When she stepped out from behind the screen, Florence was still sitting in the chair Hope usually occupied. Angelica tightened her entire body and walked toward her chair to grab her iPad. “Have you sent over the script yet?”
“No. Ange?—”
“Then I guess we’ll just wing it today.” Angelica stepped to the side with her iPad in hand and walked out of the room, leaving a flabbergasted Florence behind her.
Rex was already set up for her, and Hope was standing with him, arms crossed and an unhappy look on her face. Angelica was about to say something when Hope nodded at her and walked away. Perhaps the question of their relationship was becoming too much for Hope, or it could be something else entirely. She wasn’t sure, and she didn’t have the time right now to figure it out.
“Elsie is working with Hope in the kitchen. They already started filming,” Rex said.
“Okay.” Angelica didn’t need an explanation from him, but it did help ease her nerves about that entire interaction slightly. “Florence hasn’t emailed the script today.”
Rex grunted and raised his bushy eyebrows. “She’s stressed.”
“We all are.” Angelica peered over Rex’s shoulders to the blacked-out windows. “They’re still out there?”
“They are.” Rex sighed heavily. “And they’re making problems, unfortunately.”
“Perfect.” Angelica flicked through her iPad to find her notes on the hotel so she could at least prepare herself. “Where do you want me to talk to Ronan?”
“In the office, I think. He’s upstairs cleaning a room right now for a guest tonight.”
Angelica jerked her head up at that. “Ronan is cleaning a room.”
“Yeah.” Rex mimicked her look of disbelief.
“Why don’t we go meet him there?” Angelica lifted her chin to meet Rex’s eyes. “I think I have a few more questions to ask him.”
Rex’s lips pulled upward into a knowing smile. “Sounds like a good idea. I’ll snag Sy.”
When Angelica walked into the guest room, Ronan was sitting in the chair with his head in his hands, the cleaning supplies he’d brought abandoned near the door. His eyes were glazed over, a pained expression on his face, and he didn’t even seem to notice that she was there.
“Ronan?” Angelica asked, using a softer tone than she normally would. Something about this moment called for it.
He jerked slightly, looking up at her and shaking his head. “You know my biggest fear about everything is that I’ve ruined all of this.”
Angelica glanced to Sy and Rex, hoping that they at least had the cameras on for it.
“What do you mean?” She asked, stepping deeper into the room and sitting on the edge of the unmade bed to be close to him but still give him space.
“My mom dumped all her extra money into this hotel to try and save it so that I’d have something to do with my life after…” He trailed off, his voice thick with emotion. “And I can’t do it. No one will come and stay here, no one will help, nothing I do makes a difference.”
Angelica slid her hand along her thigh, realizing far too late that it was clammy. Hope would be much better at this conversation than she was, but she wasn’t incapable of it.
“What am I supposed to do when she dies? She’s not going to live forever, and she’s already struggling with her health, and working here a hundred hours a week at her age isn’t healthy for her, and I?—”
“Ronan.” Angelica interrupted him, because she was definitely missing some kind of context. While she agreed with everything he’d said so far, she still needed to know what the instigating problem he was struggling with was. “You’re going to have to fill in the blanks for me.”
Ronan drew in a deep breath, sighing it out, along with whatever was left of his stoicism. She could see it in the way his face was drawn, the acceptance that he needed to just come out with it.
“We’re a small town.” Ronan ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “And we have a lot of tourism which keeps everything going, and that’s probably what’s saved us because they don’t know, but no one will recommend us. In fact, they try to steer tourists away from Mom’s restaurant even.” He sighed again. “And it’s all my fault.”
“Take me back to when it happened.” Angelica tensed her shoulders, realizing she was getting far too deep into this conversation, but they also weren’t going to get any work done on the hotel until Ronan admitted what the problem was and they could start to work on it.
“I had an affair.” Ronan’s lips thinned and he looked up at Angelica. “And it was with the wrong person, and yes, I know I was wrong to have an affair, but I’ve been made out to be the enemy ever since. I lost my job. I lost all of my friends and family. I have nothing left except the rotting boards in this hotel, and my mom, who for some reason can’t just walk away.”
Angelica’s stomach tightened hard. This was exactly what she was trying to avoid in her own life, being made the outcast, not because she regretted decisions but because it was so much easier to make her be the enemy than to understand the complications in the situation.
“I used to be the sheriff, you know.” He sent her a quick smirk, and she could see underneath it the confident man that he used to be. “And now I’m cleaning toilets full of shit because I can’t get anyone to work for me.”
