4. Joy
JOY
Hester, Doreen, and Wick were all glaring at Bar as if they could incinerate him with their stares where he stood. If looks could kill, he would be a smoldering pile of ash.
Joy felt an odd tingle of protectiveness, as if she wanted to step between him and the glowering residents of the lodge.
Bar looked up from lifting the cart over the threshold. He closed the door, retrieved a briefcase from the lower level of the cart on top of the Tupperware, and straightened. Joy watched his hopeful smile, aimed mainly at her, dissolve into a cooler, more dignified expression.
“Ms. Hatherill,” he said to Hester.
“Mr. Grey,” Hester returned. “I hope you had a pleasant drive.” Her voice was more frigid than the wintry chill in the lobby. If icicles could have formed on each word like a cartoon character’s, they would have.
“It was fine,” Bar said. “No issues.”
He was like a different person than he had been with her, Joy thought. Stiff, formal, all the warmth and guy-next-door charm she had experienced during their rescue on the road hidden behind a cold exterior. He looked like he was facing down a business meeting that he wasn’t looking forward to.
She was also aware of Leah, beside her, coiled like a snake about to bite.
Hester took a breath and went on. “Joy here is a real estate agent. She’s going to take a look at the paperwork you want me to sign before we do anything with it. All right?”
Bar’s cool gaze swiveled to Joy, and for an instant she glimpsed a flash of true emotion, surprise and something else, before his face went cool again. “That’s fine.”
“With the weather so terrible, there’s no chance of you driving out again tonight.” Unfortunately , Hester’s tone seemed to suggest. She reached for the row of keys on the pegboard behind the desk and took down the largest, which had a heart-shaped head. “You can have the honeymoon suite. It’s upstairs to the right, at the end of the hall. If you have luggage, my husband will help you with it once he’s done working on the furnace. Dinner is at five in the restaurant.”
She delivered the speech with clipped, frosty formality, providing no opportunity to get a word in edgewise.
Bar nodded and took the key. He gave Joy and Leah a brief, formal nod. Joy thought she detected a spark of warmth when his eyes met hers, however.
“I hope I’ll see you in the restaurant later,” she said spontaneously.
Bar looked a little startled, and for an instant his cool mask slipped a bit and his eyes grew very warm. They were gray, Joy saw, to match his surname, with dark lashes. “I’d like that,” he said with a hint of a smile.
Then he turned, briefcase in hand, and went up the stairs. Doreen refused to yield, so he had to go around her, edging narrowly past between her and the railing. The whole time she went on tapping the wrench in the palm of her hand.
After Bar had vanished upstairs, Hester said, “Doreen, please don’t threaten our guests. Even if it’s him .”
“I wasn’t threatening him.” Doreen smiled grimly, displaying her teeth. “Believe me, when I threaten him, you’ll know it.”
“I knew we couldn’t trust that guy!” Leah exclaimed. “You’re lucky he didn’t steal your cookies, Joy.”
“For heaven’s sake, my cookies are not that much of a commodity,” Joy said impatiently. “Do you want some help getting them to the kitchen?”
“No, we’ll handle it.” Hester took down another pair of keys from the pegboard. “Do you already know him?”
“He covets my sister’s cookies,” Leah said darkly.
Joy was starting to think cookies were not the actual issue here. “We met on the road,” she told Hester. “Our car got into a skid, and he helped us out of the ditch. He seemed nice,” she added, a bit wistfully.
“He’d better be nice while he’s staying here,” Hester said between her teeth. Taking a breath, she got her hostess face back on and gave them the keys. “Anyway, you two are at the other end of the upstairs hall, a left turn at the top of the stairs. You have rooms 201 and 203. There’s a lovely view of the snow-covered woods. I’ll get some space heaters sent up to you, and just let me know if you need anything else.”
Bar, Joy noticed, had not received an offer of a space heater. She wondered if Hester and the others were hoping that if he was uncomfortable enough, he’d just go away. She took one set of keys and passed the others to Leah.
“Since I’m looking at the paperwork anyway, I could talk to him. I really do think he seems nice enough, and maybe if the situation explained to him, he’ll be more willing to negotiate.”
“You’re welcome to try,” Hester said. She looked tired. “I’ve already talked myself blue in the face. I don’t know if you can find some deeply buried heart in that Scrooge, but you’d be doing all of us an invaluable favor if you can.”
“We could Scrooge him, you know,” Leah announced, brightening. “I’d make a great Marley. My theater group did A Christmas Carol three years in a row. Technically I was playing Tiny Tim’s sister, but I understudied for Marley, Scrooge’s sister, and the Ghost of Christmas Future, so I know all the lines, and I’m also great at improv?—”
Joy put a hand on her sister’s arm. “That sounds like a really good way to get sued. And that’s if you don’t fall out the window, tangled in chains.”
“Please, no Christmas ghosts in the lodge,” Hester said. “Doreen, could you go look for the space heaters? I think they’re in the outbuilding with the generator. Hopefully we’ll have the heat back on soon, and the lobby will be pretty warm once the fire gets going.”
The chill was already starting to fade from the air. Joy noticed that Wick had vanished at some point during the conversation, leaving behind a crackling fire throwing out warmth into the large space.
“Any more bags in your car?” Doreen asked. “I can grab ‘em, since I’m coming up with the space heaters soon anyway.”
“Yes, there’s a bag in the trunk.” Joy hesitated and then offered Doreen her car keys. It was such a small place that she had no qualms about it. She was also increasingly sure that Doreen, and probably some of the others, were shifters as well. She had vaguely heard around the local shifter community that the new owners of the lodge were shifters or at least shifter-friendly.
“Thanks,” Doreen said, spinning the key ring around her strong, callused finger. “I’ll be up with ‘em soon. There’s an elevator at the side there if you all want.”
“I’m good with stairs,” Leah said briskly, and as if to prove it she all but skipped over to the stairs on her crutches. Joy followed with their smaller bag.
As they went upstairs, an increasingly beautiful view was revealed through the big front windows. The glittering Christmas lights looked even brighter and more striking from up here.
“Do not slip and fall while showing off,” Joy said under her breath to Leah, who was ostentatiously refusing to use the railing, as one of her crutch tips skidded. The stairs were faux-marble and a bit slippery, although there was a runner providing both traction and looks.
“I’m fine,” Leah said testily. She sidled a bit closer to the railing. “But seriously, I bet that big truck has snow chains, don’t you think? Using his own chains is a Marley sort of thing to do?—”
“You heard the lady. No chains, no ghosts, no Scrooging.” Joy frowned. “Is Scrooging a verb?”
“If you can do it, you can verb it,” Leah declared confidently.
They reached the upstairs hall. Joy thought it seemed a bit warmer, perhaps because of the heat from the fire rising, although she could still see her breath. There was a row of numbered doors in front of them.
“Left,” Joy said, briskly correcting her sister’s trajectory as Leah started to turn right. “She said it’s at the end of the hall to the left.”
“I know that,” Leah retorted. “I was simply going to scout?—”
“No scouting, no Scrooging.” Joy glanced down the hall. The door at the end had no number, just a big heart. Honeymoon suite indeed, she thought, and then found herself wondering what exactly made it the honeymoon suite. The heart on the door? A big, warm, comfortable bed with Bar in it?—?
“Well, someone decided to be a killjoy,” Leah said, unlocking the door to 201.
It turned out to be a corner room, not wildly sumptuous, but very comfortable; both their bedrooms from their small apartment would probably fit in here. There was a king-sized bed with a quilt in rustic green and brown, and a desk under the window, where snow swirled down and ticked against the glass.
“Ooh, dibs,” Leah exclaimed.
Joy tried the door that appeared to lead into the next room. There was, as promised, a bathroom—no tub, but there was a recently remodeled shower enclosure, and everything was spotless.
She went through the bathroom into the other room. It wasn’t quite as nice as the corner room, but the bed was big and comfortable-looking, and after the stressful and exhausting drive, Joy found herself wanting to sink into it immediately.
A knock on the door of 201 announced Doreen’s arrival. She came in with their other large suitcase and two electric space heaters.
“Let me know if this isn’t enough.” She knelt to set up one of them beside the big bed, where Leah was perched on the end. “I think we have more, so I can ask Mauro—he’s Hester’s husband, the co-owner.”
“The one who’s fixing the furnace?” Joy asked. As if on cue, there was a muffled thump; it sounded like it might have come from the roof.
“The one who insisted on climbing up and doing the hard part,” Doreen said. “I’m the lodge’s fixit person, the one who works on the vehicles and so forth. But Mauro has been the general all-around handyman for years, so he knows the ins and outs of the place. I have more specialized knowledge when it comes to fixing engines and so forth. Furnaces aren’t really my bag, but I’m happy to learn.”
Leah bounced a little on the end of the bed. “Oh, I’d like to learn too. Can you show me?”
Doreen flipped the heater on and, as hot air began to blast out, looked up with a smile. “Sure, I’d be happy to. What’s your field?”
“Well, technically I work for a phone bank,” Leah said. She wrinkled her nose. “But I also volunteer with the local theater. I do stage special effects, pulleys and colored smoke and similar, plus a little bit of acting.”
Doreen looked fascinated. “That sounds amazing.”
“She’s always had a head for gadgets,” Joy explained.
“Well, let’s save the tour until the heat’s back on, but I’d be happy to come get you and show you around,” Doreen offered. “Right now I need to go see if Mauro needs any help. Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything else. Are you good to set that up in the other bedroom?”
“Yeah, it looks pretty basic.”
She left, and Joy lugged the other space heater into the bathroom. She set it so that it was blasting hot air at the shower.
“As soon as it’s less Arctic in here, I’m going to take a shower,” she told Leah. “Need to use the bathroom first?”
“I want a shower too. Rock paper scissors.”
They threw for it. Joy lost. She took it with grace; at least if Leah was in the shower, she wouldn’t be tiptoeing down the hall to rattle chains outside Bar’s door. “Good enough. Let me know if you need anything.”
She retreated into the other bedroom and opened her bag. What was Bar doing now? she wondered, bustling around, unpacking her things. Was the honeymoon suite any warmer? She hadn’t wanted Leah sneaking off down the hall, but suddenly she found herself wondering if there was time, while Leah was showering, to slip off and see how Bar was settling in. Maybe they could start having that discussion about paperwork. Not that paperwork was what she really wanted to be doing with Bar, but it might open the door to?—
A loud scream reverberated from inside the bathroom. Joy dropped her makeup bag.
“Leah!”
She bounded across the room and tore open the door.
“What’s wrong? Did you slip? Oh ....”
Leah was sitting on the closed toilet lid with a towel wrapped around herself. Her hair was dripping. The shower door was half open and the shower was still running full blast, filling the room with cold, wet spray that, in the chill of the bathroom, looked like steam until you noticed it wasn't making things any warmer and in fact was doing the opposite.
“It’s ice cold,” Leah said, unnecessarily.
“Oh. Right. The furnace probably runs the water heater, too.”
They stared at each other for a minute, then Joy said, “I saw a deck of cards on the desk.”