Page 26 of Wish For Me

Leif blushes. It’s really fucking cute.

“Dan was really into rocket ships as a kid. It’s what got him into video games—space invasion games were his favorite.”

“Maybe I should play with him sometime.”

“No thank you!”

Leif grins.

I shake Dan from my head, focusing on the gorgeousness that is the Rolling Hills. “So do you get to stay here anytime you want?”

“Technically I guess I could. But my grandparents aren’t getting any younger, so I usually like staying with them when I’m in town.”

“Have your family always been hotel moguls?”

He laughs. “It’s just this one. My grandmother bought it back when it was a rundown eyesore, and my aunt Cass took over after Grandma passed.”

I grill him for a few minutes, fascinated that it was the matriarchy in his family that took the lead on this place. The love and care they’ve put into the hotel is evident not just by the gorgeous appointments—the huge marble lobby and giant waterfall structure next to the plate glass windows overlooking the valley—but by the way everyone who works here seems genuinely happy to be here. None of their smiles look fake.

An older bellboy—bellman?—passes while I’m still looking around in awe a few minutes later.

“I do the same thing every mornin’ when I come to work,” he says, then gives me a grandfatherly wink.

“Sometimes I wish I grew up here,” Leif says. We have a few minutes before our reservation is ready at the restaurant, so we settle down into the buttery leather sofas next to the Christmas tree. “My cousins did—they had the run of the hotel, just like my dad and his siblings did when they were kids.”

“You came to visit though, right?”

“I spent whole summers here.”

“What’s your favorite memory here?”

He hesitates, then looks around as if someone might be listening.

There’s no one nearby. “What is it?” I ask, curious now.

“Seeing the ghost of Eleanor Cleary.”

“What?”

“Haven’t you heard about her?” He asks. To the shake of my head, he says, “She was a woman who was murdered here back in the 1920s by her jealous husband. They say she haunts the hotel.”

Leif looks away when he says that last part.

“You don’t believe that, do you?”

Leif shrugs. “I shouldn’t. But…” he hesitates as if debating whether to tell me. “I can’t explain what I saw, either.”

When I demand he tell me, he says, “Okay, but you have to promise not to laugh.”

“Of course not!”

“I was playing outside one summer with my cousin Enzo—my dad’s brother Eli’s son. We were in the middle of this stick-sword battle—I think we were nine or ten. And out of nowhere, Enzo just froze. I almost whacked him with the stick. Then I turned to see what he was staring at.”

I lean forward. “What was it?”

“There was a woman. She was in the hotel, on the ground floor, opening a window. She looked strange. Old-fashioned. Pearls. Bobbed hair. White gloves.”

“A hotel guest?” I don’t think he’d make this up, but I can’t help being skeptical. They were kids.

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