Chapter 6 Haisley
HAISLEY
Haisley heard the unwelcome group crashing around in the great room, and the door to the lodge opened and shut several times as the majority of them trooped out into the snow. But someone was still definitely poking around in the kitchen, singing opera and opening and shutting cabinets.
He’d better not be rearranging things or using metal in her non-stick pots. She’d left a note about that, of course, but people got careless.
When she cracked her door to listen, she could also hear voices in the great room, and the crackle of a fire.
She shut the door again and locked it. The outdoor party had gone out the front and her bedroom was around the side of the lodge, so she could just see a portion of the front yard and the workshed if she sat at one end of the window; it was still bright enough that they couldn’t see her through the glass.
It was hard to make out features, they were so bundled up, but they were clearly enjoying themselves.
They staggered around, making angels and snowballs.
It looked like they’d brought a pair of dogs with them, but they were furthest away and Haisley couldn’t quite make them out. Probably, they were the reason that she’d been laid off for the rental, if they thought that pets would be unwelcome. Hopefully, they wouldn’t do much damage!
A brief snowball skirmish ended when the smallest figure got mistakenly hit in the face and fell over.
Everyone else froze as one of the larger men went to scoop her up out of the snowbank, but she was laughing, and her hat fell off her head to reveal long, pure white hair.
An old lady? That might explain why everyone seemed so protective of her.
They explored the property after that, and some of them found shovels and cleared the path to the garage and around to the back door.
Haisley kept her room light off, because it was starting to get dark, and she didn’t want them to be able to see in through the blinds.
It was so awkward to be hiding in her own home.
But of course, it wasn’t her home.
She was hired help, and she could be unhired just as easily.
They found the skis and sleds, and quickly figured out that the new snow was too fluffy for good sledding.
One athletic couple strapped on skis and set out on the shortest trail.
(Had they read about the trails in Haisley’s welcome book?
She hoped so. She’d tried to make the descriptions funny as well as useful.)
It continued to snow, and the old lady made a show of trying unsuccessfully to catch the flakes on her tongue. She was very spry for her age.
The clouds on the horizon thinned just enough for sunset to cast a few rays of light across the piled snow, and limn everything in rose gold.
Everyone stopped to watch it, clustering into pairs, except for one lone figure who wrapped arms around himself.
Haisley wished she could be at the door to greet them with warm towels and hot cider.
She truly loved making people welcome in the chalet and finding out where they were from and hearing all the details of their lives.
Was the white-haired woman a matriarch of their clan?
Was this a family reunion? There was an ease between them all that suggested a strong relationship…
except for the one figure by himself, and Haisley wanted his story most of all.
As the sunset faded, everyone moved out of her sight, around the other side of the building. Haisley nearly turned from the window to find something she could occupy herself with without making too much noise or light when what she had assumed were dogs streaked by.
And they were not dogs.
It was a pair of leopards, one of them gold and black, the other a fluffy, long-tailed snow leopard, and they cavorted past Haisley’s window so fast that Haisley blinked and they were gone.
She rubbed her eyes, trying to convince herself that it was just the failing light that made her see them as anything other than dogs.
But she’d seen them so clearly.
Pet leopards?
That certainly explained her dismissal. Leopards were not legal pets here, even if they were so well-trained that they were allowed to run free without a collar to leash to.
Haisley chuckled. Every time that she thought she’d seen everything that wealthy people could do, they managed to surprise her.
Leopards!
What was next? Trained bears?