Well, irritated, at least.
Okay, fine. It was probably down to “mildly peeved” with shades of curiosity at this point, and the curiosity was, frankly, a novel feeling for me lately. I didn’t indulge in that, or in anything else enjoyable, anymore. I didn’t do anything but work to grow a company that would have run just fine without me now, all to fill the hours that Blair couldn’t anymore.
Except now, I’d actually taken timeoffwork for once, for… well, not for pleasure. It was still for work, since Jason wanted to buy this property. But if I was being totally honest with myself…
Shit, was I enjoying this? I couldn’t be. Enjoying myself when Blair wasn’t here to enjoy things too felt too much like forgiving myself for having failed him. It was why I did my damnedest to keep myself buried in work. It was my penance, and the accompanying emptiness in the rest of my life was nothing more than I deserved.
Which didn’t explain why, underneath all my irritation at the unexpected wrench Greg had thrown into what should have been a simple transaction, a part of me had jumped at the excuse to shake up the monotony of my normal workaholic routine by taking some time away from the office to drive across the whole damn state and figure out what he’d meant by the hotel being “special.”
I scowled, suddenly pissed off all over again, but this time at myself.
Blair deserved better.
A wave of exhaustion hit me, and I rolled my neck to try to relieve some of the tension from the long drive.
It didn’t work.
“Why are you calling, Greg?” I asked abruptly. Ridiculous-looking paint job or not, all I wanted at the moment was to get myself checked into The Plazerra and crash for the night. Not that it was that late yet, but I didn’t care what anyone said, forty-five wasnotthe new twenty-five, especially not after spending all day on the road and then facing the unpleasant truth that I wasn’t honoring Blair’s memory the way I should have been.
“Well, after being stuck in meetings all day, I found a frantic message waiting for me from one of the managers of The Plazerra. He says you want to meet with him tomorrow.”
“Iammeeting with him tomorrow,” I corrected Greg.
He sighed. “Look, Edward. If you want to go out and see the place, we can set something up for—”
I interrupted him with a rude noise. “Not you, too, Greg. The staff here already tried to give me the runaround when I called to let them know I was coming, but I’m already here. It’s a done deal.”
And why I’d impulsively decided that I had to get the fuck away from my regular life and do this now—business interests notwithstanding—I didn’t really have an answer for.
“But it can’t betomorrow,” Greg started.
“Itisgoing to be tomorrow,” I said firmly before he could continue. “As you already know, since you’ve apparently heard from the manager here. And you’re the one who refused to tell me why the hotel was so ‘special,’ Greg, so if this is inconvenient for everyone, that’s on you.”
“It’s not about it being inconvenient. The hotel is fully booked for a special event they’re hosting over the weekend, and it officially starts tomorrow—” Friday, “—with most of the guests checking in for it tonight and staying through Monday.”
The hotel’s staff had told me the same thing. At which point I’d reminded them that I was, in fact, the owner… a card I probably should have felt some remorse at playing, but fuck that. It was under pressure that people always showed their true colors, and there was no way I was going to give The Plazerra’s management team time to cook something up in order to convince me they were “special” enough not to be sold to a property developer and turned into condos.
So yes, I’d steamrolled right over their weak attempts to delay my visit to later in the month. In my experience, any business that couldn’t handle a surprise inspection wasn’t being run well, and if the management here couldn’t articulate what made the place special without time to prepare a damn PowerPoint on the subject—or repaint, I thought, my lips twitching again—then it probably wasn’t.
“Let me remind you again that Iown the place,” I said to Greg, rubbing the back of my neck with a sigh of my own. “I made an executive decision to come assess the situation for myself, and I’m already in Asheville. I’m parked outside the hotel right now, in fact. The staff tried to give me the runaround when I called to let them know I was coming, but if they can’t roll with unexpected circumstances, then they don’t deserve to be in the hospitality industry.”
Greg muttered what sounded like a string of uncomplimentary obscenities under his breath as a disaster of a decades-old car pulled into the parking lot, wobbled its way into the empty slot next to my truck, and promptly gave up the ghost with a shudder and died.
Was that the caliber of guest The Plazerra attracted? Not to judge, since the car reminded me of some of the wrecks I’d driven myself before I’d finally gotten Garrett Construction off the ground twenty years ago—hell, it looked so old that it might havebeenone of those old wrecks—but so far, my first impressions of The Plazerra made me strongly suspect that Greg’s definition of the word “special” was something entirely different than mine. And as for them staying in the hospitality industry?
That wouldn’t be a problem for them anymore, once I sold the place to Jason.
“Since when do you want to get involved with the estate’s holdings?” Greg asked, starting to sound a little pissed off himself now. “If you really wanted to know more about The Plazerra, you could have just asked me.”
I could have, and his reaction was probably even justified, since the answer to me getting involved was normally “never.”
I’d wanted nothing to do with Blair’s family’s money while Blair had been alive, and I sure as hell didn’t want to touch it now that he was gone. Greg was the one who handled all the details of Blair’s estate because I simply… couldn’t.
The only directive I’d given him was to do what he thought Blair would have wanted with it, and since Greg had loved Blair, too—they’d been childhood friends almost as close as brothers—I trusted him to do exactly that and to keep me out of it.
Regardless of what it said on paper, that was what I really paid Greg for.
“If you’d wanted to explain yourself and give me more information on this place, you had your chance when I told you to sell it to Jason,” I said a little defensively, even as guilt started to gnaw at me. The familiar, constant guilt that was my daily companion, but now with a new overtone of having made Greg’s job harder for no better reason than the restless curiosity that I definitely didn’t deserve to indulge in.
