Chapter 16 Haisley
HAISLEY
Haisley really should have known that someone would figure out what she’d done with the water heater and fix it. That wouldn’t be true with many of the hands-off hopelessly-sheltered clients they’d gotten, but this lot seemed like an unexpectedly competent crowd.
The plows came through late that day and cleared the road, but the unwelcome guests made no move to leave.
Over dinner, they made plans to do a run into town the following day and get fresh food.
“We’d be well set even without the trip,” Chef said in his booming voice as Haisley eavesdropped, “but there are a few fresh greens I’d like.
And there’s a recipe for pulled pork that I’d like to try if we find twenty pounds of roast.”
That’s my recipe, Haisley thought furiously.
“It looks absolutely divine,” Chef added. “Who would have thought to add Dr. Pepper to the pressure cooker?”
That’s my recipe, Haisley thought again, rather smugly this time.
They all made other shopping plans, and Haisley was disappointed to hear some of them say that they would be staying behind. It was too much to hope that they’d all go into town, and then there would be an amazing snowstorm and trap them all there. Forever.
Waiting for them all to wander off to bed was an exquisite torture. Haisley was dying to try the curry that Chef had made. The smell made her salivate, and her granola bar and soda (cracked carefully open in the bathroom so no one would hear it) were unsatisfying.
She had basically convinced herself that she had imagined the antelope from the previous night. It was too impossible. She wasn’t entirely sure that the white-haired woman hadn’t also been a hallucination, though she had since heard others call her Gizelle.
Their conversations were almost as absurd as her memories. How could someone possibly have a sense of smell so keen they could tell if people had been around?
Haisley rearranged the dish towels in the kitchen out of sheer stubbornness, and served herself from the copious leftovers. There was a whole tub of vegetarian curry and Haisley ate more than she meant to, then had one more defiant final bite.
“I’d say you were Goldilocks, stealing porridge and sitting in our chairs, but your hair is brown.”
Haisley whirled around and was face-to-face with Quiet Vegetarian Guy Tristan.
He was more handsome than she’d guessed from her glimpses through the window when he was outside.
He was black-haired, and deep-eyed, with golden-brown skin and slightly canted features over cheekbones that made Haisley realize what romance books meant when they said they could cut glass.
Chiseled.
He looked like he’d been carved out of amber, and he was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants that didn’t do a good job of hiding the fact that his whole body was just as carefully sculpted.
He was also staring at Haisley so intensely that she forgot to be afraid and went straight to outraged.
“Why are you sneaking around in my kitchen?” she demanded, completely overlooking the fact that she wasn’t supposed to be there.
He looked completely taken aback. “I’m sorry,” he said, as if it was automatic. “I mean, wait…”
Haisley could not help but laugh, then she leaned weakly against a counter because the adrenaline was ebbing away and she knew that she was well and truly caught now.
“No, I’m sorry. I wasn’t supposed to stay here, and I was trying to be out of the way, but you guys kept moving my dish towels, and I guess I’m a little more OCD than I like to admit. ”
“You’re the one who left all the notes,” he said, and he was still staring at her in wonder, but his mouth was curved up in a little half-smile. “And yours is the locked door down the hall.”
“Guilty,” Haisley said. “My car wouldn’t start, and I had nowhere to go, and I knew I wasn’t supposed to stay, but I wasn’t sure what else to do.”
“Did you disable the wifi?” he asked. “And change the password?”
Haisley saw no reason to lie. “Yes. I was hoping you’d all leave if everything wasn’t absolutely perfect.”
“Oh thank goodness. I was starting to doubt my own sanity.”
That made two of them.
“Did you turn down the temperature on the water?”
“It was petty,” Haisley said. “And my own shower this morning was punishment enough.”
“And you moved the cheese, and the dish towels, and hid the binder.”
“It sort of defeated the point if I left you a manual on how to fix everything that I was trying to so carefully break. ”
“Were you about to escalate to cutting off the power?”
“Oh no,” Haisley said at once. “I mean, I thought about it, but what if one of you had a medical condition and needed the power for…I don’t know, dialysis or oxygen or something? What if you froze to death? I wanted you to be uncomfortable and leave, I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”
“Of course not,” Tristan said firmly. “I know you wouldn’t.”
“How would you know that?” Haisley asked, suddenly suspicious. He seemed awfully convinced.
“Because…ah…I mean, you’re not…I…you don’t seem like the type?”
Haisley had a habit of raising her voice at the end of a sentence to make herself less of a threat and hearing it made her automatically empathize with Tristan. He was probably no happier to find her lurking in the kitchen than she was to be caught.
“My name is Haisley,” she said as a peace offering.
“I’m Tristan.”
Haisley nodded too soon.
“You already knew?”
“I haven’t been trying to eavesdrop,” Haisley said, feeling the heat of a blush rise in her cheeks, “but it’s sort of inevitable. You guys are really…loud.”
She hadn’t realized it was possible for Tristan to stare even harder at her, but somehow he did. “Have you…seen anything?”
They were all nudists, Haisley suddenly realized, like a lightning bolt.
That would explain the weird woman who had been naked in the kitchen (if she wasn’t Haisley’s isolation-crazed imagination), and…
well, Haisley couldn’t quite figure out how it explained some of their weirder conversations, but it solved the one mystery at least.
“Not much,” she assured Tristan. “Barely anything. Almost nothing. Ah…” Barely and nothing made her think about what Tristan would look like naked.
She’d been to a nude beach, in Hawaii, but it had been mostly very regular people looking like any random selection of people, in a range of weights and fitness.
Tristan was the kind of person she would want to find at a nude beach.
Haisley’s blush threatened to combust her hair. These were definitely not things she should be thinking about a guest.