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“Yes, it's under King, Preston King.”
She sucks in a breath as she stares at me.
“Oh, um, right, of course.”
I give her a soft smile. The part where she recognized the name but not the face relieves me a little bit. Maybe I can still go some places unnoticed.
She starts to type away on her computer, and I wait patiently for her to ask me that next question. But we don't get that far, because the conversation next to me steals all my attention.
“I'm sorry, ma'am,” Mason says with his most apologetic tone. “With the outage, we just don't have any rooms left.”
“But we have no power and the roads are terrible, my family and I have nowhere to stay. This is the only place left. Everywhere else had no vacancy.” She looks down at her three kids, who seem to be much less stressed than their mother as they play-fight each other and chew on some snacks.
Oh, to be a kid again and take my time growing up.
“Ma'am, I'm so sorry. There's nothing I can do if we don't have a room.”
“She can have mine,” I say without thinking.
Mason turns to me. So does the woman.
And so does Grace.
“Oh, I couldn't take your room,” the woman says.
“Oh, but you will,” I say, then turn to the clerk checking me in. “Make sure this woman and her children get a key to the room that was under my reservation.”
“But, sir,” the woman says, “where will you stay?”
“I'll find a place.”
Hopefully, Dutton or Gavin have a room I can hole up in. It wouldn't be the first time I crashed with them, but I do like my privacy, which is why I always stay at the lodge. Plus, being near Grace is always a perk, whether or not she wants me here. She is the one person in this world who has never treated me differently because of my name. Okay, her brothers don’t either, but women are different. It's like they hear my name or see my face and they change. They'll be anybody they think I want them to be.
But not Grace.
“I couldn't do that. I couldn't put you out. That's no—”
“I’ll figure something out.”
“I just—”
“Please, ma'am, it would mean a lot to me if you would just take my room. There's plenty of space for you and your kids. Anything you order, please charge it to my card. Trust me, no one knows the stress of a snowstorm more than I do.”
My eyes flicker to Grace, who's glaring at me at this point.
“But then you won't have a place to stay,” the woman says.
“As I said, I'll figure it out.”
“No, I can’t do it if I don’t know that you have a place to stay.”
For someone who wanted a room so badly, it’s hard to get her to take one.
“It's fine. I—”
“He has a place to stay,” Grace says quickly.
Everyone falls silent.