in the past. Katie gave our dad her full attention. She held his hand and laughed with him and asked him dozens of questions about his life. She told him about her twin brother and her job and how much of a romantic she was.
And she told him about me.
“Your son has made my life so much brighter since I met him,” she said, looking my father in the eyes. “I wanted you to know that. You raised a wonderful man and I feel very lucky to know him and to be able to have a meal with you all like this.”
My father swallowed and reached out with a shaking hand to touch her cheek. She leaned into his touch and closed her eyes. “Perhaps,” my father said, “you will be a daughter of mine one day after all.”
Chapter 32
Katie
My life had been all business since returning to St. John last week. Peter and I hadn’t seen nearly as much of each other as we wanted—or deserved—so when I knocked on the hotel manager’s office door on Monday morning for my annual review meeting, I had the full intention of discussing my options of pulling back only a little so I could have a more reasonable work-life balance. Prior to meeting Peter, I would have been happy to continue the year ahead with my usual seventy-hour work weeks. But now that I had someone who I couldn’t stop thinking or dreaming about, my perspective on time and what was important had shifted.
I was a little nervous when my boss called for me to come on in.
I pushed the door open and poked my head around it. “Good morning, Evan.”
Evan, the manager of the El Cartana for over a decade, had his head down and was typing speedily on his laptop. He didn’t look up, but he raised one hand from the keyboard to gesture for me to sit on the brown leather chair across from his desk.
I stepped across the rich burgundy carpet and took a seat, where I waited quietly for him to finish up what I assumed was an email.
When he finished, he took his glasses off, set them down to his right beside a framed photo of his wife and two daughters, and closed his laptop. “Thank you for waiting, Katie. It’s been a busy morning. Lots of changes happening at the hotel.”
“Good changes?”
He shrugged one shoulder and leaned back in his chair.
Evan was a decent-looking man. He had that weary look to him that I thought all management grew into eventually—crow’s feet at the corners of his steel blue eyes, creases of permanent concern in his forehead, a permanently clenched jaw from dealing with unreliable employees calling in sick or no-showing for their shifts. When I first started working there, his hair had been salt and pepper but mostly pepper. Now he’d gone nearly completely white near his temples. Still, he was handsome.
He’d worked in the hospitality industry since he was sixteen years old when he started as a busboy at one of the restaurants. He soon moved up to server, then to bartender, to bar manager. From there, his career only endured upward growth until he started managing small hotels. Eventually, he landed larger contracts until now, at fifty-two, he oversaw all operations of one of the most luxurious hotels in the Caribbean.
“Changes that must be tended to sooner rather than later,” Evan said. “It’s good timing that you and I had this meeting scheduled for this morning.”
“Is it?” I asked nervously.
He chuckled. “Don’t worry, Katie. You’re not going anywhere. Profits at the El Cartana went up fifteen percent after you were brought onto the team and they’ve stayed consistent. The boss man knows how essential you are to his business.”
I let out a little sigh of relief and sank deeper into my chair. I noticed I’d been gripping the armrests so tightly the tendons in my forearms had started to ache. I released them and forced myself to smile. “That’s good news.”
“Yes, however, I do have some things to review with you that I don’t think you’ll be thrilled about. I tried to change his mind, I hope you realize. But once Mr. Tucker sets his mind to a thing, it’s difficult to sway him.”
Oh God, what is it?
Evan opened one of the drawers in the side of his desk. One of the rollers squeaked and he muttered under his breath about how he needed to fix that. He sifted through files for a