I walk down the same flight of stairs my father once strode every day, and my grandfather before him. The marble with the gold pattern inlay is softly sloped from a century of heavy use, taking guests from the restaurant to the lobby.
It’s old. It’s used. And it’s still beautiful. The aged aspects of the Winter Hotel, historic and unique, are what allows us to charge thousands of dollars per night.
I let my hand slide down the bannister and take the steps in quick succession. It’s been another late night at work, going over our international expansion. Our almost-finished resort in the Caribbean has shown enough promise that we’re scouting locations in Greece for a second one, with the same resort feel and Winter luxury, surrounded by turquoise ocean rather than New York’s concrete jungle.
I walk across the smooth checkered floor of the lobby. Outside the front doors, the daylight is gone. It’s late, and there’ll only be a few good places left open on the block to get takeout.
My staff could bring something up, but I need the walk, and the air. I roll my shoulders back and feel the telltale protest of stiff muscles.
“Sir,” Andrej says from behind the front desk, with a nod of greeting. He’s in his mid-forties, originally from Croatia, and has an eye for impeccable detail. He’s in charge of everything in reception.
One of the finest men I’ve hired during my tenure as the president of the Winter Corporation.
“Evening,” I say. “Is everything running smoothly?”
He nods. “Sure is. We’re almost at capacity.”
“Great,” I say, and lengthen my stride. Flake’s down the street has good enough food. I can be in and out in under half an hour and still have enough time left over tonight to hit the gym.
The sound of high heels on marble echoes behind me. The pace is furious, the speed unrelenting.
A woman is racing from the emergency staircase with the wings of her camel coat open and flowing behind her. The half-run alone is unusual, but it’s her face that stops me in my tracks.
Tears stream down her cheeks, and she reaches up to wipe at her face, her steps quickening.
She looks destroyed.
A pair of Winter security guards appear behind her. They must have followed her down the staircase. They’re hard on her heel and I see Larry hold a finger up to his earpiece, talking to someone.
Are they calling in reinforcements for a crying woman?
I’m moving before I make the conscious decision.
“Here,” I say and draw her behind one of the old stone pillars in the lobby and out of sight of the guards. “Ma’am, are you all right?”
She shakes her head and struggles to catch her breath. Mascara has smudged beneath her eyes and tears streak down cheeks rosy with exertion.
“You’re okay,” I say. I put a hand against the pillar to block her from view. “Just breathe. Take a deep breath… Yes, that’s it.”
The woman nods and takes a shaky breath. Small diamond studs in her ears glitter beneath the hotel lights and her brown hair hangs blow-dried and smooth around her face.
She’s younger than me, but not by much, I’d guess. Finely dressed. A guest?
She reaches up to wipe her eyes. Two rings flash on her left hand. A wedding band and a diamond-studded engagement ring. “Oh my God,” she whispers. “I can’t… I just… oh my God.”
“What’s wrong?” I reach inside my suit jacket and pull out a packet of tissues. She takes one with a breathless laugh that sounds anything but amused.
“Thanks,” she murmurs and wipes her face. Her breathing is starting to come fast again. “I just caught him red-handed. In the act, even… Oh my God.”
“Caught who?”
“My husband,” she says, but her voice breaks on the word. Her eyes well up again and something inside my chest twists. I can’t stand the sight of people crying. Never fucking could. “I suspected for so long. And I knew he was using the Winter Hotel because he loves this place, and I found those tiny shampoo bottles in his bag last weekend, and he always, always, steals the hotel shampoo. I don’t know why. But he does. And he said he had a business meeting tonight but I came here instead, because I suspected…”—another another broken sob—“and I was right. I was right.”
The picture is clearing up by the second. I hand her another tissue. “You were?”
She nods and wipes at her face. She has freckles, I see. A smattering of them across the bridge of her nose. “I told the woman at reception that I was here to surprise my husband for our anniversary. Showed them my ID and they could see… could see that we’re married. Oh my God, I’m going to have to leave him.” She closes her eyes, voice dropping. “I have to move out of my home.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it. I glance around the pillar and see the two security guards, watching us from a safe distance. I give them a nod. Got this.
“So I went up to his room, and I had the second keycard…”
Part of me registers what a mistake this was on the receptionist’s part. This should never have happened. But we’ve added new staff over the month, and some are greener than others.
Andrej is going to have to let someone go.
“I opened the door to his suite.” She buries her head in her hands and sobs again. It’s a desperate sound and my hand tightens into a fist against the pillar.
“Don’t cry,” I say. Please don’t.
She shakes her head, but tears keep streaming. “They were together, in bed. They were… I saw it. All of it.”
Something grim tightens around my mouth. “I’m sorry.”
She sniffles. “I raced out of there and he chased me, in… in only a bedsheet. We passed some guards by the elevators and he yelled that I’d been trying to… to… break in.”
And my security guards had chased a fully clothed woman down the stairwell instead of the half-naked man who raced down the hallways of my hotel?
Another necessary conversation.
“I’ve lost everything,” she whispers, eyes turning up to meet mine. They’re peculiarly clear, like the tears have deepened them, left them free of any artifice. They’re light blue, a contrast to her dark hair and pale skin. “I’m so sorry for bothering you. God, I’ve just… sorry. I just told you…”
“You haven’t done anything wrong,” I say, and slowly, unwillingly, lower my arm from where it shielded her against the pillar. “You’re in shock.”
“Shock. Yes. Even if I suspected it.” She reaches for the ties of her camel coat, knotting them tight around her waist. She’s probably around thirty, I think. “I’m sorry. Um, I didn’t mean… that is to say… hello? Nice to meet you?” Her face softens with an embarrassed little laugh.
“My name is Isaac,” I say. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Oh.”
“I work here.”
Her brilliant eyes clear up, back into a liquid pool of light. “Oh! I’m sorry for doing what I did with the receptionist. It was all me, I can be very convincing when I… they won’t get in trouble, will they?”
“Don’t worry about that.” I lean around the pillar, but the lobby looks empty apart from a few couples sitting in the lounge couches. “Do you think your husband might come down to follow you?”
Her eyes widen. “Oh. No. I mean, he might. Unless he went right back to…” She grimaces. “I should leave.”
“That might be for the best,” I say. “Tell me, what’s his name?”
“Percy Browne,” she says. “Why?”
I know that name, know the family. But it doesn’t change the conviction in my voice. “Because I’ll make sure he’s given hell at check-out. We’ll charge him for the entire minibar.”
She laughs. The sound is over as soon as it begins, and yet it draws a lift to my own lips. Smiles feel much more natural than tears on this woman. “Thank you. Don’t give him a late check-out either.”
“Never.” I gesture toward the front doors and she falls in step beside me. “Did you arrive in a car?”
“I took a taxi.”
“Then I’ll flag one down for you,” I say. “Mrs…?”
“Sophia,” she says, and then adds shakily, “I suppose I’m just Sophia, now. I guess I’m getting divorced.”
There’s aching sadness in her voice and it’s painful to hear. Suddenly, and with a ferocity that takes me by surprise, I feel hatred for Percy Browne.
“Better that,” I say, “than being with a man who doesn’t appreciate you.”
Sophia looks down at her hands. Sophia, I think. The name fits her. Soft and strong and classic, somehow. Steady.
She doesn’t respond to my words and I raise an arm to hail for a taxi. Lord knows I don’t know what to say to crying women. Or crying men, for that matter, not to mention crying babies. My younger brother has one on the way now, and no doubt the little kid’s favorite activity will be screaming his lungs out whenever I hold him.
A taxi rolls to a slow stop in the designated waiting spot outside the Winter Hotel. Sophia looks up at me. “I’m embarrassed,” she says softly.
I shake my head. “Don’t be. You reacted exactly like a person in your position would.”
She blinks away a new set of tears. They glitter like diamonds along her lashes. “Thank you. Truly.”
“Anytime,” I say, and open the car door for her. Sophia Browne, soon to be something else, the woman with the heaven-blue eyes and balls of steel, steps into the car. Dark hair, camel coat, nude loafers. The picture of elegant put-togetherness, marred only by the devastated expression on her fine features.
I can’t let her go just yet. I pause with my hand on the door. “Just promise you’ll do one thing for me?”
“Yes?” she says.
“Don’t let this ruin your image of the Winter Hotel.”
Her mouth curls into a small smile. “It won’t. It’s thanks to your shampoo bottles that I even found out!”
I watch as the taxi drives off down the avenue, hugging the edges of Central Park in the direction of the Upper East Side.
Then, I shove my hands in my pockets and walk down the street toward Flake’s, my original plan intact, even as my mind dwells on the diamond-like eyes that shone brighter than the one on her finger.
