“Yes.”
I peer down again.
No obvious movement on the platform, so it doesn’t seem to be stopped because of an issue with anyone getting on or off on this end.
Margot’s staring straight ahead, breathing slowly.
As if I wasn’t already fucked with thinking about her as a human being. A vulnerable human being whom I’m realizing might be lonely in her own way.
I move slowly across the short distance to sit beside her, the instinctive need to protect taking priority over the need to shield my own exposed heart. “Tight spaces or heights?”
“Being trapped without an exit plan.”
Relatable. “Ever go skiing?”
“Not for a few years.”
“Too cold, or you got stuck on a lift?”
“It didn’t come naturally to me, so I got frustrated and quit.”
“Ah.” I settle farther back on the bench. The gondola sways slightly.
She sucks in a shallow breath through her nose and keeps staring straight ahead. “I don’t usually give up when it’s hard.”
“Sure.”
“I don’t.”
“Can’t be a badass boss lady if you give up when it’s hard. Gotta know when to pick your battles against your own nature.”
“So it wasn’t a lift incident.”
Her knee brushes my arm as she shifts, then she temporarily freezes as the car sways a bit. But she still draws a deep breathand answers me. “No. Not a lift. I got stuck on a stalled subway train during a power outage once. Close to two hours in a dark space with dozens of strangers squished all around me. I was trying to understand how our normal guests lived and what kind of experiences they had when they stayed at our hotel.”
I jerk a glance at her. “That’s what you’re doing here too.”
Her lips twist in a wry smile. “Busted.”
“You do stuff like this often? Get a different view of how your hotels run?”
“As often as I can, but not as much as I used to. Especially after the subway incident. My security thought taking the train was overkill for the experience, but they went along with it, and then the train stopped, and…yeah. They were right. I didn’t need that to understand more about what someone wanted in our hotels.”
“You get recognized?”
“No, it was just—just highly uncomfortable. Being so far from control. Unable to fix it in a high-risk situation.”
“You think you’re in control pretending to be a housekeeper?”
“I can walk out of here anytime I want.” She grimaces as her eyes flit about the enclosed car. “Except for right now.”
Distractions tend to help in these situations, so I change the subject instead of hugging her like I want to. “So how do you know Jonas Rutherford?”
She blows out a slow breath and keeps staring straight ahead while she answers me. “We are—wereboth on the board of a nonprofit that provides funding to bring humanities studies to low-income schools. Art supplies, musical instruments, instructors, things like that.”
“See him often then?”
She shakes her head. “Maybe a half dozen times in the few years before he moved here. I see his brother more now.”
