Page 338 of The Parkers' Handsome Holiday
I stared dumbly at her, still trying to process her words. But I didn’t even know where to begin.
Bailey laughed and shook her head. “This is supposed to be the point where you tell me that you like me too,” she suggested. “Or maybe kiss me again. But if you’re not going to do that, the least you could do would be to promise me that you’re not going to find some other seasonal fling to take your mind off me for the rest of the winter. I’m asking you to wait for me. Because I sure as shit am going to be saving myself for you.”
I continued to blink at her, wondering if she could really be saying what I thought she was saying. “What about Ian?” I asked.
“I wanted to tell you this days ago, but when I told him that he needed to lay off with interfering with the mountain, I also told him that he’d better quit interfering with you and me,” Bailey said. “He’s not super stoked about us still, but he’s just looking out for me.”
She paused, looking uncertain. “And I know that he’s been causing a lot of drama between us, and I know it’s not really fair for me to ask you to just deal with all of that. I hate that he’s made you feel like you’re not good enough for me. But he’ll come around. And if he doesn’t, I really don’t care, because I want to be with you anyway. So he’s just going to have to deal with it.”
I frowned, wanting to argue. But it was hard to do so when she sounded so damned sure of herself. She wanted this. And I wanted this.
So I did the only sensible thing; I pulled her into another kiss. This one was gentle and sweet. I pressed my lips to hers, brushing my tongue lightly across her lower lip, practically begging her to let me deepen it. She complied, tilting her head to the side as she opened her mouth to me. Our tongues twisted with one another’s and she moaned, the vibrations instantly shooting through my body as light pulses of lust.
We made out for a few long minutes, neither of us willing to let the other person go. I finally broke the kiss, nuzzling along her jawline. “I wish you didn’t have to leave right now,” I said quietly, the words spilling from me before my brain had caught up to them. An embarrassed look crossed my face. What a silly thing to say.
But Bailey sighed. “I wish I didn’t have to leave either,” she said. “And honestly, if Ian hadn’t taken the earlier flight, I might be tempted to just stay here. But this is the last flight tonight, and all the flights are pretty much booked up at the moment since everyone is going home after the holidays.” She leaned into me. “But I’ll be back. As soon as I can.”
“I’m going to hold you to that,” I said seriously. I wanted to kiss her again, but I knew that she really did need to catch her flight. And if I didn’t let her go soon, I wasn’t going to at all. “Ethan still wants to ski with you, so make sure you get back while there’s still snow on the ground,” I warned her.
Bailey laughed. “One or two weeks. Maximum,” she reminded me, and this time, it almost sounded like a vow. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
“Good,” I said, finally letting her go.
She smiled up at me, and I could tell that there was more that she wanted to say. But then, she bent down and grabbed her bag. “Well, I should probably get going,” she said, all businesslike once again. “But I look forward to seeing the weekly reports from you.”
I snorted at the overly-professional goodbye and lifted a hand in farewell. “I’ll call you,” I promised her.
Bailey nodded, giving me one last quick hug before she turned and walked briskly into the airport. She didn’t look back. I didn’t expect her to.
I hated to watch her walk away like that, but I felt reassured that she would be back soon. I smiled a little too myself. What a cheesy goodbye. Almost like something out of a movie. I got in my car and drove back to Brooks Resort, trying not to think too much about it.
That afternoon, we were scheduled to have an all-employee meeting. And now, given that I was Bailey’s eyes and ears on the ground, I knew that I needed to attend. I wondered what Mike wanted to talk to everyone about, anyway. We had just had the other all-employee meeting about Ian last Friday, and I thought we had gotten everything out of the way then.
Mike nodded at everyone as we filed into the room. “I just wanted to make sure that we were all on the same page,” he said as we took our seats. “It’s been a pleasure having Bailey around here since the acquisition, but now that she’s moved on to other projects – “
“Wait,” I interrupted, unable to help myself. I fought not to feel embarrassed as everyone turned to look at me. “She hasn’t really moved on to other projects. She just has to take care of some stuff back home. But she’s planning on being back in a week or two, she said.” I looked around the room, hoping that Kayla would back me up.
Mike cleared his throat uncomfortably. “She’s taken herself off general payroll and cleared out her office,” he said, shrugging apologetically. “As far as I know, she considers her work here done, is confident that we can run things in her absence, and isn’t planning on coming back. Now…”
He started talking about how we shouldn’t be worried, that basically things were going to go back to being done just the way that they had been under the previous owner. But I could barely hear him. Bailey had told me that she was planning on coming back. That it would just be a week or two. That she was going to save herself for me. That couldn’t have all been lies, could it?
But I had to believe Mike if he told me that she was off payroll and out of the picture. She and I had been avoiding the difficult conversations ever since she had bought this place, and there was no reason to think that things had changed now. Maybe that was the deal that she had struck with Ian; I could keep my job here if she got the hell away from here?
I remembered what Ian had told me before, about how if he saw me talking to Bailey again, he would make sure that I would never work in this state again. I got to keep my job here, but Bailey wasn’t allowed in Utah anymore. Was that how it was? I didn’t like to think that was the case, but it did make a certain amount of sense.
Whatever had happened, whatever the reasons for Bailey’s quick departure and lies about her return, I couldn’t help but feel my chest constrict. I knew that I never should have gotten involved with her in the first place. I had given her too much of myself, without even clarifying whether we were in a relationship or not.
And we never had been. Just like I’d tried to say at the airport, this was just some seasonal fling. And now it was over, having not even lasted the season.
What more did I really expect?
CHAPTER 47
ADAM
It had been two weeks since Bailey, the new owner of Brooks Mountain Resort here in Park City, Utah, had gone back to Las Vegas. In that time, there had been quite a few changes to the way that things were running. She had originally left Mike, the general manager, in charge of things in her absence, and everyone had expected things to continue to operate just the way that they had before Bailey had bought the place, since the mountain’s previous owners had been pretty hands-off.
But then Mike had gotten into a skiing accident, and although fortunately he was mostly okay, he had given himself a nasty concussion and torn some ligaments in his knee, and after the surgery, he was on strict orders for bed rest.
