides. Watches me for a long few seconds, then leans in. Again, we kiss. For a long time. It’s a few degrees hotter this time, my blood slowly rolling toward a boil.
“You also bought a building for my city.”
“I bought it for me.”
“Then gave it to my city.”
“I didn’t give it away. It was a sale, fair and square.”
She nods. “You’re right. You’re a ruthless, bloodsucking capitalist pig.”
“There’s my little hipster darling.”
More kissing. Now my skin is warming. Hers, too.
She gives me a long, lingering stare. And very deliberately, she says, “I don’t know that I ever thanked you for that.”
I tip my head toward the bedroom. It’s encased in glass. You can draw the curtains, but that buries the view. Considering that we have the most luxurious of the resort’s dwellings, I want my view. If anyone can see us from across the valley, so be it.
“Thank me in there,” I say.
“I’m serious.”
“Me too.”
Another quiet beat.
“I thought you’d given up on me,” she says.
“Never.”
“I never returned your calls.”
“I know. Fortunately, your dad is more polite.”
“You didn’t have to donate the building. Once I saw what you did with it, I’d have come around.”
“I didn’t feel like taking that chance.”
We wait. There’s more to it than that, but it’s hard to say. I don’t like admitting I was wrong.
“Besides, Williamsville has grown on me. And it deserved better.”
That earns me the longest, most passionate kiss yet. I’m hard. She knows; her hand has found me.
“If Mateo buys this place,” I say, “we’ll be able to come up here whenever we want.”
“I thought he wanted to build some climbing thing. Sounds like an ultimate Spartan Race or something.”
“Yes, but I think he’d keep the buildings. It’d be stupid to knock them all down. People need places to stay. This mountain could just as easily be a writer’s retreat as a rock school. He’s never going to be able to buy it, though.”
“That Damon guy doesn’t want to sell?”
I shake my head. It’s getting harder to talk.
Stacy is unbuttoning my pants.
“It’s not him. It’s his daughter. She doesn’t want her father to sell, and the way Mateo tells it, there’s not even a good reason. She’s just a bitch.” I laugh. “Elizabeth. That’s how Mateo says it. Like it’s the name of a growth people find on their bodies.” I repeat the name, grinding it out for comic effect: “Eliiiiizabeth.”
Now Stacy’s hand is fully inside. Wrapping my cock. Her skin is velvet on mine. I could come right here, just like this.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Stacy leans in to kiss me again, but this time it isn’t sweet. There is passion, brewing in her as surely as it’s brewing in me.
We stand. And with our hands linked and my fly still open, we walk inside to have our fun.