Chapter 4

At seven twenty-five I stood outside the Camellia Conference Room on the third floor as requested, five minutes early and ready to meet the man who had hired me, Archie Bryant’s father, Jonathan Bryant. Dressed to kill in a cherry-red bandeau top underneath a tailored, slim-cut black leather jacket, black pants, and three-inch red Choos, I had on my armor—necessary when meeting the team a few days ahead of schedule.

I wasn’t nervous—I never get nervous—but I had no idea what Archie had already told his father. I could be getting my pink slip before I’d even officially started, which would kiss my partnership bye-bye. Mr. Bryant Sr. could’ve called this meeting with the express intent of firing me on the spot, while his son with the freckles looked on with a delighted smile.

Which is why I was so surprised when the delighted smile that greeted me in the conference room belonged to Jonathan Bryant, who not only stood when I came in the room, but came over to shake my hand and welcome me officially to Bryant Mountain House.

“Ms. Morgan, lovely to meet you, just lovely. Thank you so much for meeting with us this morning. I hope we haven’t intruded into your stay with us too much?”

“My stay?” I asked.

“Yes, my son told me you were here under a fake name and—”

“Mr. Bryant, I can assure you the only reason I was here under the name Bixby is because I—”

“—wanted to get the lay of the land without us knowing you were here? Wanted to experience Bryant Mountain House as a regular guest? Interested in seeing how we really tick without all the extra bells and whistles we’d certainly be sure to throw at a well-known hotel branding expert?”

I grinned at Archie, who was standing directly behind his father, as his expression went from anticipatory, to confused, to frustrated, to now positively livid. “Yes, yes, and yes, Mr. Bryant, all of the above.” I shook his hand heartily, now focusing all my attention on the father and not on the son. “And it’s lovely to meet you as well, please call me Clara.”

“Clara.” He nodded. “It’s a genius idea, of course, when you think about it, wanting to understand a property as a guest before trying to understand it as a professional.” He gestured toward a long table filled with an array of pastries and fruit, bagels and cream cheese. At the end, coffee urns beckoned. “Please make yourself at home. Have something to eat. And then I’d love to introduce you to our team.”

Jonathan Bryant was a great-looking man; it was easy to see where Archie got his good looks. But where Archie seemed quite cool and distant, not to mention like a real jackass, his father was the epitome of warm and welcoming. He stepped away, giving me the green light to grab something to eat and a cup of coffee. Not wanting to seem ungrateful for the hospitality, I did just that.

I scooped a few berries and some melon into a bowl, dropped a wheat bagel into the toaster, and as I was pouring myself some coffee I took a moment to appreciate the beauty of the room. Wood paneled like everything else on this mountaintop, it was elegant and refined. An enormous table anchored the room, with comfortable swivel chairs all around. I noticed that there were place cards for the staff in front of each seat so I knew exactly whom I’d be meeting.

“Let me help you with that,” a familiar voice said over my shoulder.

“Help me right off a cliff, I’m sure,” I said just under my breath, arching my eyebrow as Archie stepped in front of me to pick up my bowl.

“Well, we are on a mountain . . .” he muttered.

“Do you speak to all of your guests this way or is it just me who gets this very special treatment?” I asked as we headed to the table.

He placed my bowl in front of a chair on the left side of the table. “Are you a guest, Ms. Morgan?”

I placed my coffee, and myself, in front of a chair on the right side of the table. “At your father’s request, yes.” I looked pointedly at the bowl of fruit that was now across the table from my chosen seat. His left eyebrow arched, he tilted his head at me, once more examining me with those searching eyes.

“My father,” he said, picking up the bowl and depositing it in front of me, “would do anything to save this hotel. Including bringing someone in from the outside.”

“Oh, so that’s what this is about, I’m from the outside.” I whispered the last part like I was saying I have the leprosy.

“Ms. Morgan, before yesterday how much time had you spent at Bryant Mountain House?”

“Before yesterday, Mr. Bryant? None.”

“Interesting, and before yesterday how much time had you spent in the Hudson Valley?”

“None,” I answered promptly, to his instant smug smile. “Unless you count four years in Ithaca. Which you undoubtedly won’t, since Ithaca technically belongs to the Finger Lakes region of New York State.” I offered my own smug smile. “I received my degree in hotel management from Cornell.”

Realization dawned. “Ah yes, you did attend Cornell, I must’ve forgotten that detail.”

I looked at him, brow crinkled in confusion. “You forgot a detail that I never mentioned?”

“I forgot a detail I read in your file. Won’t happen again.” “My file?”

“You don’t think I’d let my father hire someone to turn our entire world upside down and not do my due diligence to make sure she’s qualified, do you?”

My eyes boggled. “A file. You’ve got a file on me. Wow.” “Wow?”

“Wow as in, dude, that’s weird.”

Now his eyes boggled. “Dude? Did you just call me dude?” “Dude, I also called you weird. How did you miss that part?”

I suddenly became aware of a great silence, the kind that presses in on you, a tangible Saran wrap clinging thing. Archie and I were just inches from each other, his hands on his hips and my finger pointing at his chest through the hole in my bagel while everyone else waited to see what would happen next. I looked at his father, who was watching us with crossed arms and a delighted grin.

Archie and I each took a step back, then another, like two high school

drama kids given their first set of stage directions. I resisted the sudden and wild urge to curtsy and instead calmly, and with what I hoped was incredible grace, sank into my chair.

I met Jonathan Bryant’s eye, nodded and said, “So, let’s get started.”

The meeting went surprisingly well considering how it began. I met the entire senior team of Bryant Mountain House. Heads of housekeeping, catering, dining, groundskeeping, recreation, historical, guest services, and accounting. If a team wasn’t led directly by a member of the extended Bryant family, then it was led by someone who’d been here long enough to be an honorary member. Early favorites included Mrs. Banning, dining, and Mrs. Toomey, housekeeping. They’d insisted right from the beginning that any help I needed, any at all, I was to come find them right away and they’d make sure I had what I needed.

Although to be fair, this sense of generosity, a willingness to listen and learn seemed to extend to the entire team.

Except to Archie Bryant. He sat back during the meeting, staying quiet during the introductions, listening intently as his team shared some of their concerns. His father was clearly leading the meeting, but it became just as clear that Archie was the real eyes and ears of this resort. But when asked a direct question by me, he answered quickly and efficiently, offering no other information other than what was specifically asked for.

This wasn’t uncommon. Several of the hotels I’d worked for over the years had those among them who didn’t enjoy having someone come in “from the outside” and tell them how to turn their resort around. But never like this, never had I had someone so vocal about voicing their displeasure over my mere existence.

“So one of the things I’ll be doing, before we even start talking about implementing changes, is simply observing. Watching. Getting a feel for how things run.”

Archie snorted.

I didn’t react, ignoring his nasal outburst and continuing on anyway. “Mrs. Toomey, how long have you been working at Bryant Mountain House?”

The older woman smiled, tucked a pen behind her ear, and answered proudly. “I started here as a swimming instructor when I was eighteen years old.”

“She and I both started the same summer,” Mrs. Banning interjected, arching an eyebrow. “She played in the lake all summer while I was making beds inside. Before we installed the air-conditioning.”

“Be that as it may, we’ve both been here more years than we care to count,” Mrs. Toomey said, and both women laughed.

“Forty-nine,” Archie said from the other end of the table, and ten heads swiveled at the same time. “You’ve both been here forty-nine years,” he repeated, smiling at the ladies. “Dad’s already planning your fiftieth anniversary party.”

“That’s incredible,” I crowed, as the ladies blushed a bit. “Other than the fact that Mr. Bryant here just told us all how old you are, that’s incredible.” Laughter rang out around the staff, but Archie merely raised an eyebrow. “So Mrs. Toomey, you started out in recreation, when was it you moved into the kitchen side of things?”

“Oh goodness, I’ve done so many things here it’s hard to remember exactly. I suppose I started working in the kitchens more and more after I moved inside in the late eighties? I’d moved around quite a bit, working in reservations, at the front desk, even housekeeping for a minute—although luckily by the time I was making beds it was after we installed air- conditioning. But then there was an opening in management in the restaurant—they needed someone to run the dinner service and I’ve been there ever since.”

“And your head chef, he recently retired, correct?”

“Retired?” she asked, leaning forward in her chair. “He’s not here anymore, but I’m not sure he really retired.”

“Do we need to hash this out again?” Archie sighed.

“It’s not hashing it out if she asks,” Mrs. Toomey quipped back, smiling broadly at me as though encouraging me to please yes, dig a little deeper here. But I’d already stepped in it with Archie enough as it was, so I decided to hedge my bet a bit.

“You know what, let’s table that for now and move on to overall bookings. Mr. Bryant was kind enough to send me figures for the last two seasons, as

well as projected bookings for this summer,” I said, turning toward the senior Mr. Bryant.

He smiled warmly at me. “You’ll have to start calling me Jonathan, everyone does.”

“Oh, I don’t know, I—”

“You should call him Jonathan, really. He’ll insist,” Archie interrupted, a resigned expression on his face.

“What can I say, I love Walt Disney.” Jonathan laughed. I shook my head. “I don’t follow.”

“Walt Disney had his first name, and first name only, put on his name tag, no one was ever allowed to call him Mr. Disney. He felt it separated himself from his team too much, he wanted everyone to feel like they had an equal stake in the outcome.”

“I love this idea,” I said, agreeing instantly with where he was coming from. A few of the others were chuckling, including Archie. “You don’t feel the same?”

“It’s not that I don’t want everyone to feel like they’re on the same team, but—”

“Archie takes a more formal approach than I do when we’re at work, always has. Much more like my father in that respect, I suppose,” Jonathan said, not without some pride.

“Grandfather took a formal approach to everything, Dad. He’d have hemorrhaged if he saw men in shorts at the breakfast service.”

“Shorts?” I asked.

“We relaxed the dress code several years ago,” Archie explained.

“Twenty, it was twenty years ago.” His father laughed. “I’ll never forget because you walked into your graduation brunch in the main dining hall in Bermuda shorts and your grandmother whispered to me that it was a good thing he’d died the year before because the sight of bare knees in the dining hall would’ve put your grandfather in an early grave.”

Someone at the end of the table remarked that he certainly didn’t have a problem when miniskirts were all the rage in the ’60s and the conversation was lost at that point. Stories about days gone by, tall tales and laughter and memories and traditions. As I sat back and watched this family, by blood or by proxy, I was reminded once more that the stories this family had in their back pockets alone could stack a library ten feet high. This is what I needed

them to remember when the changes began. I decided not to circle back and bring up the projected bookings for this summer. Why bring the room down when they seemed to be having so much fun reminiscing? They could go back to worrying later on, and worry they would. If the metrics were correct, they were due for their worst summer ever.

As talk wound down, I waded back in. “Thank you, everyone, for this impromptu meeting this morning. I know some of you may question my methods, up to and including the reason I checked in yesterday under a different name.” I lifted my bagel in Archie’s direction, and he lifted his coffee cup in return. “But I really am here to help. And I want to hear these stories, all of your stories, to get a better idea of who you all are, and what the inherent DNA is of this place. So please, hold nothing back, share whatever you feel comfortable sharing, and I promise you, I’ll work my tail off in return. Agreed?”

Voices echoed back from around the table. “Agreed.” I was about to stand up when Jonathan spoke.

“You were checked in under Melanie Bixby for two nights, correct?” “I was,” I replied, a you-got-me look on my face.

“Well then, you’re still Melanie Bixby as far as I’m concerned. Which means you’re still on vacation. So no shop talk for the rest of today, I want you to relax and enjoy yourself. Make yourself at home. We’ll start, what did you say, working our tail off tomorrow, got it?”

Surprised, and pleased, I nodded.

“And as a special treat, Archie will be your personal tour guide today.” “Wait, what?” we both said, making Jonathan smile bigger than I’d seen

him smile all day. He sat back in his chair, hands steepled together and looking back and forth between us.

“Yes, I think a tour is definitely in order.”

The meeting now over, everyone filed out, chatting companionably, giving me their own welcome and thank you and excited to get started as they passed by. Jonathan was the last to leave, giving me a broad smile and a strong handshake on his way out.

And then it was just me and Archie. Staring each other down.

I nodded, resigned to it. “Um, okay, well, I’ll just go put my bag in my room and—”

“If you want a tour, you might want to consider changing into more

comfortable shoes,” Archie interrupted, looking down at my heels. A habit I’d picked up from Natalie, I was obsessed with stilettos, the taller the better. I noticed he looked at my shoes, but then his eyes lingered on my legs. My eyes narrowed.

“Oh, I think I can keep up.”

And that’s how I got my own personal tour of Bryant Mountain House.

“So, where should we start?” I asked, as we left the conference room.

He regarded me coolly. “There’s a tour every morning of the resort, led by a different member of the staff. Mr. Phelps is leading it today, and he’s a great guide, very informative. It’ll get started in a few minutes, leaving from the Lakeside Lounge. Should give you a good idea of what it is you’re working with.” He started to walk away, but I called out after him.

“I thought you were going to give me my tour?”

“Ms. Morgan, I have many things to do this morning, many things. The last thing I have time for is a walk around the grounds.”

I gritted my teeth. “And the last thing I want to do is to spend my morning with a cranky owner’s son disguised as a bellman who says he can move mountains for his guests except manage to get a television into a hotel room, but I took this job, and your father hired me, so I’m going to do whatever it is your father wants. And he wanted you to give me the tour, not pawn it off on poor Mr. Phelps.” Like it or not, he was going to be my tour guide. “So, where do we start?”

He turned back toward me, looking more irritated than he had all morning. “Are you this much of a wrecking ball on all your projects?”

“Funny you should mention wrecking balls, Mr. Bryant, as that’s exactly what I make sure doesn’t happen on any of my projects.”

He flinched. “That’ll never happen here. I won’t allow that to happen here.”

“And that’s exactly why you need my help,” I reminded him. “My father hired you, not—”

“You?” I interrupted. I could play that game too. “I know your father is the one who hired me. And I’m going to go out on a limb and say my gut tells me he’s retiring next year, right?”

“End of this year, your point?”

I knew it. “And you’ll be taking over after him, right?” “January first.”

“January first, huh? New Year’s Day? Will that transfer be taking place before or after the Lake Plunge?”

“After, we— How do you know about the Lake Plunge?”

I steeled my gaze. “The Lake Plunge, one of the oldest holiday traditions here at Bryant Mountain House, I believe? After midnight on New Year’s Eve, staff and guests alike—the brave ones at least—march down to the south end of the lake and polar bear plunge through a patch of ice that’s been cleared specifically for this. Sounds crazy to me, but I think you all have been doing it since the twenties, yes?”

He studied me carefully, searching with those indigo eyes. “Since 1919, actually.”

“Great, then we’re coming up on a hundred years, we’ll have to make a big deal out of that. Break a record for the most fools freezing their noonies off at the same time.”

“Their noonies?”

I shrugged. “I assume most of the fools are men. Tell me I’m wrong.”

He laughed then, an honest to goodness laugh. And it changed his face entirely. For the first time, there was no suspicion, no irritation, no trying to figure out what I was going to say so he could beat me to it. I realized with a start he wasn’t that much older than I was. Laughter, plain old laughter, took years off his face. “Are you ready for that tour?”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Yes, yes I am. Where should we start?” “Lakeside Lounge, that’s where the tours always start,” he replied, turning

smartly and starting for the staircase. “You coming?”

“You’re still gonna pawn me off on someone else?” I asked, falling into step beside him.

“Nope, I’m taking over for Mr. Phelps. Sure you don’t want to change into more comfortable shoes?”

I ignored the blatant challenge, although this one was delivered with less spite. Progress. I’d take it.

“Noonies,” I heard him mutter under his breath. Yep. Progress.