Chapter 10
April 15
Jonah peered through the lobby window, watching Lauren run the snowblower down the walkway surrounding the lodge. She was
bundled up in a long, puffy coat with a fur hood that left the smallest circle of her face exposed. How could she even maneuver
the blower with those thick, pink gloves?
It had snowed three inches last night, but already the morning sun was warming up the earth. If she just waited till afternoon,
the snow would melt on its own. But who was he to give advice?
He hadn’t exactly hit it off with their new employee. It wasn’t because she was from Massachusetts as Mom had first assumed.
It was true that many New Hampshirites held a certain animosity toward people from across their southern border. Yet Jonah
knew plenty of decent Bay Staters—many of the resort’s regulars, in fact. But if he felt the Massachusetts RMV could be more
particular about handing out driver’s licenses...well, he wouldn’t be the first to hold that opinion.
No, his problem with Lauren began months before she’d even arrived. November was a slow month for the resort. A few snowmobilers
or skiers per week. The extra downtime had allowed Jonah to load up on courses during the semester—for the degree he’d never
even wanted.
Dad’s heart attack had shocked them all. Tom Landry was a bear of a man, standing six-two, with strapping shoulders and a lumbering gait. He was a man of few words, but he wasn’t afraid of hard work and he could fix anything as long as it didn’t involve a computer. To Jonah he’d always been strong and invincible.
Dad had been repairing a refrigerator in mid-November when the heart attack struck. A week later he was home from the hospital,
a stent in place.
Mom pulled Jonah and Meg into their upstairs living room and lowered her voice. “Your father needs a break from this place.
I know we’d talked about both of us retiring at the end of next year, but I guess God has different plans.”
“That’s fine, Mom. Meg and I have got this.”
“Absolutely,” his sister agreed. “I’ll take over your part of the office work. I’ll have plenty of time to do the books for
us and Bartley’s.” Meg also did the accounting for a local insurance company.
“And I’ll take over management. Consider it done.” Jonah had been planning to do so in just over a year anyway, right after
graduating.
Mom set her hand on his arm. “That’s not what your dad and I want, honey. You need to finish your classes.”
“I can do that later—”
“If you take them one or two at a time... it’ll take forever. We want you to finish up.”
Jonah pressed down the frustration this topic always brought to the surface. After Meg—who’d always planned to help run the
resort—had discovered a love of accounting midway through her business degree, she’d shifted course. And this had made his
parents worry that perhaps Jonah wasn’t considering all the options for his future. They’d insisted that he, too, get a college
degree before committing to managing the family resort.
But with just over a year left, he felt as strongly about it as he always had. Just because he was a good student didn’t mean he had to aspire to something more intellectual. He loved this place. Loved the steady coming and going of familiar people. Loved taking care of a place that was a beloved annual tradition for dozens of families. Loved feeling connected with the family history. It was like opening his home to people who loved it just as much as he did.
He cleared his throat. “I will finish my degree, Mom. But I’m needed here now. I want to do this.”
Mom’s brown eyes softened. She’d aged ten years in the week since Dad’s heart attack. “I know you do. But your dad and I thought
it would be good to get some fresh blood in here for a while. Just till you graduate. A temporary manager who might bring
new ideas. And come the end of next year, if you still want to run the resort—it’s yours.”
“That hasn’t changed, and it’s not going to.” Mom had it stuck in her head that he should be a schoolteacher like his biological
mother and grandmother. Sure, maybe he’d entertained the idea as a kid. But he was twenty-eight now—a man who knew what he
wanted. For the hundredth time he wondered if she secretly hoped Meg would change her mind. Did Mom want to pass the resort
to her biological child? After all, he wasn’t technically related to Mom—or her parents—by blood.
“We’ve already decided. We’re hiring a temporary manager as soon as possible. We can probably muddle through for a few months
on our own. But we’ll need someone full-time for high season next year. Once he or she is trained, your dad and I’ll do some
traveling. Heaven knows it’s the only way I’ll keep him from returning to work. This health crisis has reminded us we won’t
last forever, and your dad and I want to see something of the world. We were gonna do that the year after next anyway. We’re
just getting an early start.”
In the following weeks Jonah tried to talk them out of the new hire several times, but they were set on it. He had, however, talked them into letting him train and oversee the new hire. That gave him some measure of control and made sense since they’d be traveling a lot. He applied himself to his classes, and the next thing he knew, they’d hired someone fresh out of college. As if a few courses could teach someone more about this place than a lifetime here had taught him.
He’d 100 percent rather be running the place than taking a full load of classes during the high season. But this was what
his parents wanted, and he respected them too much to do anything but honor their decision.
Then four weeks ago, the woman he’d splashed with mud stepped out of Carson’s SUV. Judging by her rigid spine and the flat
line of her lips, she recognized him instantly. And in that fleeting second he’d felt sorry for the incident and opened his
mouth to apologize again.
Then he realized why she was here on his property. She was the new manager, coming to settle in for the next nine months.
She must’ve changed clothes—no hint of mud splatters. She reminded him of his ex-girlfriend Monica with her designer pocketbook,
heeled boots, and manicured nails. And her name—Lauren Wentworth—sounded like old money. He gave the princess a week.
He never had issued that second apology.
But a month later she was still here. His parents were now on the road, heading to the Florida Keys, and Jonah was staying
on property for a few weeks to oversee their new hire.
Lauren had made a few small missteps, the worst of which was double-booking a cabin for a week in June—but his mom had caught
the mistake quickly. Jonah would give Lauren credit for a surprisingly good work ethic. She was up and about at sunrise, always
busy doing something, and didn’t seem to mind being on call 24/7. Of course, she hadn’t lived through high season yet.
“She’s not so bad, you know,” Meg said.
Jonah let the curtain flutter closed. “Didn’t say she was.”
“It was the smirk on your face. You could at least tell her the snow’s gonna melt.”
“Where’s the fun in that? Don’t you have some numbers to crunch?”
Meg crossed her arms, giving a smirk of her own. “You just don’t like that she’s doing a great job.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. And she’s barely a month in. Also, it’s not high season yet.”
Meg shook her head in a patronizing way. “You poor thing. You don’t even realize.” With that she took off for the office.
Jonah frowned. “Realize what?” When she didn’t answer he followed and found her settling into her chair behind the old computer
screen. “Realize what ?”
She started clacking on the keyboard. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed how beautiful she is.”
The image of her sage-green eyes flashed in his brain. “What’s that got to do with anything? I can barely tolerate her.”
“And why do you suppose that is, brother dear? She’s doing the job she was hired for and allowing you to get your classes
over with. You should be grateful and yet you can’t seem to be around her without bristling.”
“She’s the bristly one.”
“Oh, really? The rest of us get along with her just fine.”
“You’ve seen how she is when I try to give her instructions. She’s practically belligerent.” Okay, she might not say anything
out loud. But that stubborn look on her face said it all.
Meg deigned to glance his way, holding his gaze a long second. “Since you seem to be the last to know, I’ll do you a favor
and enlighten you: The sparks between you two could ignite an inferno.”
Jonah flinched. “That is ridiculous. Those are not sparks . We rub each other the wrong way, that’s all. We can hardly be in the same room.”
“Explain your dislike for her then, if it makes so much sense.” That he resented Lauren for taking the job he wanted seemed pretty entitled if he couldn’t explain his fear about being an outsider in his own family. And he didn’t want to go there with Meg. How could she possibly understand? Besides, if he told her he suspected their mom wanted her to run the resort instead of him, it would only make her feel guilty for choosing accounting.
He fumbled for words. “She’s a city girl. She doesn’t belong here.” But he knew even as he said it that it was poor reasoning.
Sure, she’d been a bit overdressed that first day. But since then she’d shown up to work in appropriate attire—if maybe a
bit on the fussy side.
Meg was regarding him with something like pity. “Not everyone from the city is like Monica.”
Because yes. She did remind him of Monica—from the designer bags to the big-city dreams. His ex-girlfriend had broken his
heart when she left him and this “Podunk town” for the greener pastures of New York City.
It wasn’t fair to take his hurt feelings out on Lauren. But somehow, when she tipped up that stubborn chin or pressed her
lips in mutiny, all common sense went right out the window.
“I’ll admit Lauren’s a bit of a city slicker,” Meg said, “but that’s hardly a fatal flaw. She works hard and she’s doing a
good job, isn’t she? Maybe you could ease up a bit—be a little less impossible.”
“Me? She’s the impossible one.”
“See my former comment about sparks.”
Good grief. Jonah rolled his eyes as he turned on his heel and left the room. “You read too many romance novels.” His little
sister had obviously never been anywhere near the vicinity of love. It didn’t start with mutual dislike. It began with attraction.
Like when a guy caught the eye of a beautiful brunette at the Daily Brew and they shared a private smile. Or when he held
the door for her half an hour later and she asked for directions to the post office and he thought his heart might explode
from his chest.
That was attraction.
Jonah had escorted Monica to the post office, which was formerly a train depot. Monica had just been hired as an esthetician at the spa in the new Harborview Resort. She was from a tiny town in Maine he’d never heard of and had taken this job straight out of beauty school. Back in Maine she had two brothers, five sisters, and amicably divorced parents.
The conversation was fluid with plenty of give-and-take. He liked that she was direct, and that wicked smile she turned on
him made him feel like a king. They reached the post office way too soon. He was still trying to figure out how to get her
number when she pulled her phone from her pocket and said, “What’s your number, Jonah Landry?”
A moment later his phone vibrated with a text.
“See ya later.” She flashed a smile and entered the post office, those beautiful brown waves bouncing around her shoulders.
As soon as they parted ways, he checked his phone. Call me , her text said. And he did just that the next day—right after he looked up esthetician .
He mentally fast-forwarded through the months of courtship, full of ups and downs—mostly ups—until they reached the end of
the road: a job offer from some spa in Manhattan.
Maybe he should’ve seen it coming a million miles away. She’d mentioned her determination to escape that small town where
she’d grown up. Her search for bigger and better things than the lone town diner where she’d waitressed through high school
and where her mother still worked. He’d thought of her as a small-town kind of person from a middle-class family, much like
him.
He’d missed all the clues, and the cost of his ignorance had been a broken heart. The memory of that first meeting fizzled
like a spent firework.
Now as Jonah headed off to find a quiet spot to read his assigned chapters, he caught a glimpse of Lauren through the window
and scowled. No, he knew what attraction looked like, felt like—and it wasn’t this.