Chapter 13
“This is bad. Very, very bad.” Thandie said and smoothed her frizzy curls away from her face.
She paced along the gazebo’s railing, occasionally picking up a mat or a towel and throwing the items into the cart. What was she supposed to do, let him embrace her? And then what? Where would that lead? Thandie stomped on the wooden planks and stood erect. “I am an employee here. He is a guest. No matter how much I like the man, I must keep a professional distance. If not for my sake, then for Leo’s.”
With renewed resolve, she tossed the few remaining things into the cart and headed to the barn, where she hoped Grant would not be. She was embarrassed. Again. Grant’s advance had been inappropriate, given their roles, but she had to admit, it wasn’t unprovoked. Heck, he probably thought all the attention she was giving to him was a kind of flirting!
“This is bad,” she repeated as she mounted her bicycle and began up the path.
Ahead, the darkened barn was like an abyss, waiting to devour her. She pedaled backwards, slowing to a stop. With her feet planted on the ground on either side of the bike, she took a couple of much-needed deep breaths. “If I make it through this week, I’ll need a wellness retreat myself,” she said and resumed her journey back to the barn.
The pressure to do what she had to do to help The Foundry and keep her job was more than she had expected it to be. She wished she had never heard Leo and America discussing the investor situation at all. She could have done her job just fine not knowing that so much was riding on her performance.
While replaying her interaction with Grant over and over in her mind, and dissecting where she had gone wrong, she easily made the half-dozen trips up to the loft. She put away all the mats and the bands she had neglected to utilize during her improvised yoga session. If she got a chance to redo the activity, she would find some way to incorporate more equipment and switch things up.
Back outside, Pa crouched beside her bicycle. He fumbled through a tool bag and what sounded like a pile of metal wrenches and screw drivers banging against one another. Like a magician, he held the thing he needed up in front of his grinning face before hunching over and doing something to the cart.
“Hey, Pa,” she said from the door so as not to startle him.
He looked up over the top rim of his safety glasses. “Did she work?”
“The cart? I hate to admit, but your fix was better than what I had rigged up.”
“Well, she just needs a little tuning up, and if that golfcart is a far way out, I can do a bit of fabricating and get this thing properly connected.” Pa clapped his hands together and rubbed one greasy palm on his worn khaki coveralls, which looked to be an army surplus uniform. “I know you aren’t the kind of woman who needs help, but let me know if anything comes up.”
“I understand,” she said and helped him with his heavy tool bag, though he carried it like it was nothing more than a sack of air. “Pa, can I ask you something?”
“Shoot,” he said and made his fingers into the shape of a cap-gun. He laughed like a jolly Santa mixed with the gruffness of a life hard-lived.
“What is it about this place?” Thandie said. “There’s so much energy and optimism in the air, even among the guests.”
Pa smiled upside down. Her question stumped him, perhaps. He paused and threaded both arms through the tool bag’s handle. “It wasn’t like this before.”
“Before what?”
“I take it back,” Pa said. “It was like this a long time ago. But after the cove dried up, people moved away. Everyone that did stay accepted that the good days were behind them and did nothing to create change. But then, America showed up here and flipped the whole place on its head. There was a big fancy resort looking to build in the area, but after we came together, they couldn’t get what they wanted. We found our joy again and rediscovered what it means to be a community. A real one where people lift each other up instead of tearing things down.”
“Reminds me of home.”
“Where’s that?” Pa asked.
“A little town near Omaha, but on the Iowa side.”
“Ah, corn country. Do you miss it?”
“I miss some of my friends. My parents. But I’m not ready to go back anytime soon,” Thandie admitted, though she was unaccustomed to saying it out loud.
“Sounds like a story there.”
She nodded.
“Uh oh.” Pa pointed with his chin. “That story will have to wait for another time. Here comes the boss.”
Leo came through the doors carrying a large stack of white, freshly laundered towels. “Just the person I was looking for. How was the morning’s activity?”
“Good. It drizzled, but the gazebo kept us all dry, and the sound and scent of the rain were relaxing,” Thandie said. “What do you need?”
Leo handed her the towels, still warm from the dryer. “I need you to take these to the Bear Cabin.”
“Isn’t that Grant—I mean, Mr. Goldie’s cabin?”
“You got it,” he said.
“I’m happy to deliver these, but?—”
“But what? Is everything going as you planned?” Leo asked and his face tensed with concern.
Thandie didn’t want to give him anything more to worry about than he already had on his plate. “Everything is great. I’ll take these right away.” She placed them in the cart.
“Where did you get this contraption?” Leo pointed to the cart on her bike.
She nodded at Pa, who was beaming.
“I did it,” Pa said. “Your director here was having a time of it getting her things down to the gazebo. And I needed something fun to do other than dig that drainage trench behind the barn. Do you like what I came up with?”
“Nice work, Pa. I owe you one.”
“I’ll add it to your tab,” he said as he walked away. “But, for you, Thandie, this one’s on the house.”
“Thanks, Pa,” Thandie said and smirked as though she’d won a prize.
“What’s on the schedule for this afternoon?” Leo asked from the door.
“Flower arranging.” Thandie threw her leg over the rear tire and sat down on the bike seat. “And then supper.”
“Sounds good,” Leo said. “Now get going.”
Looking at the fast-moving gray clouds hovering low in the sky, Thandie knew she needed to hurry if she were going to get the towels to Grant’s cabin while they were still fresh—and dry. She pedaled and let gravity pull her and the cart down the path. Grant’s cabin was situated closer to the old shoreline than the one where she was staying, and between the barn and the gazebo.
Thankfully when she came around the back side of his cabin, it looked empty. She could just put the towels right inside and skedaddle before accidentally having another encounter with him. Not now. She needed to focus on all the guests, not only Grant, but he was making it hard for her to do anything other than that. He’s just so good-looking, she thought, swooning.
Taking the stack of towels in hand, she knocked.
While she waited, she looked over her shoulder to the dancing wildflowers. The lady trio walked by on the path and waved. Thandie pressed the pile of towels to her chest with one hand and waved back to them. “Heading up for lunch?”
One of them nodded and pointed up the ramble. With the sun shining through puffy white and gray clouds in quick passing intervals and a steady breeze, it was a beautiful time of day for the quarter-mile walk, though she would have taken a bike or an umbrella at a minimum if she were them.
Thandie knocked again. With no answer, she used her master key and entered the front door. “Hello?” she called out, just in case Grant was in there. The Bear Cabin was so unlike hers. The walls were made of rolled logs with white chinking. The window frames were painted white to match. A round iron chandelier hung from a long wooden beam at the peak of the ceiling. Despite its small size, the studio space had a cozy appeal.
Beside the entry was a coatrack and a sitting area with two oversized leather chairs and a small game table. A kitchen was tucked into one corner, and a bed and desk made up the opposite side of the room. It was so quaint, but now she felt as though she was violating his privacy by being essentially inside of his bedroom.
A door hung ajar near the kitchen, and she could see a white glossy bathtub and a porcelain pedestal sink with brass legs. She walked in and looked for a place to put the extra towels. Behind the door, she found a narrow linen cabinet and opened it. Inside, she discovered all of his toiletries on the top shelf, in addition to a stack of perfectly good, folded white towels.
She closed the doors and placed the extra towels where he could see them on the back of the toilet tank. There was no way he hadn’t seen the extra towels on the shelf below his personal things! Curious, she opened the door again and inventoried the other shelves. One held several rolls of toilet tissue and a small tray of complimentary toiletry items, such as shampoo and lotion.
The bottommost shelf was left empty. She straightened the rolls and existing towels in their designated places, but paused at the top shelf. A tortoiseshell comb lay perfectly perpendicular to the front edge, and his toothbrush lay in the center of a long, narrow dish. His deodorant, face cream, lotion, hair gel, and under-eye moisturizer stood like little toy soldiers in a row.
He was meticulous, she had to give him that.
“Ahem,” a voice broke her snooping, and she whipped around. “Hi.” Grant gave a wave with his fingers.
The cabinet doors clattered, and items toppled over inside as the door latched. “Um. Hello,” she said. “I was just—um—bringing you extra towels.”
“I hoped you would,” he said.
“You did? Why?”
“I felt really bad about how I behaved earlier. You have a job to do here, and I took advantage of that,” Grant admitted, though it wasn’t quite an apology for the way he recoiled and stormed away from the gazebo.
Something twisted in her stomach. “I hadn’t noticed anything,” she said. “Just two adults enjoying each other’s company. However, I do have a job to do. I put your towels just in there and please let me, or any of the other staff, know how we can make your stay here more enjoyable.”
She was proud of how professional, though slightly cold, she sounded.
“So,” he met her in the middle of the room, his bedroom, and took her by the hands. Warm hands. “There’s nothing between us?”
His question had several meanings. She felt the electricity turn every hair on her arms on end. There was something between them, but admitting that out loud would ruin everything. She couldn’t chance losing her job. She pulled her hands away and broke their connection. His eyes lowered ever so slightly at the sudden parting.
“Grant, I can’t. And if things were different, I think I’d like to get to know you better, like why you line up all your toiletries, that no one else is going to see, in perfect little rows, or why you know more about yoga than I do, or what a man like you is doing at a wellness retreat, alone, in the first place. But that would be out of place for me.”
“I line up my toiletries because I like order.” He paused and closed the distance between them. “I spent a year in Bali learning yoga from a master guru.” He brushed a ringlet behind her ear. “And I think I’d like to know you better, too.”
“In a professional way,” she said quickly and hid the quiver in her voice.
“Of course,” he said and moved out of the way of the door. “Will I see you later?”
“Flower arranging at the dock at three. Then supper. Tomorrow, we’ll have breakfast outdoors. I’ve got something really fun planned.”
“And the bonfire tomorrow night?” Grant asked as she brushed by him.
His hand fell to her elbow, and she paused looking into his eyes. Her breath caught at his touch. “It looks like rain,” she said and put her hand out the door. A drop, and then another landed in her hand. “Wear your poncho.”