Unfinished Hero 04 Deacon (4 page)

I was in the bedroom, stripping sheets.

I left the bed half-stripped and walked into
the living room. When I did, I saw John Priest standing in the open
front door to cabin four.

It had been five months since his last
visit.

Five months and nothing had changed.

Except for the fact that Grant was in
Oklahoma and I was still here.

“Hello, Mr. Priest,” I greeted, moving
through the living room, which I had to say, even if it was tooting
my own horn, looked fan-freaking-tastic with it’s warm
mushroom-colored walls, large, thick braided rugs in muted tones
covering the refinished, gleaming wood floors, and interesting
prints of buffaloes on the walls.

In fact, all the prints in this cabin were of
buffaloes. This was why I thought of cabin four as the “Buffalo
Cabin.”

What I didn’t see, but knew was there, was
the fabulous kitchen behind me.

Seeing as kitchens in the cabins didn’t have
extensive countertops, I’d been able to strike a deal with a local
contractor to buy his remnants. That meant none of the kitchens
were the same. Some of them had butcher block countertops. Some had
tile. A couple even had gorgeous slabs of granite.

The countertops in cabin eleven, though, were
a glossy treated cement. I liked the rugged look of them. Actually,
the entirety of cabin eleven was rugged and masculine, the only
cabin that wasn’t outfitted in a warm and welcoming gender
neutral.

I didn’t allow myself to think about why I
did eleven that way. I just did it.

Grant had gotten around to putting in the
light fixtures so that meant there were quiet, but attractive
ceiling fans with lights over all the cabins’ living rooms,
straight up showstopper pendant lights hanging over the bar portion
of the kitchens, and attractive wall lights fixed beside the beds
for maximum reading and relaxing potential.

That was pretty much all Grant got around to
doing before I kicked his ass out.

“Eleven open?” Priest asked without
greeting.

Eleven, by the by, had turned into the Pinto
Cabin, seeing as all the prints on the walls there were of pinto
horses.

I didn’t offer this information to John
Priest.

“Indeed it is,” I answered, stopping in front
of him.

As ever, he didn’t look me up and down, not
that there was much to see. Still, we were having a warm Indian
summer so I was in cutoff jeans shorts, a babydoll tee, and
flip-flops. My shorts weren’t Daisy Dukes or anything but I fancied
they looked okay on me. My legs were tan, though, and everyone knew
that anyone looked better tanned.

Then again, I’d lost a ton of weight.

Not meaning to do it, I’d hit on a no fail
diet plan. Unfortunately, that included finding out the love of my
life wasn’t the love of my life but instead a guy whose greatest
skill was breaking promises.

This caused a woman to throw herself into
work—a scary thing when she already threw herself into work—and
thus she forgot about eating.

Further, when she wasn’t working, she was
moping and going over every moment of the last year that she could
remember, trying to figure out where she went wrong, which was
emotionally taxing and utterly fruitless. Still, it was an
excellent appetite suppressant.

She did, however, drink tons of wine through
this.

And tequila.

She’d also find she had a taste for
bourbon.

Priest took me out of these thoughts when he
looked beyond me into the cabin then he twisted his neck to look
over his shoulder up the lane toward my house. Finally, his eyes
came back to me.

“You need me to come back to check in?” he
offered.

I shook my head. “I’ll walk up and get you
your key. I can finish in here after.”

He said nothing and the only way I knew he’d
heard me was that he shifted out of the door.

I moved out of the cabin, closing the door
behind me, and heading to the steps that led off the front
porch.

Surprisingly, when I got to the bottom of the
steps, John Priest didn’t go to his truck, a colossal, black
Suburban that had mud streaming up its sides, more caked on the
wheel wells.

He fell in step beside me.

Unsurprisingly, he didn’t speak.

So I did.

“We have a website now. I don’t know if you
noticed coming in, but I had the new sign put up at the top of the
lane so people can see it from the street. I finally decided on
what to call the place. Glacier Lily Cottages. That’s our web
address too. There’s a phone number and e-mail on the site if you
want to contact me ahead of time to make sure eleven is open. We’re
not full up very often but we’re getting busier.”

As I was speaking, I put one foot in front of
the other. So did he. I quit talking. He didn’t start.

So I kept going.

“I can’t take bookings on-line yet but that’s
hopefully coming. It’s just a little more complicated to pull
things like that off. I can do web design but that kind of thing
requires a professional. Or, at least for me it does. But an e-mail
is the same thing, if the unit is free.”

He made no comment.

I had nothing more to say.

We arrived at my house and I felt him move in
a way that wasn’t walking so I looked up to see him scanning the
area outside the house.

“Grant’s gone,” I shared, guessing at what he
was looking for, and his eyes tipped down to me. “It didn’t work
out.”

“Not a surprise,” Priest declared. “He was a
dick.”

I blinked.

“A lazy one,” he went on.

“I…” I began but trailed off, shocked not
only that he noticed but that he had something to say about it, and
further, he said it.

“Eleven?” he prompted when I said
nothing.

I pulled myself out of my surprised stupor,
nodded, and jogged up the steps to my house.

He followed me, came inside, and did the
registering thing while I got his key.

When he was done, he turned to me.

“Still sixty?” he asked and I shook my
head.

“Seventy.”

He said nothing, just pulled out his wallet,
took out some bills, and handed me five of them. Four of them
hundreds. The fifth, a fifty.

“Five days,” he stated.

“Right,” I muttered, not even bothering to
offer him change. I knew the drill. A drill which included him
shoving the key through the mail slot in my front door as his means
of checking out.

“You want my ID?”

I smiled at him. “I think we’re good with
that.”

He didn’t look at my mouth to take in my
smile. He also didn’t speak further. He reached toward me, took the
key from my hand, and walked out the door.

I walked out behind him, stood on my front
porch, and watched him move down the lane.

He wasn’t graceful, he was too big to be
graceful, but he was athletic.

Men walked the way he walked when they
approached the place they’d throw a javelin or when they positioned
at the line of scrimmage or moved to the top of the tennis court
prior to serving. Loose but prepared. Alert but at ease. It was
strange.

It was also hot.

And as with all things John Priest, it was a
little scary.

I put John Priest, my top patron and still my
only return customer, out of my head, turned to my door, closed it,
and then walked across my porch. I hopped down the steps and headed
to cabin four to finish stripping the sheets.

* * * * *

“Coming!” I shouted from the kitchen after I
heard the knock on the front door.

I hustled out and into my softly lit foyer,
going straight to the door. I saw the hulking shadowy figure that
was silhouetted by the outside lights through the filmy curtains
that covered the windows in the door and knew who it was
immediately.

I turned the locks, threw off the chain, and
looked up into John Priest’s aloof but handsome face.

“Hey,” I greeted.

“Yo,” he replied.

“Come in out of the cold,” I invited,
stepping aside for him to do just that.

He did and I caught a glimpse of his
Suburban, stark black against the white tufts of snow in January in
the mountains of Colorado.

I closed the door on the chill and turned to
him to see he was standing, facing the registration book, but his
head was turned toward the kitchen.

“Cookies,” I explained the scent in the air
as I rounded him and his eyes tipped down to me. “I’m in the mood.
Christmas does that to me. I’m an extreme baker at Christmas and it
doesn’t wear off until after Valentine’s Day.”

He said nothing. Showed nothing. Just stared
at me.

I forged into the silence.

“We’re pretty full up but eleven is
open.”

He jerked up his chin then turned to the
book.

I kept talking.

“We have new flat screen TVs, with Blu-ray
players. And cable.”

He kept scribbling.

I kept blabbing.

“And I figured out how to take bookings
on-line. I did it all by myself. It works great!”

I sounded excited because I was. I fiddled
with that for-freaking-ever. So long I thought it’d be the death of
me. But in the end it worked beautifully.

He dropped the pen and straightened toward
me.

I didn’t stop blathering.

“I also have a library of DVDs. There’s a
menu in your cabin if you want to check one out. I usually require
a credit card for that service but we’ll skip that part seeing as
you’re a repeat customer, so I’m guessing I can trust you won’t
take off with my copy of
Lake House
.”

That got me something. His full, attractive
lips twisted in distaste.

“Not a Sandra Bullock fan?” I asked.

He shocked me by sharing, “Keanu Reeves.”

I grinned at him. “This is the difference
between men and women. Many men don’t get Mr. Reeves.” I leaned in
and finished conspiratorially, “Every woman absolutely
does
.”

He made no comment and showed no hint of
understanding or humor.

Instead, he asked, “I take it it’s no longer
seventy.”

I shook my head. “Sorry. And it’s high season
so it’s a hundred a night.”

And it was one hundred dollars a night and I
added ten dollars a person if there was more than one.

I had eight of the eleven cabins filled, with
Priest there was nine.

This meant I was doing it.

Finally.

Utilities and cable were crippling. Not to
mention taxes. The day-to-day work was constant and there was still
more to do to get the cabins as I wanted them to be. I wasn’t
rolling in it and I could use some help, like someone to help me
clean and do laundry.

But I was doing it. I might not be able to
pay my dad off with interest anytime soon, what with all the stuff
that needed doing to the house, not to mention the fact that two
winters in Colorado running my business with my car were two
winters too many without a truck or SUV, so I had to get on that
and soon.

But I was doing it.

Finally
.

John Priest reached to his wallet, pulled out
some bills, and handed me three hundreds, saying, “Two nights.”

“Just two this time?” I asked.

His gaze sharpened on me but he said nothing.
I had no idea how to read this except to think he wasn’t a big fan
of me keeping tabs on how long he stayed.

Which was weird.

And scary.

And thus totally John Priest. A man I’d seen
repeatedly. A man I did not see at all when he was in one of my
cabins, except seeing his SUV drive up and down my lane when he
came and went. And once, I watched him carry groceries into cabin
eleven.

That was it.

Therefore, he was a man I did not know. Not
even a little bit. Except for the fact I was pretty certain his
name was not John Priest, and since he gave a false name and paid
in cash, it was likely he was not an upstanding citizen.

“Okay, just two,” I muttered.

“Key,” he prompted and my body gave a slight
jerk in response, seeing as I totally forgot about the key. Mostly
because he wasn’t there often, months passed in between, but he was
the only one who came back time and again and it felt strangely
like he should have his own key.

I moved to the cabinet, got him his key, and
walked it back, hand out toward him.

He took it as I offered, “Would you like to
take some cookies with you? I have plenty.”

He gave me that sharp look again and
surprised me by saying firmly and extremely rudely, “Absolutely
fucking not.”

“I…uh, o-okay,” I stammered. “You don’t like
cookies.”

He didn’t confirm this fact.

He dipped his chin, turned to the door,
opened it, and disappeared through it, shutting it behind him.

I stared at it a moment before I moved to it
and locked my three locks again.

When I looked out my filmy curtains, I saw
nothing but porch lit by my outside light, the gray mounds of snow
beyond, and the darkness of night.

No SUV.

John Priest was heading to eleven to do
whatever it was he did in my cabin that was none of business.

So I was heading to my kitchen to finish
baking.

Which was what I did.

* * * * *

Five months later, I threw open the front
door, looked up at John Priest’s scary, beautiful face, and
declared, “In case you’re cataloguing the goodness, my man, we have
Wi-Fi!”

He said nothing but he moved to take a step
in so I had no choice but to take a step back. I did this heading
toward the key cabinet.

He headed to the registration book.

He also moved not speaking.

I didn’t return the favor.

“The password to get in is ‘snookums321.’ But
seeing as your badass fingers might implode if you tried to type
out the word ‘snookums,’ you can give it a miss tonight because
tomorrow is my normal change day. I’m thinking ‘Iloverocknroll999.’
That would be ‘and’ as an ‘n’ with no hyphens or apostrophes,” I
shared, nabbing the key and turning to see him bent over the
book.