Buns (Hudson Valley #3)

Maybe after I was partner. Then I could tell her. Only after. Until then, I was determined to squash this down.

What I would have an even harder time squashing down was the goose-down featherbed that came standard in my new Tower Lakeside suite! A king bed, four-poster no less, stretched out before a grand fireplace, resplendent in rose marble with ebony inlaid trim. If I stacked my pillows three high I found I could see both the crackling fire and the lake, the very definition of Hudson Valley luxury. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, two balconies, and one glorious sitting room—this suite had a waiting list a mile long in the summer season. But good luck to anyone on that list. The same three families reserved it all summer long, June through August. They’d been coming here for years, multiple generations vacationed here together, occasionally renting out entire floors of the main tower. I’d seen how much it cost per night; I didn’t need a calculator to know that if they could afford four weeks of that, they deserved to see both fireplace and lake at the same time.

I used one of the bedrooms as my base of operations, asking housekeeping to help me clear out the furniture and move in my heavy artillery. Dry-erase boards, vision boards, a cheese board courtesy of Bailey Falls Creamery, and an entire wall dedicated to parking lot questions . . . the land of questions that hadn’t yet been answered but would be, and soon.

Things were beginning to move up on this mountain. We were still a couple of weeks away from Easter, plenty of time to roll out a few new ideas before the first wave of loyal guests returned.

The team was mostly on board with all the new changes, and Jonathan was ecstatic. He, like Archie, had initial concerns about the price reduction, but I’d eventually won him over, although we were still working out the details. He loved the idea about bringing the town back into the picture, and wondered why they hadn’t done it sooner. “Sometimes when it’s right in front of you, you can’t see it,” he quipped one day while we previewed some of Natalie’s TV spots that would run in the big East Coast markets next week.

Roxie was a big help as well. When she came up to chat with Archie about featuring Zombie Cakes on the dessert menu, the existing pastry chef took one look at her 7 Layer Blueberry Dream Cake and threatened to quit on the spot. The head chef was only too happy to take her resignation—apparently that’d been brewing for quite some time.

“He’s not leaving because of all the changes, is he?” I asked Mrs. Toomey when I heard the news. I’d hurried down to the kitchen before the dinner service staff started to find out.

“Mostly no, he’s been thinking of retiring for a while now, but I think he feels this place needs some new blood to take over, someone new in the kitchen who is a little more up-to-date.”

“Oh no, I feel terrible,” I moaned, leaning on the counter with my head in my hands. “I never wanted anyone to feel like they were being pushed out.”

“That’s not what’s happening here, dear, not at all. These changes are good. They needed to be made. The staff is excited, that I can promise you. And I’ll tell you something else,” she said, looking over her shoulder to make sure no one could hear her.

“What?” I asked warily, also looking over my shoulder.

“I haven’t seen Archie this happy since . . . well . . . since . . .”

“Since before his wife died?” I asked, wincing.

She thought a moment, her eyes going soft. “You know, I have to admit, I don’t think I’ve actually ever seen him this happy. And that’s the truth.”

And with that, she turned on her heel and headed back into the dining room.

Huh.

Speaking of Archie, the man was a machine. No no, not like that.

He worked sixteen hours a day. He never stopped. Once I got his buy-in on the changes, he was all in. Something I’d noticed in that very first meeting was proving true. He really valued other people’s opinions, and he listened. That was hard to find sometimes in a boss, but he really went out of his way to make sure the entire team was involved and felt they were being heard.

Had he always worked this hard? Or had work taken over his life since his wife passed away? When there was pain or hurt, or bad memories crowded in, work could be a literal lifeline, taking your mind away from what you couldn’t deal with and channeling it into something good, something tangible.

Was work how he coped too?



One night after dinner, I took a wrong turn and found myself in a part of the hotel I hadn’t been before. Having nowhere to go and not at all tired, I wandered a bit before heading back to my room.

Tucked away at the far end of the east wing, on the first floor down by some of the offices, there was a portrait gallery. Every generation of the Bryant family, starting with paintings of Ebenezer and Theophilus—the brothers who had started it all—hung on the walls. As I walked along the hallway, the same expression reflected back to me in many of the faces. Strong, fearless, patrician, and yet somehow all carefully guarded. No chink in the armor here, no insight into what made any of these folks tick beyond a sense of duty to their family and the life they’d created here on their mountain.

I could see suggestions of Archie here and there, Jonathan too—they all shared some similar features. The elegant jawline, the strong straight nose, the indigo eyes, all clearly noteworthy throughout the family history.

But at the end of the line there was a portrait I hadn’t expected to see, but was unable to tear my eyes away from.

Ashley Bryant. Archie’s wife. She was beautiful.

Icy blond hair, tumbling in soft curls. Gorgeous green eyes, captured by the artist in a tone resembling freshly grown summer grass. She had a warm smile, high cheekbones, and the same easy going “isn’t life grand?” expression that everyone in this family seemed to have.

An image jumped to mind of a picture I had in my apartment, one of the few photographs I’d actually taken the time to frame. Me with Natalie and Roxie after just crossing the finish line in my first-ever Tough Mudder race. Literally covered head to toe in dirt and mud, hay and somehow sunflower petals, I’d finished strong and immediately hugged my friends who’d come to cheer me on, and got them just as dirty as I was. It was one of my favorite pictures of the three of us. I told them I’d framed it because it was a great picture of all of us smiling, and that was true, but I also selfishly loved that picture because it reminded me of how strong I was. Covered in earth and sweat was when I felt the most alive, the most able to conquer anything and everything that got in my way, and whenever I looked at that picture I felt a flickering of pride, an emotion that wasn’t one I experienced often.