Chapter Text
*New Year's Eve
"What is Jaime Lannister doing here?"
"He asked for an invite when he heard you'd be coming. I've never seen him smitten this way, love."
*Present Day
Brienne makes it a point to check every single room after it’s been cleaned and readied for the next guest. It was a habit she started when she first joined the business as a front desk staff, telling her father that she needed to know exactly how to describe the room when she was introducing guests to their homes for the night.
But three years later, and even though she’s now the manager of their second and smaller Evenfall property, Evenfall Square, Brienne hasn’t changed her routine. The property is small, with just 35 rooms, and each of them designed with a different layout and varied colour schemes and decor, and it’s important that she knows the rooms and how they’ve been laid out for the next guest.
Selwyn Tarth set up their first Evenfall property in the Westeros capital of King’s Landing when Brienne was just eight. They’d been running the Tarth Resorts on their island home for decades, but the death of Brienne’s mother from pneumonia one winter made it difficult for Selwyn to continue staying on the island where they had built their life.
Her childhood and teenage years were spent in Evenfall Hall, which began as a 10-room family establishment and grew to 82 rooms and suites over the years. Selwyn would personally prepare breakfast for guests, and Brienne would help the housekeeping staff with changing the towels and sheets on weekends.
It was only natural that she would go on to study hospitality management in university. Evenfall was where she had grown up, learned about people and the world, where she met businessmen and families visiting King’s Landing, it was her home for a good 10 years before she moved to the north to attend university.
At university, she met Catelyn Stark, who helmed Winterfell Hotels with her husband Ned, and she grew to appreciate the boutique hotel business more - hospitality wasn’t just about full occupancy and efficiency, but making sure that it was a home for guests, and a place they would remember as much of their trip as the other destinations they visited.
She continued to seek out Catelyn’s opinion on operation matters, and would consult her on dealing with staff and design, even after graduating. Catelyn’s daughters Sansa and Arya were a few years younger than Brienne, and showed little interest in the family business, and Catelyn treated Brienne like her own child, mentoring her professionally and giving her the motherly love she had been deprived of so suddenly in her childhood.
Catelyn was now teaching full-time at Westeros University, the largest university in King’s Landing, after Winterfell Hotels had been brought into Lannister International’s stable of hotels. While she continued to help Ned with overseeing the chain’s operations, the major decisions were now made by Tywin Lannister’s hospitality group, and little she said “had any weight” these days.
“We haven’t booked our flights for Christmas,” Brienne says, as she passes the report for the previous quarter to Selwyn. It was the end of November, and the prices would be creeping up soon, but they’d both been too busy preparing for the winter peak season to remember.
“About that… I thought perhaps we could stay in King’s Landing this Christmas.”
“Why?” They’d always gone home to Tarth for the holidays - her mother’s birthday was two days before Christmas, and she had passed just a day after the new year, and going home always felt like the only way Brienne could still honour her memory.
“It’s been 20 years since your brother’s… accident. I don’t think I could make that trip this year. Plus, it’ll be busy, with the launch for Hill in a few weeks after the new year. We can always make the trip during the Easter bank holiday.” Selwyn gets up from his seat and leaves the office, putting an end to the abrupt conversation.
Had it really been 20 years? She remembers being a young child and seeing her parents weeping in the hall with police officers standing around. It wasn’t until years later that she understood that Galladon had drowned in one of the resort’s pools while the lifeguards had went for a lunch break. He was only seven, and her parents’ darling, and a picture of Gal and her mother was the only photo that Selwyn kept in his wallet.
She knows that it’s not really an excuse - they would be busy with the launch of their third property, the 55-room Evenfall Hill, but she had been looking forward to going home for Christmas as always. Much as there were bittersweet memories of the island’s warm waters and fine sand, it was also where she had run around most freely, and being back there every year always felt like home, even if she had spent most of her years in King’s Landing. But she knew there would be no changing her father’s mind, and it would be a difficult trip for him to make.
So she picks up her phone, and RSVPs yes to Loras and Renly’s gathering for New Year’s Eve. She hadn’t been for the last two - parties at their penthouse unit which were one of the most elaborate events of the year - and Renly had been trying to persuade her to return early from Tarth this year so she could be there for this one. He was planning to propose to Loras, and she had to be his wingwoman, or so her most handsome friend said, even though she knew he didn’t need any help at all.
She hopes she won’t regret it, but she’s always regretted every single one of their parties whenever she rose with a massive hangover, so there’s that.
*
“Why the sudden interest in the Tarth properties?” Jaime leans back in his chair, flicking through the deck that he had his assistant, Podrick, compile on Selwyn Tarth’s assets on the island and in the capital after his father had told him to give a report on the viability of the acquisitions.
“Not all the Tarth properties. Just the Evenfall hotels,” Tywin Lannister says curtly. “Which you would know if you would pay closer attention to our competition.”
“They’re two boutique hotels, just over a hundred rooms. Hardly the space we’re playing in, Father.” Jaime closes the deck dismissively.
“Three by next spring. Their properties have been performing well, nearly full occupancy even in slow seasons, and Selwyn Tarth’s staff are notoriously hard to poach. They’d be a good fit for a new brand. I’ll give you a few months, I want it settled within two months of their third property’s opening. It’s been a while since we introduced a new brand, the portfolio is getting stale. You need to step things up, Jaime.” Tywin’s gaze is hard, the same look he would give when Jaime struggled with his schoolwork as a boy, when his dyslexia had yet to be diagnosed and the letters were just a jumbled mess most of the time. You’re a disappointment , he didn’t have to say.
Jaime slumps back into his chair as his father leaves the office. He hadn’t wanted to join the company, but he didn’t have a choice. Tyrion was by far more gifted and suited to the business than he was, but being the younger son and not of ideal stature , as Tywin put it when they were teenagers, he was never in line to take over Lannister International. Cersei had expressed her ambitions from an early age, but their father made it apparent early on that she would never gain a controlling stake, even if she had a keen interest in the industry that Jaime never would have.
He wasn’t going to squander the family business - Tywin Lannister had made sure of that - and he commanded the respect of his employees and board members easily with his charisma and quick wit, but there was a restlessness he felt whenever he was at work. A gnawing feeling that the hotel business was not right for him, no matter how long he had been at the company nor how much stake his father had transferred to him, his heir.
Jaime opens the deck again - Selwyn Tarth ran the company with his only daughter, Brienne, who by all accounts was only in her early twenties and fairly green in the industry. He sighs, and records a brief voice message for Podrick to arrange a meeting with the pair.
He’s barely done clearing his table when his door swings open, and Tyrion strides in, a smirk on his face.
“I heard Father has new orders.”
“Is Podrick my assistant, or yours?”
“Well, technically he used to be with me, until you showed that you were incapable of keeping your female secretaries around. Honestly, Jaime, it wouldn’t be that hard to just fuck them once, would it? You didn’t have to disappoint all of them.”
“You’re ridiculous. They quit, I didn’t ask them to leave.”
“All they wanted was to know how the grand Jaime Lannister was in bed. And you had to deprive them of that experience. How selfish of you, brother.”
Jaime punches Tyrion on the shoulder, pushing him back onto a chair. “Why don’t you spend your time thinking of how we can get the Tarths to agree to a proposal? There’s little in it for them. They’re doing well, winning awards and their guests are happy. They don’t need us, and they clearly aren’t into the way we run things.”
“Well, that’s why you’re going to speak with Brienne Tarth, and not her father. She’s what, 24, 25, and you’re you. Work your charms, like how you do with everyone else, it’s…”
He doesn’t get to finish his sentence, although Jaime guesses it wouldn’t have been a productive statement anyway, as Cersei bursts into the office fuming.
“They took out ads in every fucking paper! Banner and pop-up ads, both! And he signed off on all of them!” She yells, her green eyes flaring as she tosses what looks like a contract onto the table.
Jaime and Tyrion exchange a look, before the younger Lannister picks it up and glances through the first few pages. The Tyrells , he mouths to Jaime, who nods knowingly.
Cersei had been overseeing the Lannisters’ public affairs and corporate communications department for a few years now, and had an ongoing disagreement with Tywin on how the company was marketing itself in the press. Her husband, Robert, headed Baratheon Media Group, which managed more than 10 national and regional Westerosi papers, and Cersei had been pressing to run an extensive ad campaign for their higher-tier brands ahead of the holidays, “if just to keep up with the times”.
The Tyrells weren’t quite their competitors. Their Highgarden chain of business hotels were firmly in the four-star category, targetted at work travellers and older families, which was just a fraction of the Lannisters’ audience. But the firm was aggressive in their marketing and had expanded rapidly in the last few years, and the family’s heiress Margaery was a pretty young rose who had upstaged Cersei at one of the Lannisters’ social events that summer.
“I’ve told Robert on so many occasions that he shouldn’t be helping the Tyrells, but the idiot just won’t listen, and Father isn’t signing off on our new budget for ads. Jaime, you’ve got to do something.”
“Cersei, two things. One, he’s your husband, so I can’t do anything there. Two, it’s business. They’re paying for the ads, we’re not, Robert’s hardly helping them.”
He looks over to Tyrion, who’s scrolling rapidly on his phone, which basically means he’s doing absolutely nothing, and tries to kick him under the table, but his brother just ignores him, with a smirk across his face.
They both know there’s little they can do when Cersei gets into one of her moods like this, apart from waiting it out. When they were younger, Jaime would have done just about anything to appease her, but those days were over. Gone were the times when he would kiss her on the lips to quieten her, when he would take her into his embrace and tell her it’d all be alright - it’d all fallen apart once he realised that Cersei wouldn’t love him in the way he loved her, that she would be with Robert and have his children, and his love for his sister would never be reciprocated in the romantic ways he used to wish for.
He knew how twisted it was - to be in love with your own sister, his own twin, to want her to be the only love of his life. Tyrion had tried to slap sense into him on several occasions, but to Jaime it had always been simple. He cared about Cersei, wanted the best for her, wanted to do his best for her, and for the longest time it had felt like she had wanted the same - until she didn’t. When Robert entered the picture it was clear that she wanted power, and he would be able to give him that. Jaime was her brother and her pawn from a young age, and while he still loved her - she would never be his. That she had made clear.
So he dated - young girls barely in their twenties, older women in their forties, some of Cersei’s closest friends - some out of spite, mostly to get a response from his sweet sister, but none of them got that same stir in his stomach that he used to get when she entered the room. He never could find it in himself to like them enough to love, and all of those women knew it before he would say it.
He knew it was pathetic - the only woman I’ve loved is my own sister - and his brother never let him forget it. But it felt like a foregone conclusion at this point, that perhaps he would never love anyone else the way he once loved Cersei, even if that had faded in the years since she had married Robert and had three of his seed.
All he had was his muddling life as Tywin Lannister’s heir, carrying out his father’s orders.
He looks up Brienne Tarth the day before they’re scheduled to meet - ignoring Tyrion’s suggestion, he’s set up a lunch with both her and Selwyn. There aren’t many pictures of her, and from what he sees it’s fortunate for her. She was possibly the ugliest woman he’d ever seen: broad-faced, with large lips and freckles, and her build in those photos made her look hulking and unladylike in every sense.
Which is why he can’t quite explain that stirring in his stomach when his gaze settles on her very blue eyes.