The scent of coffee struck Natalie the moment she stepped into the kitchen. She then spotted a blonde woman by the coffeepot. About medium height and with a curvy figure, the woman was pouring steaming liquid into a cup. Still only halfway through the door, Natalie froze at once, her hands tightening anxiously around her daughter as she stared at the stranger. She had no idea who the woman was, but she did look kind of familiar, and Natalie was fretting over that when the woman turned and smiled at her.
“One sweetener and two splashes of Turtle creamer, right?” she asked, and proceeded to treat the coffee she’d just poured with what she’d just listed off. Concentrating on what she was doing, the woman asked mildly, “How is your head this morning? Any headache? Fuzzy thoughts? Blurry vision?”
Natalie almost sagged with relief as memories from the night before began to flood her mind and she recalled that the woman fixing her coffee was Dr. Dani Pimms.
Valerian MacKenzie, the golfer whose golf cart had died on the seventeenth hole, worked with Dani’s husband, Decker. When Natalie had refused to go to the hospital, he’d called in a favor and asked his coworker’s wife to drop by and take a look at her to be sure she was all right.
Natalie had at first been annoyed when Valerian had returned to the office and announced that his “doctor friend” was coming. She hadn’t appreciated his overstepping and had been furious with him right up until Dani Pimms had arrived half an hour later. The woman had one heck of a bedside manner, or couch-side manner in this case, Natalie supposed, since she’d still been on the couch in her office when Dani and her husband had arrived. The couple had barely entered before Natalie had felt herself begin to relax, and moments later she was sure that allowing the woman to examine her was for the best. After all, Mia needed her. It was better to make sure that the blow to the head she’d taken hadn’t caused some unseen damage.
Her memories got a little blurry after that. She knew the woman had examined her, flashing light in her eyes and asking questions. She also had a vague recollection of being given a local anesthetic to numb her forehead, and then Dr. Dani stitching her up. Or perhaps she’d used some kind of glue. Natalie remembered her saying something about liquid stitches and surgical glue to keep the scarring down. She’d also given her some kind of painkiller for the headache. Finally, she’d helped her get down to her bedroom where Natalie had assured her she’d be fine on her own and get herself to bed. Natalie had then climbed into bed in her clothes, intending only to nap for a little bit and then go out to see to mowing the course.
That memory made her frown. Obviously, she hadn’t got the mowing done, which meant she’d have to attend to it now before the golfers started showing up and she was juggling running the check-in desk and the kitchen for those who wanted breakfast before golfing. Natalie’s gaze dropped to Mia even as she thought that, but then she decided Mia would just have to come with her. It wasn’t that big a deal. She’d done it before, but while Mia always found it entertaining at first, she tended to get bored and then either just dozed off or got whiny. Natalie was afraid it would be the whiny response this time, since the child had just woken up.
A cup of steaming coffee appeared in her line of vision, and Natalie blinked in surprise at it.
“It is one sweetener and two splashes Turtle cream, isn’t it?” Dani asked.
“I—Yes,” Natalie murmured, shifting Mia to her hip to free one hand. She took the beverage, but then glanced at Dani Pimms and asked with curiosity, “How did you know?”
“You told me last night,” Dani said with a faint smile. “It was one of my questions to see if your thinking was clear.”
“Oh.” Natalie offered a crooked smile. “Guess I forgot that.”
“I’m not surprised. There was a lot going on,” Dani said sympathetically.
Natalie nodded and lowered her head to take a sip of coffee, but then paused and jerked her head back up. “You stayed all night?”
“I wanted to keep an eye on you,” she said with a shrug. “Besides, Decker and Valerian were out most of the night mowing the course for you.”
“What?” Natalie gasped, nearly sloshing her coffee in her surprise. Setting it down on the prep counter next to her before she spilled it on Mia, she turned toward the door and then paused and swung back with confusion. She wanted to go check on her golf course and be sure it was okay. Mowing a course was not the same as mowing your lawn, and she was terrified of what state she’d find it in. But she needed to feed her daughter too, and Sinbad, so Natalie walked over to the small table she’d set up in the corner of the room when she’d taken over the golf course, and strapped Mia into her booster seat.
“Wait here, baby. Mama’s going to get you breakfast.”
“And Sinneee,” Mia ordered.
“Yes, and Sinbad’s too,” Natalie assured her, and then moved to the large industrial refrigerator to retrieve milk and a container of Sinbad’s homemade dog food that she whipped up for him weekly. Natalie didn’t do it out of any concern that normal dog food wasn’t good enough, but because it saved her money to use up the leftover vegetables and odds and ends of meat from the club restaurant rather than just toss them. Some weeks there were more leftovers than others, but there were always some, because she tended to overbuy a little rather than risk not having something that a customer ordered. And yes, all right, she did believe it meant the meals Sinbad was getting were probably healthier than dried bits of kibble, but that was just a bonus. She was equally sure she was saving money using up the leftovers like that.
“You seem worried,” Dani commented mildly as she watched her scoop a cup and a half of the homemade dog food into Sinbad’s porcelain dog food bowl.
“No, not at all,” Natalie lied as she set the dog food in the microwave to warm it up a little, and then moved to collect cereal and a bowl. She could hardly admit that she was stressed about how the men might have mown the course. It had been kind of them to do it, after all. In fact, she could hardly believe they had. Valerian was a customer, for heaven’s sake. He was someone she hadn’t even met before last night, and they hadn’t exchanged more than a couple of sentences since then. As for Dani’s husband, he was Valerian’s coworker, and presumably a friend to him, but neither of them should have felt responsible for mowing the course. The fact that both men had stepped up and done so to help her out was incredibly . . . well . . . kind. And it would be unkind of her to admit she was worried about what sort of job they might have done.
“I don’t know how well you know Valerian,” Dani began after a moment. “I understand he’s golfed here for several weeks, but—”
“Months,” Natalie corrected as she finished pouring cereal and milk into her daughter’s bowl, slipped a spoon in, and then pushed it aside as she went to retrieve Sinbad’s dog food from the microwave and carried it toward the door. “Valerian’s been coming since July . . . or maybe late June,” she admitted, unsure now when exactly he’d started coming. It had been around there somewhere, though, she thought as she pushed the door open, bent to set the dog food down in front of Sinbad, paused to give him a quick pet, then said, “Okay,” and watched him dive into the food before she turned back into the kitchen.