What a day.
And yet somehow, the night wasn’t over.
We still had the ghost tour.
GHOSTS—PAST AND PRESENT
It was called a ghost tour, I realized, because we were staying at the Stanley Hotel—yep, the one from The Shining. The one that was haunted. Allegedly.
Tay had disappeared right after dinner, for what she referred to as “Tay Time,” her sacred hour at the bar, to be interrupted only in the event of a life-or-death emergency. That left us in the capable hands of the regular hotel staff, who guided us into the main lobby. There, we broke into four smaller groups, each of which would be embarking on a separate tour, led by one of the Stanley Hotel’s official ghostly experts, which I couldn’t help but think was kind of cool.
Because, apparently, that was a real job.
My group was made up mostly of my dinner companions, but there were also a few strangers mixed in. Some looked genuinely excited. Others, like a couple of guys in hiking gear, looked like they were here purely to roll their eyes at the whole thing.
Then there was Noah Grady, who had returned from wherever he’d disappeared to and was now giving absolutely nothing away in his expression.
Which, I was beginning to realize, might just be his default setting. His resting nothing face. Because I honestly couldn’t tell if he was looking forward to this or counting the minutes until it was over.
And after that dinner, I couldn’t help feeling there was something just under the surface. Not from what he’d said—more from what he didn’t. The way he paused, or looked away, like certain thoughts were better kept to himself.
But I couldn’t imagine what that would be. I mean, he seemed to be doing pretty well for himself. He was educated, had a job that people respected, earning what had to at least be a comfortable income because, you know…doctor. He even had a good relationship with his mother…
Oh, uh...
Huh.
Suddenly, this list was starting to feel like more of a personal comparison, one I wasn’t sure I was ready to examine.
Regardless, Noah had rejoined his mom, and as he stood beside her, I couldn’t help but notice he was wearing a new pair of jeans, because I’d dumped water all over the last pair.
And practically given him a hand-job in my frantic attempts to dry him off.
No. No, I had not practically given him a hand-job. That was an exaggeration. A wildly inappropriate exaggeration.
Good gravy! Was I blushing?
He looked good though, in the new ones, with the way they hugged his—ahem—his assets.
Simmer down, Luna.
It was like parts of me were defrosting. Lady parts. Carnal parts that had been sitting in the freezer for a really long time. Had I ever felt this way around Leo? Intimacy between us had been…sweet. It had been comfortable.
Which was…understandable? Maybe this was just normal post-breakup reawakening. A reaction to being single after six years in a committed relationship. Hormones.
Proximity to hot annoying guys. Who even knew anymore?
“This is where it all started,” our guide announced, interrupting my internal TED Talk on my sexual reawakening.
I snapped back to the moment as Archie—our fit, silver-haired gentleman guide—gestured toward the grand staircase, its sweeping curve and polished banisters glowing under the soft chandelier light.
“Freelan Oscar Stanley, the hotel’s founder, grew up in Maine before coming to the Estes Valley over a century ago. He had become gravely ill with tuberculosis and, believing his end was near, he came here intending to die in a place of beauty.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flicker of movement. Noah had reached for his mother’s hand, giving it a small, absent squeeze—almost protectively.
“But,” Archie continued, “he didn’t die. After just one summer here—breathing in the fresh mountain air—his health improved dramatically. And in 1909, he built this hotel—a bastion of luxury in what was, at the time, a remote mountain valley. It was also the first all-electric hotel in the world.”
I barely heard the last part.
