“Oh my God,” I heard myself say, heat blooming everywhere. “Oh my God, oh my God.”
He cinched me tighter around his hip, rocking into me, using his body to bring me higher and higher.
“Clara,” he said, and my name on his lips caused me to shatter. Broke me wide open. Waves coursed through me as starry streaks crossed the sky above. As I clung to him, panting, boneless, witless, all I could think was that I never wanted to come down from this roof again, if it meant I could stay wrapped around this guy.
And once the meteor shower had finished, this thought spurred me into action faster than anything else could have, and as soon as politely possible, I kissed him and ran back downstairs.
Danger. Danger. Danger.
Chapter 14
After feeling empty and cavernous for weeks now, the hotel was suddenly alive and buzzing with excitement with the arrival of Easter weekend. The floral arrangements were more elaborate, the bellmen were moving with a little more pep in their step, and for the first time since I’d been there I couldn’t get a dinner reservation that entire holiday weekend because they were—and these are the words every hotelier lives for—all booked up.
“I love when a hotel feels like it’s bursting at the seams, don’t you?” I sighed, standing at the bottom of the stairs in the lobby with Mrs. Toomey late Friday afternoon, watching car after car pull into the porte cochere. “Families coming from all over the place, deciding to spend their weekend away from home, somewhere they’ll be treated a bit like royalty. Someone makes their bed, someone brings them their paper, someone folds their towels, and who doesn’t love coming home after a long day to find a chocolate on their pillow?”
“I know what you mean,” she said, “especially on these holiday weekends. It’s like having one big extended family all under one roof.
“Whoa, can we help you with that?” Mrs. Toomey said as Archie came around the corner, carrying an enormous egg tree. Wintry branches were crammed into a large vase and littered with eggs painted in springtime colors. It had been a crafting project that some of the evening activity guests had been working on all week, making tiny pinpricks in eggs and blowing out the insides to make the shells empty. They were then decorated with tiny beads, glitter, ribbons, all delicate and beautiful. One more Bryant family tradition carried on for another year.
“This looks great.” I admired the tree, wanting to bat at the eggshells like a cat but knowing that’d be frowned upon. “Where is this ending up?”
“Right . . . here,” Archie said, balancing left and right and finally setting the tree down delicately in the center of the lobby table. “That way the guests can see it when they check in.”
“It looks great, really, better than I expected.”
“You doubted our egg tree?”
“I walked into the lounge one night to find seven old ladies blowing eggs . . . what the hell was I supposed to think?”
Mrs. Toomey smothered a laugh. “I’m just going to go find something to do.”
“We’ll be at full capacity by tonight, I’m sure there’s something to do,” Archie joked, and she swatted at him as she toddled off to terrorize the girls at the front desk. Once she was out of earshot, he looked carefully at me. “Have you been avoiding me the past few days?”
Yes. “Yes.”
“Care to tell me why?”
Because I can’t stop thinking about you. Because you’ve got me all tied up in knots. Because I don’t know how much longer I can go without seeing you naked and underneath me. Because now I’m feeling some feels beyond what I know how to deal with. “I’ve been super busy.”
“Hmm,” he said, not buying it. I looked away, not wanting to meet his gaze. “You don’t look super busy now.”
“I’m slammed, actually. I’ve got a meeting with the guys in room service to make sure they have everything set for the new menu we’re rolling out, I’ve got to talk with Lucy in the greenhouse about bringing up some fresh-cut tulips for the elevator lobby, and I still need to stop by the spa and make sure they have everything they need to roll out the new Spring Awakening package this weekend, and I wanted to check the bookings.”
“Dye some eggs.”
“Excuse me?”
“Dye some eggs. Room service menu is good to go, the tulips are being set out as we speak, and the spa is booked all weekend, they’ve even got a waiting list, I just checked. So come dye eggs with me for the egg hunt.”
“I have a degree in hotel management, work for the best rebranding firm in New England, have turned countless hotels around, and you want me to dye eggs?”
“Based on what you just said, you need some humility. You’ve also come into my hotel, thrown everything up into the air and out on its ear, not to mention driven me half mad with not only that bossy mouth but the incredible sounds you make when I’m kissing that bossy mouth, and now, by God, it’s my turn to make you part of one of the oldest traditions here at Bryant Mountain House. Dye some eggs.”
I thought for a moment. “Okay.”
Twenty minutes later I was sitting at an enormous table in the back corner of the kitchen, surrounded by crates of hard-boiled eggs. “I don’t get it, couldn’t you order these already dyed? Surely there’s a specialty food service that could’ve delivered these.”
“Well sure, but what’s the fun in that?” Archie asked, rolling up his sleeves as he prepared to dip an entire tray into a deep-purple wash.
“Where indeed,” I wondered. I tried to mimic what he was doing with a similar tray and the green color. “Why does this smell like salad dressing?”
“It’s the vinegar.”
“There’s vinegar in egg dye?”
He shook his head. “Are you a communist? Haven’t you ever dyed eggs before?”
My hands shook a little, but I managed to keep my eggs in line. “Yes, I’m a communist. How long do they need to sit in here?”
“Wait a minute, let me get this straight, communism aside. Have you really never dyed eggs before?”
“It’s not really a character flaw, is it?” I asked, arching my brow at him.
“No no, I just can’t . . . well, what the hell did you do before Easter? Or did your parents just surprise you with eggs on Easter morning? I always used to wonder why we dyed them for the bunny to hide, if he was the Easter bunny he could’ve just brought his own eggs.”
“The bunny brought them, yes,” I replied, rolling my shoulders. “Not everyone did the same thing growing up, though, you know?”
“I suppose—every family’s different, right?”
“Mm-hmm.” I looked at his eggs. “So how long do they need to stay in the dye?”
“Depends.”
“Depends on what?”
He looked up at me over the rims of his glasses. “On how deep you want it.”
Ungh. I breathed. Then blushed.
“How deep you want the color, that is.”
I considered. “Pretty deep.”