Page 36 of Coming Home to Maple Tree Lodge

Expecting him to agree with her, she was shocked when he looked at her with haunted eyes. ‘What? What’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘You’re not the only one that’s been lying,’ he told her.

She was shocked by what he had just said. ‘You?’ she asked. ‘You’ve been lying as well? To the family?’

He sighed and nodded. ‘Me too,’ he said softly.

She waited for him to speak on.

Finally, he did. ‘When my father died, I came back here to help my mother. I thought I’d give the family some support and then head back to my own life, my own career. But then I looked at the finances and discovered things had gotten bad. Really bad. And so I never left.’ He looked up at her with a bleak expression. ‘Dad had secretly remortgaged the place and then there was the fact that the whole hotel was in danger of slipping into the lake unless it was underpinned. It went pretty much downhill from there, almost literally in fact.’

‘But surely once the renovations are complete…?’ she began to ask, but her voice drifted off as she saw him shake his head once more. Lily was shocked and dismayed. She had had no idea that things were truly that bad.

‘I honestly don’t think it’ll be enough to save Maple Tree Lodge,’ he told her.

18

Ben was a little surprised to find himself blurting out the truth about the future of the hotel. Especially to Lily, of all people, after all of her secrecy and lies.

And yet he had found himself touched when she had confessed about her lonely childhood to him. It had touched a nerve, certainly in stark contrast to the large family environment that he had grown up in. Whenever there had been a problem, his family had always gathered around.

Until now, of course. Since coming back after his father’s death, it had felt different. He was so unhappy fighting Walter when they should be uniting under the shared goal of trying to save the hotel. He had been closed off instead, not telling them the truth.

Just like Lily, he found himself thinking. Everything that he had accused her of, he realised he was equally guilty of acting that way.

‘The hotel’s in that much trouble?’ she asked, breaking into his thoughts.

He nodded, the reality hitting home.

‘I can’t believe it,’ she said, getting up and walking across to look out of the open window at the lake beyond. ‘I mean, I knew that with the renovations bookings were down but I thought it would be OK when it was all finished.’

‘We didn’t have any guests to begin with,’ he told her. ‘Well, not enough, anyhow.’

She spun around. ‘But your grandad always spoke about how busy the place had been.’

‘Maybe in the early days but that was an awful long time ago,’ he replied. ‘Before I can remember.’

‘I see.’ She puffed out a sigh. ‘Do they know? The family? How bad it is?’

He shook his head. ‘You’re not the only one who’s been keeping secrets from them.’

She frowned. ‘But why not tell them the truth?’ she asked.

‘I needed to see if I could save the place first,’ he told her. ‘Before the worst-case scenario plays out. You see, we’ve received a very large offer from a firm that wants to buy us out. They want to turn us into yet another chain hotel.’

He was mollified to see her grimace. ‘You can’t!’ she stammered. ‘Maple Tree Lodge is unique, special, a one-off.’

He nodded. ‘I agree, which is why I’m trying to think of every reason not to sell.’

‘So that’s why Hannah says you’ve been so stressed,’ said Lily, running a hand through her long red hair. ‘It’s not just the grief.’

‘I had to close myself off from all the family stuff,’ he said. ‘I’ve been trying to think logically, trying to treat it like a business.’

‘Yes, but it’s also a home,’ she told him. ‘Your home. Your family’s home.’

‘Which makes it a thousand times worse,’ he replied, with a heavy sigh. ‘Especially after losing Dad. But what do I knowabout the hotel business? All I know is architecture and even then…’

His voice trailed off.