I squinted out the window as Everett called the front desk, asking after a later checkout. Apparently, it was a no-go, and so we ran with our things to his car where we sat, soaked through.
“Are they seriously going to send someone down to clean in this right now?” I asked. “We couldn’t hang out for fifteen minutes?”
“I don’t know how much fifteen minutes would help,” Everett said. He glanced over at me. “I think we should probably find somewhere to stay tonight.”
The thought of staying in a room with Everett—only Everett—landed in my stomach, fluttering around, but I tried to quickly shake it off. The pact, I reminded myself. Anything else with Everett was off-limits.
He drove us up to the main building and parked out front. I tried to distract myself from the way his wet T-shirt was sticking to him as we walked in, but there was only so much looking at the ceiling I could do. Luckily for me, though unluckily for our prospects of a new room, Ralph was standing behind the desk, grimacing at us as we approached. The sheer hatred emanating from him was distraction enough.
“Hi,” Everett said. Ralph eyed the still-damp elbow he leaned on the counter.
“Hello,” he said in a pinched tone.
“We just checked out of Poppy Cottage,” Everett said. I let my eyes roam around the lobby as he explained our situation. I’d only been here at check-in and hadn’t paused to do much inspecting of the building, but it was beautiful, from the original tiled floors to the intricate gold sconces on the dark wood walls. The place was historic, I knew, started by some starlet from the golden age of Hollywood and her third husband, a fact Laurel had cited when she managed to book a cottage at all.
I was dragged out of my daze by Ralph’s nasally voice telling Everett that the only available accommodation for tonight was the six-bedroom Palomino Villa, a half mile down one ofthe roads that zigzagged its way around the property, and ran for two thousand dollars a night.
Everett hesitated for only a minute before he nodded and said, “Okay.”
“Okay?” I echoed, voice rebounding off the walls. Ralph narrowed his eyes at me. There was literally no one else around to hear me.
“Don’t worry,” Everett told me in a low voice. “It can be on my dad.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Your father won’t mind you charging a two-thousand-dollar villa to what I’m assuming is an emergency credit card, the lease on which is probably about to run out given the fact that we just graduated college and are now supposed to be real adults?”
Concierge Ralph looked like he’d like very much to sigh.
“He won’t care,” Everett said. “It’s not an emergency credit card. It’s more of a ‘buy whatever you want because I’m such an absent dick of a father’ card.”
This stopped me. If I knew about anything, it was absent parents, and in particular not wanting to rely on them or owe them for anything.
“Let’s just find another place,” I said. Ralph looked up hopefully, but Everett shook his head.
“My dad won’t ever see this bill,” he said. “And this can be its last hurrah anyway. Ralph, could you send a bottle of your best champagne to the room, please?”
Ralph looked at us skeptically. Before I could say,Heybuddy, this man is throwing down a cool two thousand dollars for one night in a rainstorm,Everett’s arm was coming around my shoulders, warm and heavy in the best way, squeezing around me. I’m not sure what possessed me, but I leaned into his side like I fit there.
“Did I forget to mention?” he asked. “We’re celebrating our engagement.”
Ralph looked between us. “Are you.”
“Yes,” I said, stepping in front of Everett so his arms looped around me, pressing back against his chest. “We were celebrating with our friends, but his dad—” I reached up, patted a hand to Everett’s cheek “—just insisted we stay another night to celebrate on our own.”
Bullshit!Ralph no doubt wanted to cry, but he just grimaced at us and swiped the card. “Typically,” he started. “We offer our guests golf umbrellas in inclement weather like this, but I’m afraid all I have left is...” He trailed off as he offered up a maroon umbrella that looked like it might have come from the back corner of the antique mall we’d all walked by in town earlier this week, and smirked.
“Excellent, sir,” Everett said. “Thank you so much for your help. We promise to be on our best behavior in that villa of yours.”
Without another word, Everett took the umbrella from Ralph in one hand and mine in the other, pulling me outside behind him. We paused for a minute in the door as Everett fiddled with the umbrella, and I watched him, thinking.
“What exactly does your dad do that he won’t ever see or care about this bill?” I asked.
Everett cleared his throat. “He works in the film industry.”
“Ah,” I said, the pieces clicking into place as he fiddled with the umbrella. Everett, so cool and collected, hair perfectly right, had been navigating Hollywood crowds his whole life. “So you’re in the family business.”
The umbrella unfurled with a creak. Everett’s mouth ticked upward as he glanced askance at me. “Unfortunately.”
We ran for his car, where he opened my door first, keeping the umbrella over me until I was firmly inside. I watched through the windshield as he jogged around the front, lowering the umbrella as he went, so by the time he did get in next to me, breathless, he was soaked all over again, T-shirt sticking to him and water dripping from his hair into his eyes. I stared at him for a minute, heart ramming in a frustrated way against my ribs, until he looked up and grinned, like heknew.Like we hadn’t spent this whole week avoiding moments exactly like this.
