9. Bar
BAR
No one was in sight as they entered the lobby, but cheerful voices could be distantly heard from the hotel restaurant. Bar took Joy’s coat and hung it up with his. Joy smiled at him, the pink of her cold-tinted cheeks enhancing her already stunning sex appeal. It was not the pristine elegance of the perfectly made-up beauties that Bar had dated from time to time, the kind of dates his dad had liked to see him with. Joy was fresh and down to earth and real, every part of her.
Bar’s general plan for the morning had been to grab a muffin before Hester saw him and slink off to the honeymoon suite to see if he could get enough internet to get some work done. Now he discovered that the potential pleasure of having breakfast with Joy outweighed the worry that Hester would think of a way to poison him without risking the lives of her other guests.
As if sensing the drift of his thoughts, Joy said, “We could get carry-out and go eat in one of the rooms.”
It was tempting, but if he stayed with Joy longer than the weekend, he was going to have to learn to handle her friends and especially her sister. His head refused to think permanently , but his heart, or perhaps the shifter animal that was his instinctive side, was fixed on it anyway.
“Nonsense, it’ll be fun,” he said cheerily.
“I’ll taste-test your food,” Joy suggested, bright and playful. She led the way into the restaurant.
It looked as if poison was off the table, so to speak, because there was a breakfast buffet laid out in the dining area. It was simple fare, scrambled eggs and bacon and some more of Joy’s baked goods, muffins and other breakfast pastries rather than cookies this time. The buffet table was decorated with small touches of Christmas cheer, including scattered tinsel and a reindeer-shaped plate holder.
Hester appeared with sweat-straggling hair bound up under a hairnet. She stopped to greet Joy with evident happiness.
“Just load up a plate. We’re almost out of eggs, but there are more on the way. It looks like we’re going to go through your lovely pastries faster than we thought.”
Bar was surprised to see that Doreen and Leah weren’t the only people in the dining room. There were some other couples, a few singles, and even a family with kids. “Who are all these people?” he asked.
Hester’s friendly look at Joy turned into a scowl at him, and Bar realized he could have phrased that more tactfully. But she answered him.
“Locals,” she said. “The lodge has been part of the neighborhood social life for a long time. The previous owners before me were getting old and having health issues, so it was closed more often than it was open, but we’re opening it up again. We had a lot more than this planned, but we’ve had to scale back our holiday plans this year because of—well, because of you , and then the weather happened.”
“I didn’t see any cars,” Joy said. “How did they get here?”
“Most of the people here this morning came up on skis or snowmobiles. Mauro says that there have always been quite a few drop-ins in the winter, even when the weather was bad. This place is a local institution. Not that you’d understand that,” she added darkly to Bar.
“I’m not out to destroy your life, Hester.”
“He really isn’t,” Joy said, and Bar experienced a small clutch of shock; he wasn’t used to people standing up for him. “It’s not personal.”
“It feels personal,” Hester said. “I thought you were supposed to be talking to him for me.”
Joy winced, and Bar felt an odd, different, much less pleasant clutch in his chest. He had completely forgotten that Joy had a reason for hanging out with him beyond mere friendliness.
Before Hester could say anything else, Mauro arrived with a replacement tray of scrambled eggs. “How was your walk up the hill?” he asked. He wasn’t as friendly as Hester had been to Joy, but he was courteous. “Did you enjoy a lovely sunrise?”
“Very beautiful, thank you,” Bar said politely. Joy glanced at him.
Mauro replaced the eggs and swept off the empty tray. Joy picked up a plate.
“You’re so different around other people,” she said quietly.
Bar was distracted with his own concerns about Joy’s motives, so that it took him a minute to follow her. “Different how?”
“More polite and formal. It’s really hard to explain if you haven’t noticed. You’re so much warmer and more charming with me.” She smiled at him. “I think they’d like you a lot if they saw that side of you.”
“Hmm,” he said noncommittally.
Joy frowned at him, visibly puzzled. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. Let’s eat.”
He knew that Hester had asked Joy to look over the paperwork for her. But was that all? He hated the way that concerns were now twisting around each other in the back of his mind, winding and unwinding like smoke.
He had learned early on that, while every kid at school wanted to be his friend, what they really wanted was to cultivate a buddy with rich parents. They were happy to accept invitations to weekend skiing trips and other excursions, but when he really needed friends, no one was there.
It was the same with the women he’d dated—gold-diggers, the lot of them, none of them actually interested in him. And with his business contacts, of course it went without saying that they were there for purely mercenary reasons.
He wanted to believe Joy was different, but he had to swallow a tightness in his throat as he gathered food onto his plate that he wasn’t sure he had an appetite for.
Still, it was hard to remain suspicious of Joy’s motives when she smiled at him with affection that recalled her delightfully wriggly warmth in his arms, her lips lush and willing on his.
“There’s a nice table by the window,” she said. “Or we could sit with Leah and Doreen.”
The absolute last thing Bar wanted was a third or fourth wheel, but he smiled gamely. “Let’s join them. I’d like to get to know them better.”
Joy looked a bit dubious about this, but they went across the restaurant to the table where Leah was sitting with Doreen and a man Bar vaguely recognized from the lodge the previous night. The guy looked like a backwoods lumberjack, big and heavily muscled in a plaid shirt, with too-long-for-fashion hair tied back in a short ponytail. When he turned to give Bar the unfriendly look that Bar was coming to expect, there were scars covering one side of his face.
“Morning, all,” Joy said brightly. She took the seat by Leah, leaving an open place between herself and Scarred Dude. Bar decided it could be worse and took the offered seat.
“Morning,” he said to the table in general. “Hi, I’m Bar,” he added to the man-mountain next to him.
The only answer was a grunt.
“Where did you go this morning?” Leah asked Joy. “I woke up and you were gone.”
“Shockingly, your big sister is capable of finding her way around without falling off a mountain,” Joy said dryly, buttering a muffin. “I went for a walk in the snow.”
“Not alone, I see,” Leah said, her gaze darting to Bar.
“We climbed a trail behind the lodge. It’s beautiful back there. Have you been up that trail?” Joy asked Doreen. “The one that goes to the top of the hill behind the lodge?”
Surprisingly, this brought a smile out of Doreen. “Yes, I went hiking back there on the day I first got to know Wick.” She nudged the lumberjack. Wick gave another grunt which could mean anything, but when he looked at Doreen, there was warmth and affection in his eyes. “You want to tell them how we met? It’s quite a story.”
After a moment, Wick said with a faint trace of a smile on the unscarred side of his mouth, “Not really that much of a story. And you weren’t on a hill, as I recall it. You were in my pond.”
“Your pond?” Joy asked.
“I was exploring the hiking trails and got a little turned around,” Doreen said.
“Lost,” Wick said.
Doreen nudged him again. “If you keep going over that hill, there’s a beautiful view of a valley with Wick’s and my house—of course, it was just Wick’s house then—beside a scenic pond. But I wandered around until I found myself actually beside the pond, and then I, er?—”
“Fell in,” Wick said. “Lost all your clothes.”
Doreen blushed, making her look girlishly fetching. “I’d almost suspect you of arranging it somehow.”
“Me? You were looking for me, I remember.”
They were now gazing at each other with a lost-in-each-other’s eyes expression that suggested their dining companions had faded away. Bar glanced at Joy and Leah, and found that, for once, both sisters seemed to share the third-wheel feeling.
“So are there any more good hiking trails around here?” Joy asked.
The conversation continued, with a few halts and starts, staying on safe topics. Doreen recommended some scenic hikes that she said weren’t too difficult or dangerous in the winter season. “Just don’t go too high above the lodge. The snow really gets deep on the upper peaks, and there’s avalanche danger, at least according to Wick. I haven’t personally seen one.”
“Avalanches?” Joy protested. “I don’t want any of those!”
“You’ll be fine around the lodge,” Wick said. “Not really a problem unless you’re into hardcore mountain climbing.”
Joy giggled. “That’s definitely not me, so I guess I’m safe.” She turned to Leah. “You want to come?”
Leah gestured at the crutches propped up by her chair. “Do I look like I’m cut out for mountain climbing?”
Joy snorted. “I’ve seen you bounding around like a mountain goat on those things.”
Leah shook her head. “I think I’ll pass. Doreen invited me back to her and Wick’s place after breakfast to check out their logging equipment.” She added with a similarly reluctant attitude, “You and, uh, and Bar could come if you want.”
“I think we’ll leave you to it and go for a hike,” Joy said quickly.
They separated after breakfast on semi-friendly terms. Leah went off with Doreen and Wick. Joy was full of ideas for hikes.
“I think I might like to try the snowshoes this time. Or maybe even skis, if they have any. Do you suppose they have some?”
“We could ask.”
Mauro and Hester were clearing away dishes from the buffet. As they approached, Joy squeezed Bar’s hand. “You know, they’re doing all this by themselves. I’m going to ask if I can help out. You’re welcome to go explore on your own for a while—at least, if you don’t enjoy the idea of washing dishes for the next couple of hours.”
Bar could hardly recall washing a dish in his life. It certainly wouldn’t have been his first choice of vacation activity. But doing it with Joy was somehow more appealing. Not to mention, it might help convince Hester that he wasn’t the devil incarnate.
“I think that’s a great idea,” he said, fingers still tingling from the touch of Joy’s hand. “I’d love to.”
Seeing them coming, Hester said impatiently, “If you need anything, we won’t be free for a while yet.” She had a stack of plates in each hand and stains on her apron.
“Actually,” Joy said, “we want to help.”
“We?” Hester repeated skeptically.
“Yes, we.” Bar tried to curb his sarcasm, which he knew wouldn’t improve the situation. “Whatever you need, clearing away or cleaning up. Just give us instructions.”
Mauro turned around from the half-demolished buffet with his eyebrows almost up to his hairline. “Actually, we could really use some help bussing the tables—don’t you think, love?”
“I think that would be all right,” Hester said. She eyed Bar as if suspecting him of a trick. “If you two can collect dishes from the tables and bring them into the kitchen, we’ll show you what to do next. Oh, and put the soiled tablecloths in the laundry hamper. That’s in the kitchen too; you’ll see it.”
A whirlwind half hour of activity followed. It didn’t take nearly as long as Bar had expected, with four pairs of hands helping out. Soon the industrial-sized dishwasher was loaded and running, the restaurant was clean with fresh linens put out, and no trace of the buffet remained.
Hester flopped limply on a stool in the kitchen and pulled off her hairnet to run a hand through her sweat-damp hair. “If we’re going to be open full time, we absolutely have got to hire some off-season help,” she said to Mauro, who was stripping off his apron.
“Thanks, folks,” Mauro told Joy and Bar. “This would have taken a lot longer without you.”
“Do you really run this place all by yourselves?” Joy asked, rinsing her hands in the sink.
“Normally we have a staff,” Hester said. She rested her temple against her fist on the edge of the counter. “But we only had our housekeeper through the end of the regular season, the cook quit when all of this lease business started, and—if we’re going to run in the off season, we definitely have to figure out how to keep people all year.”
She glanced narrowly at Bar, as if realizing that her plans had to be filtered through Bar’s intentions for the lodge.
Bar, for his part, had discovered that working side by side with Joy, even in the hot, damp kitchen, was more fun than he would have expected. Not that he’d want to bus dishes every day.
But he hadn’t really thought about the amount of work that went into running the lodge. Hester and Mauro were evidently cooking, cleaning the rooms, shoveling snow, and doing everything else that kept the place going. And occasionally taking time out to point a tourist in the direction of a hiking trail, he thought.
“I really wouldn’t mind doing some part-time cooking while I’m here,” Joy said. “Or serving tables. I’ve done a little waitressing in my time, too.”
“Goodness, no,” Hester said. “I didn’t mean to make you feel like you should be working on your vacation. That being said, I’m not going to stand on foolish pride. If you want to help out with the dishes now and then, I wouldn’t mind the extra hands.”
“Count me in too,” Bar said before he could think better of it.
Hester and Mauro both stared at him as if he’d grown a second head.
“You want a kitchen job?” Hester said blankly.
“I’m not a great cook and I don’t know anything about waiting tables, but I can definitely wash a dish now and then.”
Joy flashed him a bright smile. Hester looked torn between relief and suspicion.
“I just said I wasn’t going to stand on foolish pride,” she said. “So I’m not going to put up any arguments. But if we have to replace a bunch of broken dishes, I won’t be happy.”
“Your dishes are safe with me,” Bar promised, hoping it turned out to be true.
Having Hester look at him with something other than absolute loathing was a new experience, and, it turned out, not a terrible one.
But it was Joy’s heart that really mattered to him, and her eyes shining at him like stars that made him think he would happily work all day in a kitchen, if it was with her.