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“Molly told me she’s loving the new job.”
“Oh, you’ve talked to Molly recently, have you?”
“A couple of days ago,” he confirmed.
“And what did she say?”
“Uh…she told me she’s loving the new job,” he repeated, sounding a little surprised by my question. “I’m sure you know that, given you’re her boss and everything.”
It was obvious that Molly hadn’t told her brother about us. “I don’t see myself as her boss,” I said quickly, avoiding bringing up the topic.
“Even though you are?”
“As far as I’m concerned, she’s working with me, not for me,” I said.
“Whatever you say,” Jason said distractedly. “Did you call to say something specific, bro, or was this just a check in?”
It was my opening, the perfect opportunity to come clean about my relationship with his sister and yet, I couldn’t do it. I was overcome with this inexplicable sense of fear.
Once I told Jason, it would be real. There would be no going back.
It was an irrational fear. Whether Jason knew or not didn’t make our relationship any less real. But sometimes it felt like we lived in a little bubble in Hawaii. It was easy to forget that the same rules applied everywhere else, too.
“I just called to check in,” I said lamely.
“Awesome, keep me posted, okay?” Jason said. “I want to know about the resort. It’s just—”
“You’re busy,” I said, finishing the sentence for him. “Say no more. We’ll talk later.”
Once we had hung up, I sighed in disappointment. It was silly of me to feel so nervous about Molly. It was just that I’d never been in a relationship like this before. It made me feel weaker and stronger at the same time, and sometimes I wasn’t sure if I liked that. I looked at the pictures on my wall and realized that there were no personal images there.
My office was cold and business-like, there was nothing personal or warm or intimate about it. Even my desk didn’t have any pictures that we remotely familial. I wondered if I was turning out just like my father. Before he had been diagnosed, he had practically lived in his office. The difference was that he had lost the woman he claimed to love, and I had just found the woman I believed I loved.
I was trying to sort out my own fragmented thoughts when Ben walked through the door. I could tell instantly from the expression on his face that he wasn’t bringing good news.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, steeling myself for the news. I knew it would only be a matter of time before the other shoe dropped.
“We have a situation,” he started.
I didn’t like the sound of that. “How bad is it?”
“It can be controlled,” he said. “But it has to be dealt with fast…”
“What happened?”
“One of our guests has come forward with a complaint.”
“A complaint?” I repeated. “Oh, well, we were bound to have a complaint sooner or later. That’s not so bad; I thought it was going to be terrible—”
“He’s accused one of the staff of theft,” Ben cut in.
Immediately I fell silent. Theft was a big accusation, and it wouldn’t bode well for the resort’s reputation if this got out there. The fact that we had just opened made us vulnerable, and bad publicity could very easily break us.
“Fuck,” I breathed.
“Yeah,” he replied.
I groaned and stood up. “What’s he claiming has been stolen?”
