The Resort by Bentley Little Read Free Book Online

and the generally chaotic events of the day. She knew this was the monsoon season in southern Arizona from reading the Tucson Living and Southwest Lifestyle magazines provided by the resort, and indeed the weather forecast on the local news that they’d watched had predicted a thunderstorm sometime after ten. Tomorrow, however, was supposed to be clear and over a hundred degrees.
    Humidity really did make a difference, she thought. People were always joking about the cliché “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity,” as though the phrase were false or inane, but this afternoon, lying out by the pool in hundred-degree heat, it honestly had felt cooler and more pleasant than a typical eighty-degree day in Southern California.
    Not that she would ever want to live here.
    It was a nice place to visit, but . . .
    The truth was that it wasn’t even that nice of a place to visit. She couldn’t say why exactly, couldn’t put her finger on anything, but ever since they’d arrived at the resort, even before the mix-up with the room, a part of her had been thinking that she’d rather be back home, back at work.
    That was silly, though. This place had everything. Gym, spa, pool, hiking trails, tennis courts, luxurious air-conditioned rooms with satellite television, a wonderful restaurant. So why would she rather be at work? She didn’t even like her job all that much. It was just a stopgap position, something to do until . . . until . . .
    Until what?
    She realized suddenly that she had a job rather than a career, and she wondered when that had happened. Lowell had always had that attitude, had always considered a job to be merely something one did in order to make enough money to support a family and a lifestyle, but she had started out more ambitiously, more optimistically. She’d always loved art and drawing, which was why she’d earned her degree in graphic design in college. And the first few years after graduation, she’d worked at a local design firm, rising upward through the ranks. When the company went under, she’d been forced to take a day job at a bank, although she continued to apply at various graphics houses, even doing a couple of freelance jobs that led to additional contract work. Somewhere along the line, though, she’d gotten derailed, had stopped freelancing, stopped applying, made friends with her coworkers and settled in at the bank. When, though? When the twins came along, perhaps. With kids and a full-time job, she simply hadn’t had the time or energy to pursue her own career goals.
    Did she resent Lowell for this? No. Well . . . maybe just a little. Deep down. But she never thought about it, and she didn’t know why she was thinking of it now. They were on vacation, for God’s sake. She should be enjoying the luxuries surrounding her instead of creating dissatisfaction where it didn’t exist.
    Lightning suddenly flashed, illuminating the billowing storm clouds, and her heart jumped in her chest. She had never been one of those people afraid of thunder or lightning. On the contrary, she’d always enjoyed storms, found them to be curiously appealing, almost soothing, particularly at night when she was safely ensconced indoors as the weather raged outside. But it seemed as if the overarching cloud revealed by the lightning had the clear contours of a face.
    A heavy masculine face filled with uncontrollable rage.
    She tried to tell herself that she had just imagined it, but lightning flashed again, and the visage was still there, closer, the deep-set eyes trained directly on her as though looking across the distance through the window of her room, into her eyes. She stepped back from the shutters, frightened. Maybe she was still asleep, she thought. Maybe this was all part of a nightmare. It did have that sense of foggy surrealism usually associated with dreams, but somehow she knew that this was really happening.
    Feeling