Deacon (Unfinished Hero #4)(8)

“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.