We’re kissing and smiling and then, suddenly, he’s pulling away from me and dropping to one knee.
“What are you doing?” I ask, my heart pounding against my ribs.
“I don’t have a ring yet, but Maya Bennett, will you marry me?”
I stare down at him, trying to figure out how this night went from such a disaster to this perfect moment.
“Yes,” I say, and now my tears are happy ones. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
Chapter 17
The lobby glows with soft white light. I had the shell chandelier taken down, and cleaned. After a careful cleaning, three artists painstakingly touched up the shells with iridescent white paint. Around the chandelier, the lobby glows with sparkling fairy lights and white roses.
My matching dress, is also white. I see myself in the huge mirror, and stop to admire the lacey insert.
“It looks beautiful enough for a wedding,” Richard Bancroft says dreamily.
“But it isn’t,” Cruise says, putting his hand on my shoulder.
“Maya is here, day in and day out, giving everything to this hotel. When we get married, it’s going to be a private ceremony on the beach.”
Richard smiles to himself. He has what he wants. He’s partially retired, only popping in a few days a week, and he seems pleased with the way I’m running the hotel. Cruise works beside me, part business mad, part handy man. Now that he’s fully invested in the future of the hotel, he’s a great resource for ideas and solutions.
Guests gather, both in the renovated lobby, and in the ballroom, dancing across the mermaid mosaic. The new internet café is thriving, and Cruise is bringing in some local contractors to frame the space for a coffee shop.
The local paper just did a piece about the renovation, and it went viral. Suddenly Carly and the other front desk clerks can’t keep up with the reservations. We’re booked for months.
“We’ll have to save the pool renovation for next year,” he says, because Richard doesn’t want the pool under construction during peak season, even though Cruise is excited about his update plans, which include an entire water park, complete with slides.
Overall, the place doesn’t look like the same dismal hotel I entered less than a year ago. This is the hotel I dreamed about, complete with vacationers having the time of their lives, gossiping by the fountains, dressing to the nines for dinner.
A table in the lobby holds wedding gifts, wrapped in silver and white, with ribbons everywhere. Despite Cruise’s insistence that we marry on the beach, tonight is also a reception.
My parents are here, beaming, though Dad took a long look at Cruise’s tattoos, and Mom isn’t sure about me moving permanently to a place so far away. She’s also always had a fondness for vacations at theme parks, and she isn’t sure that she wants to visit Seascape Villas every year on vacation—Dad, on the other hand, is ecstatic. He loves the place.
Cruise is reserved around them. Dad says he can get Cruise’s record cleaned up. Cruise was mad at me for even bringing it up. He doesn’t like to talk about any of it, even now that everyone knows he was innocent.
“Mr. Bancroft?” Sheila Fields walks in, resplendent in a turquoise blue dress. Cruise asked her to stand in for his mother, as she’s done so many times before, in the ceremony tomorrow. “I have a letter here. It’s from Mr. Adrian.”
A hush comes over the crowd.
“Dear Everyone,” Sheila begins to read. A few people chuckle. Being in rehab hasn’t made Adrian less full of himself, addressing his letter to everyone. “Or should I say, Dear Cruise and Maya. I’m very happy for the two of you. You may not believe me. Everyone knows now, that I let my younger brother suffer, and even go to prison, for my mistakes. If anyone in the world deserves happiness, it’s Cruise, and I believe, today, he’s truly found it.”
A few people clap at this.
“Maya has helped breathe new life into Seascape Villas, and for that she will always have my gratitude. But more than that, she rescued my brother. I ruined his life, she gave his life meaning.
I’m doing well in rehab, hoping to come home for a visit soon, but I don’t want to push my recovery too fast, and risk a relapse. My drinking and gambling have hurt the people I love too badly for me to ever go back to such shameful behavior.
I’ve rambled on too long. Please accept my apologies and congratulations—”
Sheila stops to wipe the tears from her eyes.
“You can tell he’s the one who graduated from the fancy school,” Cruise mutters to me, but I can tell he’s very pleased. There was a reason he took the fall for Adrian, and a big part of it was a certain amount of hero worship he’d always felt for his older brother. It was a shock to him, to realize Adrian didn’t deserve his adoration. Maybe after his stint in rehab, the other Adrian—who I’ve never met—will be returned to his family.