The silence in Maya’s office was a physical thing, a heavy blanket that smothered the comfortable crackle of the fire in the stone hearth. For the past hour, Cole had been re-taping a fraying electrical cord on a floor lamp, a ten-minute job he had stretched into an eternity.
He worked with methodical slowness, his movements precise, his focus absolute. It was the only way he could remain in the same room with her without acknowledging the glacial chill that had descended between them since his phone call that afternoon.
Maya was a fortress behind her father’s old oak desk, besieged by ramparts of invoices, order forms, and linen inventories. The single lamp on her desk cast her in a pool of golden light, illuminating the frustrated furrow of her brow and the way she chewed on the end of her pen.
She hadn’t spoken a word to him since he’d entered, offering only a tight, noncommittal nod when he’d asked if she needed anything fixed in the office.
The call had been a disaster. It was his COO, frantic about a leveraged buyout attempt from a rival firm.
Cole had snapped into his CEO persona without thinking—his voice sharp, clipped, demanding reports and barking orders. He’d stepped outside, but not before he saw the flicker of confusion and suspicion in Maya’s eyes.
The open, easy camaraderie they had built since the power outage had vanished, replaced by the wary skepticism he’d seen on her face the day he arrived. He was just “Cal the handyman” again, and apparently, a handyman with a suspiciously corporate-sounding secret.
He finally secured the last piece of electrical tape, the task undeniably complete. The silence stretched, pulling taut.
He couldn’t leave it like this.
“Looks like you’re trying to tame a paper monster,” he said, his voice softer than he intended.
Maya didn’t look up. “It’s inventory night. The monster usually wins.”
Her tone was flat, dismissing him.
He wiped his hands on his jeans and walked closer to the desk, drawn by an unwilling gravity. The stacks of paper were formidable.
“That’s a two-person job, at least.”
“I’m the only person there is,” she said, finally lifting her gaze. Her eyes were tired, but the shields were up. They were a cool, guarded brown.
“Ben’s gone home, and the rest of the staff has families to get to.”
The implication hung in the air: And you’re just the handyman.
“Well,” Cole said, gesturing to himself.
“I’m here. And I can count. Put me to work.”
She blinked, taken aback. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I know. But I want to.” He held her gaze, trying to inject as much sincerity as he could muster.
“Besides, if we let the monster win, who knows what it’ll do? Probably eat all the good towels first.”
A ghost of a smile touched her lips before she suppressed it. She hesitated, her pen tapping a nervous rhythm against the blotter.
He could see the conflict in her—the exhaustion warring with her suspicion. For a moment, he was sure she would send him away.
Then, with a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of the entire lodge, she pushed a stack of invoices toward the empty side of the desk. “Fine. But I’m not paying you overtime for this.”
“Deal,” he said, pulling up a worn leather chair.
“My fee is one cup of that coffee I smell brewing.”
“It’s three hours old and probably strong enough to dissolve a spoon,” she warned, but she rose and went to the small coffee station in the corner.
The simple act of her pouring him a mug felt like the signing of a temporary truce. He watched her, the efficient way she moved, the determined set of her shoulders.
She was a fighter, trying to hold this place together with little more than sheer force of will. The guilt of his deception twisted in his gut, sharp and bitter.
For the next hour, they worked. He called out numbers from the linen closet manifests while she cross-referenced them with delivery invoices.
The work was tedious, mind-numbing, but it created a shared rhythm. The only sounds were the rustle of paper, the scratch of Maya’s pen, and the hiss of logs shifting in the fireplace.
The tension slowly began to dissolve, eroded by the sheer monotony of the task.
“We’re short two dozen king-sized pillowcases,” he announced, finishing a column.
“Again?” Maya groaned, making a furious note on a legal pad.
“That’s the third time this quarter. I swear Sterling’s supplier is using single-ply thread. They fall apart if you look at them too hard.”
Cole froze for a microsecond, the name of his own company hitting him like a stray bullet. He knew the supplier she was talking about—a subsidiary he’d been meaning to overhaul for months.
“Maybe you should look into a different vendor,” he said, keeping his voice carefully neutral. “Sometimes paying a little more upfront for quality saves you in the long run.”
She glanced up, a familiar spark of suspicion in her eyes. “You sound like a businessman, Cal.”
Here it was. The opening he’d been dreading and hoping for.
He leaned back in his chair, running a hand through his hair.
“Sorry. Force of habit, I guess.”
“From what?” she pressed, her pen still.
He took a breath, deciding to walk as close to the truth as his lie would allow.
“My father. He was… in business. A big one. It’s all he ever talked about. Profit margins, supply chains, hostile takeovers.”
He let out a dry, humorless laugh. “I think I learned to read a balance sheet before I learned to ride a bike.”
Maya’s expression softened. The suspicion was replaced by curiosity. “Was that your family on the phone earlier?”
“Yeah,” Cole admitted, looking down at his hands. They were calloused now, a far cry from the smooth hands that signed multi-million dollar contracts.
“It was. Some… complicated estate stuff.”
He looked up and met her eyes, deciding to risk it, to give her a piece of the real him.
“Look, Maya, I’m sorry about that call. I know I sounded… different. Intense. It’s a side of my life I came up here to get away from.”
She watched him, her gaze searching his face, trying to reconcile the competent, quiet handyman with the sharp-edged voice she’d overheard. “Get away from what?”
The question was an invitation. He could have given her a vague answer, a half-truth to placate her, but looking at her in the warm, quiet office, he felt an overwhelming urge to be honest.
Or as honest as he could be.
“The pressure,” he said, the word feeling small and inadequate for the mountain it represented.
“My whole life was planned out for me. The right schools, the right internship, the right place at the right company. My father built this empire, and from the day I was born, I wasn’t his son so much as his successor. Everything was a lesson. Every dinner was a negotiation. Every vacation was a networking opportunity.”
He paused, the memories still raw, even a year after his father’s death.
“He was brilliant. A titan. But he never once asked me what I wanted. He just assumed I wanted what he had. And the thing is…”
Cole looked around the rustic office, at the faint scent of pine and woodsmoke, at the woman sitting across from him whose passion for this place was the most real thing he’d seen in years. “I don’t.”
He confessed his desire for a simpler life, for work that resulted in something he could see and touch, something that wasn’t just a number on a spreadsheet. He spoke of the suffocating weight of a legacy he never asked for and the loneliness of being seen only for his name.
He didn’t say the name Sterling, but he told her everything else.
Maya listened, her chin resting on her hand, her expression unreadable. When he finally fell silent, the only sound was the crackling fire.
He’d laid a part of his soul bare, and he braced himself for her judgment, for the return of her suspicion.
Instead, she gave him a small, sad smile. “My father was the opposite,” she said softly.
“He never built an empire. He built this lodge. With his own two hands, mostly. He and my mom poured everything they had into it. Their money, their time… their whole lives. And he never pressured me to take over.”
She looked at a framed photo on her desk of a smiling couple standing proudly in front of the half-finished main building. “But I feel it anyway.
This pressure to keep his legacy alive, to not let it fail. It’s like I’m holding his heart in my hands, and I’m terrified I’m going to drop it.”
Her vulnerability was a mirror to his own. In that moment, he wasn’t a billionaire in disguise and she wasn’t a skeptical manager.
They were just two people, crushed under the weight of their fathers’ legacies, trying to find their own way.
“You’re not going to drop it,” Cole said, his voice thick with conviction.
“What you do here… it matters. You’re not just running a business, Maya. You’re protecting a home. For you, for Ben, for everyone who works here.”
Her eyes glistened in the lamplight. The last of her defenses crumbled, washed away by a wave of shared understanding.
The rift between them was gone, and in its place was a connection so deep and powerful it felt like it had been there all along.
They finished the inventory in a comfortable silence, the air between them now humming with a new energy. When the last invoice was filed away, Maya stretched, arching her back like a cat.
“I can’t believe we finished,” she said, a genuine, unburdened smile lighting up her face. “Thank you, Cal. I would have been here until dawn.”
“Anytime,” he said, his own smile feeling more natural than it had in years.
They stood up, the space between them suddenly feeling very small. He could smell the faint scent of her perfume, something clean and floral, mixed with old paper and coffee.
Her gaze was locked on his, and the weariness was gone, replaced by something warm and magnetic. The air crackled.
He saw her lips part slightly, and he felt an almost irresistible pull to lean in, to close the final distance between them.
But he couldn’t. Not like this.
Not with the biggest lie of his life standing between them.
He cleared his throat and took a half-step back. “Well, I should… let you get some sleep.”
“Right,” she said, her voice a little breathless.
“Yeah. Me too.”
He walked to the door, his hand on the knob.
“Cal?”
He turned. She was standing by the desk, bathed in the soft glow of the lamp, looking more beautiful than he had ever seen her.
“The man I heard on the phone… I don’t think that’s who you are,” she said quietly. “I think the man who spent three hours counting pillowcases is.”
His heart ached. She was right, and she was wrong, all at the same time.
“Goodnight, Maya,” he whispered, and slipped out of the office before he did something he would regret, or something he wouldn’t regret nearly enough.