Doesn’t ask me to look into what’s happening with Mrs. Pinsley.
Doesn’t ask me not to either.
Probably because she’s been at this hotel-retreat-hospitality thing her entire life. She knows you can’t fix a problem if you don’t know exactly what it is, and a vagueI see thingsisn’t concrete enough.
But she’d have to out herself for us to have that conversation.
“Last stop of the day?” I ask her two chalets later after she’s dropped off fresh towels for one more guest, this time without incident or chatting.
“Just vacuuming the dining room before dinner, and then I’m off.”
She says it like she’s looking forward to vacuuming.
So. Fucking. Weird.
“Huh,” I say for lack of any other appropriate statement.
She squints up at me. “Are you sure I haven’t offended you in some way?”
I squint back at her.
I’m not ready to let her know I know who she is yet.
Drop hints and see if she’ll squirm?
Yes.
Outright tell her?
No.
So I can have some fun.
And fun’s been distinctly lacking lately. Partially my own fault, partially not.
“I don’t like women,” I tell her.
Her brows lift. “Did women do something to you?”
“My fiancée left me a week before our wedding to run away with my stepbrother.”
She gasps.
But she doesn’t just gasp.
Her eyes almost fall out of their sockets, her mouth gapes so far open that I could probably see her tonsils if I looked at the right angle, and she hunches in on herself as if I’ve punched her.
Finally—finally—she’s cracked.
Not just a little. Not in a way that makes me question if I’m imagining things.
But fully, completely cracked.
“Oh my god,” she whispers.
I shrug one shoulder. “So I don’t like women.”
“I—” She stops herself, staring at me like she’s debating what to say next.
