Being back for her idiot baby brother’s wedding was going to be enough family-imposed torture for the summer. She didn’t know what the fallout would be when they found out that not only did she own The Stone’s Throw, but that she’d unknowingly undercut The Devereux Group in some way.
Right now, though, she had bigger fish to fry. Namely, not walking in on any naked guests who didn’t hear her knock.
She took a staircase off to the side that Hallie had told her most of the staff used while working. It went up to the third floor, which had fewer rooms than the other two floors. Starting there was probably a good bet.
They’d taken a tour earlier this morning to help Reese get a better sense of the inn. While she was a whiz with almost anything technical or business-related, spatial and directional awareness weren’t skills she possessed. Add in multiple staircases, and she was lucky she even found the cleaning closet.
Even then, the giant ‘Cleaning Closet’ label on the door did help. A lot.
True to Hallie’s word, when Reese unlocked the door, she found a small, well-stocked cart that would see her through her newest task.
Reese had been putting effort into her life for as long as she could remember, but that effort very rarely included any type of physical labor.
Still, she knew all the work it took to be good at most types of jobs, and as the new owner of the inn, it was important that she knew how to do them all.
She pushed the cart to the end of the hallway and flipped her focus to the iPad nestled on top of a set of plush, white towels.
“Looks like three out of five rooms on this floor are staying,” Reese said to herself.
The rooms on the third floor were all suites, doors widely spaced apart to make room for the one-bedroom or two-bedroom configurations.
The Stone’s Throw had originally been an Art Deco mansion, built in the 1920s but unused for a large portion of the twentieth century.
Hallie’s parents had purchased the building in the mid-eighties and added this floor about twenty years ago, so they were the newest rooms in the inn by a wide margin.
After knocking, Reese stepped into the first suite, a one-bedroom with a living room that had a gorgeous view out across the Atlantic Ocean. People flocked to Stoneport for a variety of reasons, but Reese knew that even if the inn was a little dated, it still pulled in strong occupancy numbers because it was set on a breathtakingly scenic overlook.
Only, Reese didn’t want people to accept whatever room they booked because it was in close proximity to what they really wanted. She wanted The Stone’s Throw to be an inn that people would still flock to even if it was located inside of a city dump because of how it made them feel at home. Because of the ambiance. Because of a certain je ne sais quoi that made them want more—to sort through every small detail and figure outwhythey loved it so much.
And she wanted to be the one to give that to them.
With her renewed vigor, she finished the third floor. After the cart was back in the closet and safely locked, she traversed the main staircase down to the second floor of the inn. This one boasted the most rooms, nine in total, all standard kings or double queens. Each room she serviced had slightly different decorative touches. She made note of this as, during her previous visits for the purchase, she hadn’t been able to view every single room.
She didn’t stop at her own room on the second floor, but she gave her current home a nod as she passed by.
By the first floor, she felt like she was hitting her stride.
The ground floor was bustling with early afternoon activity. She could smell the limited lunch menu being prepared: casual fare including a lobster roll, clam chowder that made Reese’s mouth water, and a bevy of other seafood dishes that rotated weekly.
She was wondering if she’d have time to grab something as she worked through her list of rooms, drawing closer to the scents infiltrating her nostrils and making her stomach gurgle. She’d been so on edge this morning before meeting Hallie at seven that she hadn’t eaten yet.
A few feet back, she’d dropped the first-floor cleaning cart back in its space. The cleaner who’d come in at the last minute, Brittany, had given her an appreciative nod as she’d pulled the cart right back out and headed toward the other end of the hallway to start the full cleanings for checkouts.
“One more,” she coached herself, the door to the kitchen within sight.
She knocked, loudly enough that someone still in the room would hear her. Double-checking to make sure there was no ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign, she used her master key to unlock the door and let herself inside.
She’d taken to keeping the doors open when she serviced them, just to make sure guests weren’t concerned about a non-uniformed woman without a name tag traipsing through their rooms.
This room, she noted, was configured differently than any of the others she’d been inside, with additional touches to make it more like an apartment than the suites on the third floor. It was almost as if three normal rooms had been fused together, the doors on the left and right in the hallway that should be there having been removed.
These must be Hallie’s owner’s quarters—at least for the next six months. When Reese had purchased the inn, she hadn’t been very concerned with what would be her future accommodations if she’d wanted them.
Hallie’s willingness to stay on in a managerial capacity had meant that of all the things Reese needed to concern herself with to get oriented to hotel ownership, where she slept for a few hours a night wasn’t one of them.
The room she’d walked into was a living room, with a kitchenette built along one of the side walls. There were art prints on the walls that weren’t the hotel’s aesthetic, along with furniture that didn’t match the other rooms. The back wall boasted a beautiful glass door that overlooked a small, privatepatio. Beyond that, the ocean was visible as the edge of the property dropped off at a small cliff butted up against the sea.
On each side of the living room were what appeared to be bedrooms, each of which likely had its own bathroom.
