And whose fault was that?
But no, Hallie didn’t want to touch that comment with a ten-foot pole. She was grateful when Reese continued. “It would be an unorthodox first Christmas, but Sydney and I could shack up in her old room and man the front desk over the holidays. Maybe she’d find it romantic.” Reese said the words with an airy lilt in her voice, selling them so much that Hallie believed that Reese may actually believe them herself.
She would not do that to her friends, no matter what kind of notions Reese was trying to talk herself into.
Especially when she thought about what horrors could befall the inn with those two at the helm. She blanched before recovering to a more neutral expression, which earned an earnest laugh from Reese.
Reese shot her a bemused grin. “Not your first choice either?”
“I think we should exhaust all other options,” Hallie responded diplomatically, her smile matching Reese’s. She grew serious then, the thought of disappointing Reese sluicing through her. “I do have interviews scheduled for this week. A few phone screens with candidates and an in-person interview for tomorrow. I was already planning to spend tonight reviewing the other applicants. I promise you, I’m going to get somebody in the door soon.”
Reese nodded. “I know that hiring is stressful. It’s more work now so that, hopefully, the future will contain less work. AndI take my share of the responsibility for it not happening. My parents’ divorce, coupled with the liquidation of The Devereux Group, presented an opportunity that I hadn’t been looking for so soon but that would have been insane to pass up.”
Hallie grew contemplative. She and Sydney still talked every day, and while she knew a lot about what was going on with Reese’s family, she wasn’t sure how much Reese knew that she knew.
What a tangled web.
“It’s okay,” Reese said. “Nothing about the situation couldn’t be read in a newspaper, too. The gossip rags have been frothing at the mouth for months.”
Understatement of the year. Apparently, Tripp Devereux’s empire was nothing more than a house of cards, ready to topple with the slightest push. That push had come in the form of Reese’s mom, Sharon, initiating a divorce, which had put all of the Devereux Group’s financials on full display.
Tripp, as Sydney had explained to her, had been using new investor money to pay out older investors, and on and on the scheme continued for the last decade while his properties fell further and further behind. When his latest possible investor, Stan Fitzpatrick, had pulled out of their negotiations, it had left Tripp with nothing to prop the illusion up.
“I hope your mom’s doing okay through all of it,” Hallie said. It was all that really felt worth commenting on amid the chaos. Hallie had spent time with Sharon Devereux over the last few months, and the woman had positively blossomed outside the confines of her life with Tripp.
Reese smiled broadly. “She is. She and Bryan are officially dating, which still feels so weird to say. But I’m incredibly happy for her.”
“Good. I’m glad she isn’t soured on men forever.” It would have been a reasonable feeling, having been married to TrippDevereux for thirty-five years. There was no love lost between Hallie and the men in the Devereux family, considering that Sydney had dated Reese’s brother, Grant, for six years before Sydney had caught him cheating.
He’d been cheating with Stan Fitzpatrick’s daughter no less, who, in a blaze of glory, had aired all the younger Devereux’s dirty laundry at his wedding rehearsal dinner a few months ago.
No wonder the gossip sites had continued to hound anyone involved in the situation.
And though Hallie wished that Reese would be spared, she was glad that Tripp Devereux had gotten what was coming to him. She was doubly glad that Grant Devereux had gotten what was coming to him, too. She couldn’t think of more deserving men to find themselves on the receiving end of a healthy dose of karma.
So, yeah. Hallie could understand that Reese had been distracted the last few months, what with everything going on in her personal life, with her family, and as she was trying to get her professional aspirations off the ground.
It was a little jarring to realize that Hallie was peripherally involved in this melodrama that featured millionaires and shady business deals and a daughter usurping her father’s throne due to his own hubris. This was the stuff that books were written about, so very different from Hallie’s daily life, which included placating guests and ending her night by watching Disney movies and eating ramen noodles.
“You’re thinking about how messy all of this is, aren’t you?” Reese asked, breaking Hallie out of doing just that.
Hallie pursed her lips, looking for the right thing to say. “Stan Fitzpatrick seems to have found his way to the best Devereux to do business with, so that’s definitely a positive.”
“Along with my dad’s properties going at fire-sale prices,” Reese added with the smallest hint of a smirk.
Honestly, good for her. “That, too.”
“Which has led us to our current predicament,” Reese said, directing them back to the task at hand. “I have some time in the coming weeks, given that the contracts for the two properties I’m looking to acquire are with the lawyers right now.”
Again, Hallie felt the blush of embarrassment that Reese didn’t think she was capable of handling the hiring. It washed away the last few minutes of thinking about the drama in Reese’s life and brought her squarely back to the present, where even with nothing else pulling at Hallie’s attention, she wasn’t performing at an acceptable level in her new role.
But she was going to review the applicants. This was, truly, the first week that things had slowed down in months. And yes, she’d be cutting it close, but she hadn’t seen any other solution than white-knuckling her way to the holidays.
“I can do it. I promise,” Hallie said, feeling like a little kid asking for a puppy and promising they’d take care of it. She even scuffed her boot against the carpeted floor for good measure, happy that Reese couldn’t see it.
“I think that, given the time constraints, tackling this together makes the most sense. I’ll take half the stack and you can take the other half?” Reese asked, her hand already reaching for the folder that Hallie should have assumed had been spotted the second Reese had walked in the door.
While Hallie was perceptive when it came to people, Reese was a whiz at all things operational, and she was wondering how her boss was even sitting in the office with her right now. The color-coding file system that Reese had implemented months ago had fallen by the wayside. Hallie had a stack of Post-it Notes at least six deep with things she’d wanted to remember.
