I heard gasps from either side of me, but I kept my eyes solely on Archie’s. He was the key here, the linchpin this entire operation rested on. Jonathan Bryant may have been the CEO and he may have been the one to hire me, but he was retiring. Archie was who I needed. If I didn’t have his buy-in, the rest of the staff would follow his lead and this place, and their entire way of life, would pass into the faded pages of history of what was once great.
I took a deep breath, and continued. “Now, I’m sorry if you think my words are harsh, but based on the numbers, we need to do something significant in order to save this hotel. It starts with what I like to call my Five R Plan. Number one, Refresh. We identify costs that we can offset over the years by upgrading to more cost-effective technology, like the HVAC systems. Two, Refurbish—we look into ways we can update the guest rooms and use some of what’s already there. Three, Rejuvenate and breathe some new life into stagnant areas, specifically with our menus. Revive is number four, not all that is old is boring. Let’s bring back some of the traditions that may have gone by the wayside and couple them with new customs. Let’s revive the partnership this hotel used to have with Bailey Falls in a much more specific and targeted way. And finally, Renovate. The specifics on this are TBD until I can drill down some very specific cost projections, but expect this last point to be a whopper.”
I looked around and saw wide eyes. It was time to make sure they knew they were still very much a part of this. “Believe me, I’m open to any and all suggestions, however outside the box they may be. In fact, the zanier the better, the more outlandish the better, the furthest away from ‘but this is how it’s always been done,’ the better.”
The room was quiet but not a good quiet. I knew it, I’d pushed too far too fast, and now I’d find out I was fired and bye-bye, partnership.
So when it was Archie who spoke first, I was the most surprised. But it made sense, since it was Archie and only Archie who could turn this around. “While I may not care for the method of delivery,” he said through gritted teeth, “Ms. Morgan is correct. We do need to do things differently, and boldly, if we’re to keep this hotel afloat. And as long as your plan does not call for filming an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians on our mountain . . . then I think we . . . I . . . need to give you the benefit of the doubt and hear your plan in its entirety.”
His eyes pierced mine, the challenge clear in those indigo depths.
“To be fair, the Kardashians would bring a tremendous amount of coverage to the resort, one tweet from Kim alone could—”
“Ms. Morgan, I think I speak for everyone when I say not on your life.” But he said it with nasty smile, like he’d just tasted something terrible.
“Okay then, let’s get to work.”
We broke for lunch around noon, and an enormous amount of work had been accomplished. I could feel plans beginning to take shape. Everyone had a scratch pad full of notes, dry-erase boards covered the walls with parking lot questions and to-do lists, chairs had been pushed back and rearranged, and by the end even Archie had taken off his jacket, loosened his tie, and rolled up his sleeves.
Which just made my eyes flicker back and forth almost nonstop to his forearms. I was a sucker for a nice forearm.
Forget the forearm.
No, you forget the forearm.
Wonderful, now I was literally, and most adult-like, fighting with myself.
When we broke for lunch, I headed over to the picture window at the far end of the conference room overlooking the lake. Stretching my arms over my head, I could feel my back crackle and pop. Hard work wasn’t always good for the spine, but luckily my current job site included a world-class spa. Occupational hazard and all.
“Ms. Morgan?”
“What’s up, Mrs. Banning?” She’d had some of the most interesting ideas so far this morning. It was nice having someone on my side.
“I just wanted to tell you, I’m really glad you’re here.”
“Well, that’s nice of you to say, Mrs. Banning, I’m glad to be here.”
“Oh please, call me Hilda.”
“Only if you’ll call me Clara. This Ms. Morgan stuff is for the birds.”
She shot me a mischievous look. “Jonathan likes things a bit more relaxed, although once he retires I have a feeling Archie will want us to return to a more formal working environment.”
I laughed. “Well, we’ll just have to show him how much fun it can be to loosen up a bit, right?”
“If you don’t mind my saying so, you already have,” she said, lifting her chin in the direction of a laughing and smiling Archie, who was worlds away from the buttoned-up aristocrat I’d met yesterday.
“He has to loosen up, at least in the way he’s thinking about this place, or he’ll lose it.”
She looked stunned. “Oh, is it really all that bad?”
I looked at her sadly. “I’m afraid so. Not this year, maybe not the next, but if we don’t get things turned around . . .” My voice trailed off. They needed to know, they needed to see what was coming. And as I spoke, my gaze was pulled back to Archie, who had pulled away from the rest of the group and was now pacing in front of all the notes I’d left on the dry-erase boards lining the walls. “I’m sure it’s not easy for him to hear that, he seems like he lives for this hotel.”
“Yes, I think you’re right. You know, he’s just never been quite the same since his wife passed away.” Her face clouded in sadness. “I’ve known him since he was a baby, he literally grew up here with his parents, coming and going from this huge hotel like it was one giant backyard. I feel, we all feel, actually, that he needs this hotel to succeed almost more than anything. Ashley would’ve wanted that for him.”
“Ashley, his wife, right? Had they been married long?” I asked, my cheeks heating. Much as I had no business knowing the details, I couldn’t help digging to try to find out what made this guy tick.
“Married only a few years, but they’d been together forever. Known each other since grammar school, high school sweethearts those two, why, he even proposed here down on the croquet field at the end of a game one evening. Their lives were fully wrapped up in each other, and wrapped tightly with this hotel too.” She sighed then, remembering. I pushed my luck.
“How’d she die?”
Her face blanched. “Cancer. Ovarian, which then spread to her liver. Came out of nowhere, by the time they knew what it was, it was almost too late.” She blinked. “She never stood a chance.”
“How old was she?”
“Thirty-two.”
I gasped. “Jesus Christ, she was only thirty-two when she passed away?”
Mrs. Banning nodded, but then suddenly her eyes widened and a look of shame crossed her face, before she looked down toward her feet.
I knew he was there before he spoke.
“I realize you think you have access to anything and everything that has to do with the Bryant family, Ms. Morgan, but let me be the first to tell you that my wife”—I felt a hand on my shoulder, turning me around. His face was pale, his eyes absolutely blazing—“my wife is off-limits.”
“Of course, I was only—”