“I have to go,” she said again and forced herself to head towards the door, leaving him alone in the dancing lights.
“Come find me,” she heard him say before she closed the door between them.
4
Nathan
Every time Nathan thought about the girl from room 27, he found himself smiling. But he found himself worried too. Once she’d left the ballroom, Nathan had turned the music off and the lights out and returned to the lounge to chat with Jerry, the bartender, before finally heading off to bed. He’d jerked off that night, thinking about what it might be like to make her throw her head back and moan, what her body might feel like against his.
In the morning, Nathan tried to forget all about her. She was just another guest, he told himself...a pretty one who said interesting things. There was a depth to her that he wanted to fall right into. But he had work to do because one of their supply vans was broken down and he wanted to see if he could fix it without calling the mechanic, and he had to call the gondola people about some replacement parts, and hopefully, nobody would call with problems in their rooms today.
“Feed me, Morris!” Nathan declared, sitting down at his favorite spot in the massive kitchen behind the dining hall. The sun had only just risen and he rubbed his eyes, craving coffee. Cody, who got up as early as Nathan did to prepare breakfast, whipped him with a dishtowel. “Feed yourself, freeloader.”
This was typical breakfast banter and Nathan only responded by flipping his brother the bird and leaning on his other hand, still feeling half asleep until Cody set a tall mug of steaming coffee down in front of him with Nathan’s preferred dash of creamer and sweetener.
“Bless you,” Nathan murmured. He took a sip and sighed, feeling a little more human. Really, mornings were his favorite time of day. Nothing was more beautiful than the sunrise over Black Bear Lake, in his opinion. He liked being one of the first people up at the lodge along with his brother and starting the day together. “What’s on the menu today?”
“Spinach and gruyere quiche,” Cody said as he bustled around, setting out ingredients and simmering water. “Side of thick-cut bacon. Also got some raspberry muffins. They’ll melt in your mouth.”
“I hate spinach,” Nathan reported.
“Pain in the ass,” Cody said behind him. “I’ll make you regular eggs.”
“I’ll take one of those muffins?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
The smell of the quiche was mouth-watering even though Nathan knew he wouldn’t eat it if it was put in front of him. Minutes later, Cody set a buttered muffin in front of him. As Nathan ate his breakfast, he thought about Alanna and her mysterious sadness while Cody complained about annoying guests. The sound of sizzling bacon and the clang of pots and pans was the sound of a good day beginning to Nathan’s mind. He nodded along with Cody’s ramble as he ate his muffin and drank his coffee, hopping up to refill the mug himself when he had drained it.
“There’s a girl in 27,” Nathan reported, sitting back down with his refilled coffee.
“Okay.” Cody stopped hovering over the eggs and stared at Nathan. “There’s a mushroom in the refrigerator. Are we playing vague non-sequiturs now?”
“Shut up. No, I mean there’s something wrong there,” Nathan said. Somehow Cody had known he would want another muffin and set a freshly warmed one in front of him. “It’s a sense. Ya know, instinct? I talked to her last night.” He decided not to tell Cody about the dancing, not quite trusting him not to tattle to Conner. “She’s just so...sad. And there’s something up with the guy she’s staying with. It’s bugging me.”
Cody walked all the way around his long kitchen island to stand in front of Nathan and point his greasy spatula at his brother. “Do not get involved with guest drama.”
“I’m not—”
“Do not get involved with guest drama!” Cody said. “It’s probably just like you said, a shitty marriage or a relationship. Let it lie!”
“I know, but—”
“What’s Connor’s rule?”
“Cody!”
“Nathan! What is Connor’s rule!”
“Don’t get involved with the guests,” Nathan recited, rolling his eyes.
“Do not get involved with the guests!”
Cody went back to the eggs and finally set down yet another plate in front of Nathan, who dug in, growling slightly as he attacked the bacon. When he was finally satisfied, about halfway through his third piece of toast, Nathan sat back, drained the rest of his coffee and said, “Hypothetically speaking, what if there was some real shit wrong? It hasn’t happened before but…I mean what if we saw some shit go down? I’m not letting some innocent girl get hurt.”
“In that case,” Cody said, “I’d say go with your gut. But you don’t know shit.”
“It was a hypothetical!” Nathan laughed, raising his hands in surrender.
“Get outta my kitchen.”
“I’m goin’, I’m goin’.”
Nathan had told Alanna to come find him. But he didn’t think she would.
He was wrong.
He was holed up in the lodge’s spacious garage, tinkering with the supply van. He was theorizing some salt damage in the undercarriage and he was lying back on a creeper with a mini-flashlight stuck in his mouth when he heard footsteps.
Nathan fully expected the footsteps to belong to one of his brothers, but when he rolled out from beneath the van and saw Alanna standing over him, looking uncertain, he got that itchy feeling in his head again. Only this time, it didn’t feel bad exactly.
“You told me to come find you,” she said quickly. She was wearing a black skirt and tights and one of her cashmere sweaters. “I asked Eric if I could speak to you and he pointed me here…”
He sat up, eye level with her shapely legs encased in those shimmery black stockings, and sucked in a breath, looking down to wipe his hands on a rag.
“I’m glad you did,” he said and got to his feet.
Nathan had stripped off his sweater and he’d gotten grease on the grey tank top he wore to work on the cars. He leaned on the van and wished he was a little more cleaned-up but it didn’t seem to bother Alanna, judging by the way her gaze raked up and down his body. He flexed unconsciously.
She licked her lips and nodded at the van, approaching him hesitantly. She reminded him of a scared deer. “You’re a mechanic too?”
“No,” he said, chuckling. “Not really. There are a few things I can fix so I always give it a shot before we take it to a shop.”
“Hmm.” She nodded and clasped her hands in front of her. She was clearly nervous, her gaze skirting around him as if searching for anyone else to look.
It was adorable.
“I was watching TV,” she said. “I mean I was trying to watch TV but there’s nothing good on. There’s never anything good on, you know? Sometimes, I feel like I’ve missed out on things in the human world while being a bear. But then I turn on the TV and a lot of it seems so...angry. Or sad.”