After locking the door to my office, I slumped in the chair behind my desk and dug through the drawer looking for the little bottle of Tylenol. Stress had my head in a vice-like grip, and if I didn't get some relief, I'd take my frustrations out on the person causing ninety percent of them and that wouldn't end well for me.

I grimaced at the thought of Mrs. Foster's chirpy voice explaining how nothing was ever her fault. Why couldn't the woman have found some other hobby? Just because her husband is friends with Mr. Harrison, here I was, stuck with a completely incompetent, never-worked-a-day-in-her-life manager.

The way Mr. Harrison had patted my back a month ago and told me I could stop the interview process because he'd hired someone still made me grind my teeth. Cecil Foster's wife was bored and wanted to try working, and since we had an opening, they decided why not fill it with the most unqualified person on the planet?

Besides, how hard could it be to help her out and pick up the slack? The nerve of the man.

His quarterly visits to the hotel weren't enough for him to think he knew what it took to run the place. I supposed I should be glad he hadn't shoved his daughter into the manager's position. She was almost as unqualified and had the same amount of work experience—none.

I took a moment to thank whatever forces in the universe pulled Stacy away from the hotel before I had to spend any time training her. A friend-emergency, she'd said. More like an emergency ski-trip from what I'd heard, but that was fine with me. Hopefully, an emergency beach vacation would follow.

My pulse throbbed in my temples as I swallowed two of the pills and closed my eyes. A short break, a few calming breaths, and I'd get back to work.

My cell vibrated in my pocket and with a sigh, I pulled it out to see Nate's name lit up on the screen. A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth as I answered. "Hi, Nate. What's up?"

"Nothing much. You sound tense. Everything okay?" His voice softened with concern and a weight lifted from my shoulders. How did I get so lucky?

"It's been an aggravating day, but everything's taken care of now."

"Oh, no. Mrs. Foster again? What did she do this time?"

"This morning, she scheduled a conference in the ballroom in the middle of a Saturday when we're already hosting a massive retirement party in that space."

His soft gasp made me smile. It was nice having someone that let me vent and who cared enough to be almost as frustrated by her as I was. "Thankfully, she couldn't figure out how to get it on the computer schedule. So, she just told them they could have it, wrote it on a post-it, and told me about it this afternoon."

"Yikes. Were they angry about having to change?"

"Not after I offered a small discount as an apology for the inconvenience. It'd only been a couple of hours anyway, and we had a Saturday two weeks out that worked for them."

"Good thing she told you about it. Imagine if they'd shown up during the party!"

"No kidding." I heaved a deep breath. "I spent the last hour double checking everything done on the computer under her ID number. Thankfully, the few other mistakes I found were small enough to correct without the guests being informed."

"That's good." Nate's deep chuckle warmed my chest. "I guess it's a good thing that she doesn't do much. At least there's less for her to screw up."

"True. I just hope she gets bored with us and moves on to something else soon. Some charity could use her help and her money, I'm sure." I ran my palms over my face and took another drink of water, glad my headache was easing. "Enough of that, though. What's going on with you?"

He was quiet for a second before he answered. "I know you probably have to work late, but I was wondering if you could come over?"

There was an odd tightness in his voice that set me on edge. "Is everything alright?"

"Yeah!" Nate answered much too quickly. "I wanted to talk to you about something, but it's not a big deal. I thought maybe we could hang out and watch a movie?"

If something was wrong, he wouldn't want to hang out after this talk, right? "That sounds good. I'll be pretty late, though. Probably after ten."

"No problem."

"Sounds good then. I'll bring the ice cream."

"Awesome! See you later."

"Bye." I hung up and leaned my head back against my seat. If he was mad at me, surely, I'd have been able to tell. It wasn't like he'd let me bring ice cream to an argument. Would he?

I shook my head. There was enough going on and no reason to invent new stress. He'd tell me what he wanted to talk about when I got there.

Thanks for reading! 💜

What do you think Nate wants to talk about?