So Tough To Tame. Victoria Dahl
drive to Teton Village was over in a flash, fifteen minutes accelerated to mere seconds by her dread. The scattered resorts and gigantic lodges were beautiful. There were miles of exquisite architecture and landscaping designed to look perfect amid the snowdrifts and icicles. But to her, the whole village looked like so much trash washed up on the shore of these mountains. She wove her way through the maze and headed toward the Meridian Resort halfway up the hill.
Three weeks ago, she’d been grinning through this whole drive, so thrilled and excited to have an opportunity. Any opportunity.
Clenching her jaw, she waited for the gate to the employee parking garage to open, staring straight ahead so she wouldn’t glare at the tiny camera lens to her left. Her stomach turned. She ignored it and pulled into her numbered spot. Another little camera lens watched as she got out of her car and headed toward the utilitarian steel door set in the cement wall. On the guest level, the cement walls were painted a homey beige, and the fire doors were paneled with wood. But the employee floor had all the appeal of a prison. Appropriate.
She took the stairs up one level and headed for the basement offices of the security department.
Dawn’s office was two floors up, with a lovely view and high ceilings, but Charlie wasn’t the least bit surprised to see Dawn sitting on one of the metal chairs outside Charlie’s door.
Dawn leaned back in her chair with a smile. “This is quite the walk of shame, Charlotte.”
“What are you talking about?” Charlie asked with a sigh. She unlocked her door, aware that she was an idiot to bother with locking it in the first place. Dawn had keys to everything, after all, and she used them.
“You haven’t been in your apartment since yesterday. Already out making new friends, I guess.”
Charlie hid her grimace of frustration before rounding her small desk. “What I do when I’m off the clock is none of your business.”
“As long as you’re not sleeping with other employees of the resort, you mean. Or anyone in management.” Her tone was always sweet, always helpful, which only made her words so much creepier.
“I’m not.”
“With your history, we can never be too careful, can we?”
Charlie squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, just so she wouldn’t have to look at that cute cherubic face. “I already explained about the facilities manager. Twice. And your husband—”
“Oh, I’m not worried about my husband, Charlotte. He likes nice girls. Like me. He wouldn’t risk everything he’s built just for a few moments of sordid...What’s the word I’m looking for?”
“Pleasure?” Charlie muttered, thinking Dawn must be a real treat in bed, with her stiff neck and her inability to even say something dirty, much less do it.
“No,” she snapped. “Depravity. Or plain old sluttiness.”
“You should try it sometime. You might like it.”
Her face wasn’t looking so cherubic anymore. Her perfectly rouged cheeks went red. “I pushed for you for this job in spite of your reputation. Nobody else wanted you. You should remember that.”
As if she could forget. As if she’d still be sitting here for any other reason. “Why?” she asked.
“Because if you don’t remind yourself of that, you’re going to—”
“No, I mean, why did you want to hire me?”
Dawn drew in a breath and smoothed down her blond bob. Her smile reappeared. “Because we’re friends. And I’m not the kind of person who’d turn her back on a friend in need.”
She was insane. That was the only explanation for it. Dawn had lost her mind sometime after high school. Sure, she might have been a little uptight and judgmental, but she’d been normal. But this? This wasn’t normal.
“Nobody else would’ve hired you, Charlotte.”
“Yes, so you’ve reminded me.” It was true. She’d sent out dozens of résumés. With her education and experience, she should’ve been an automatic interview. She hadn’t received one phone call. Until Dawn.
“And nobody will ever hire you again if you leave here under bad circumstances.”
She knew that, too. She had to stick this out. Just for a little while. Just until the memory of what had happened in Tahoe began to fade from sight. If she could work here for a year or two, she could send out some quiet feelers. Maybe somewhere farther east.
“You need to make this work, Charlotte. And I’m happy to help you, but I expect a little more cooperation on your part. You’re being nasty today. I’m not sure what’s gotten into you....” She swept a hand down to indicate the sexy black pencil skirt Charlie had dared to wear. “But you need to watch your attitude.”
Charlie took a deep breath. She did need to watch it. Dawn was her boss whether Charlie liked it or not.
“And stop fraternizing with male management.”
“That drink with your husband was just a drink. He was reviewing the restaurant menu, and—”
“Of course it was just a drink,” Dawn snapped.
Charlie wanted to scream with frustration. She was at a complete loss here. What could she do but scream? She breathed deeply, trying to let the feeling go. Finally she opened the laptop on her desk. “I need to get to work.”
“You do. Is everything going to be ready?”
Charlie nodded. The resort’s grand opening was in three weeks. Charlie had been so determined to make a good impression that she was ahead of schedule, but she wouldn’t slack off now. For one thing, staying busy kept her mind off her desire to drop everything and race out the front doors.
“All right, I’ll be back to check on you later.”
“I know,” Charlie said under her breath. Dawn checked on her several times a day. And probably had several times a night, too, before Charlie had moved out of the resort apartment.
“I’ll leave your door open,” Dawn said breezily as she walked out on her five-hundred-dollar heels. Charlie couldn’t help being jealous of the gorgeous shoes. She was going to don heels as soon as she got home.
Her hangover was starting to fade, at least. Probably the rush of adrenaline from wanting to strangle Dawn. She grabbed herself a cup of coffee, poured in tons of cream and sugar and sat down with her simplest task: background checks of every employee that would be hired before opening day. She’d tweaked nearly every camera in the resort, though a few were still waiting to be installed, and there wasn’t much monitoring to be done at this point. But the background checks were piling higher every day.
The last thing any hotel manager needed was a maintenance man or bellboy with a history of theft or sexual assault. A high-end place like this was hypervigilant about reputation. Charlie was more concerned with actual safety, but luckily, those two concerns coincided.
She’d insisted on installing more cameras in the employee areas than had originally been planned. That had been commonplace at gambling resorts where management considered employee theft an important target, but Charlie had found that just as often those tapes could be used to weed out gross managers who harassed their female employees. There were few things more satisfying than showing incriminating video to some asshole who thought he could act with impunity because his employees were women who barely spoke English. The back rooms of hotels were called the heart of the place, and she liked to do her part to stick to the spirit of that term.
But for now, with the employee halls mostly empty, it was time for the mind-numbing task of background checks.
An hour later, her mind was sufficiently numbed. Her headache had vanished and the three cups of coffee had cleared the haze. Charlie set aside the two applicants whose checks had set off alarm bells. She’d