“She’s at the pool with Spence and our new program coordinator, Mac Scanlan.”
“I thought Eden was in charge,” Genevieve said.
“Technically, she is. She’s the executive director, in charge of fundraising, planning, coordinating events etc. We just hired a new person to actually run the activities. He’s spending the day familiarizing himself with the facilities. She told me to send you to the pool the minute you both arrive.”
Which had been several minutes earlier, but who was counting?
“Thanks,” Genevieve said.
“I’m supposed to make you ID badges first, but we’ll have to do that later, when my system is back in action. You know where to go, right? Through the main doors there and down the first hall.”
Dylan seemed reluctant to move. Apparently Genevieve would have to take the lead. She followed Chelsea’s directions, aware of him coming up behind her.
“You made it,” she said to Dylan as they entered the hallway.
“You didn’t think I’d show?”
“Given your general reluctance to this whole idea, I guess I wouldn’t have been surprised if you had decided you’d rather go to jail.”
“I’m still not discounting that possibility.”
She smiled a little. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here. Chelsea’s right. You are in a far better position than anybody else, especially me.”
“So everybody says. I’m not seeing it.”
“You know what it’s like to be injured in battle, to have to rebuild your life.”
“Right. I’m doing a hell of a job, aren’t I?”
Genevieve flashed him a quick look. “Better than I would in your situation,” she answered truthfully.
“You would probably start designing a fashion line for one-armed pirate wannabes and go on to make millions of dollars.”
She laughed. “The only one-armed pirate wannabe I know doesn’t seem particularly interested in fashion.” He gave her a mock offended look. “What do you mean? I wore a bolo, didn’t I? I thought I was going for the hipster look.”
“Or something,” she answered.
He snorted but said nothing as they moved toward the door at the end of the hall where she could see the flickering blue of water.
“You were wrong the other day,” she said when they nearly reached it.
He paused and gave her a curious look. “You’ll have to be more specific. I’m wrong about a lot of things.”
She fiercely wished she hadn’t said anything but she couldn’t figure out a way to back down now.
“Er, you implied I flinched away when you touched me—that I was, I don’t know, disgusted or something because you’re, er, missing your arm. That wasn’t it. You just…” Her voice trailed off.
“I just…” he prodded.
“You make me nervous,” she said in a rush. “It has nothing to do with any eye patch or…or missing hand. It’s just…you.”
His eyebrow rose and he studied her for a long moment, so long she could feel herself flush. “How refreshingly honest of you, Ms. Beaumont.”
“I just didn’t want you to think I’m— What’s the word you used? Er, chickenshit.”
He laughed as she pushed open the door to the pool area and the sound echoed through the cavernous space. Several people congregating beside the pool looked over at the sound and Genevieve recognized Spence Gregory and Dylan’s sister, Charlotte, as well as a man in a wheelchair and another woman she didn’t know. “I wasn’t sure you would make it,” Spence said to Dylan when they reached them, holding out his hand.
After a slight pause, Dylan took it.
“Why does everybody keep saying that?” he asked. “No reason.” Charlotte hugged him and he gave her an awkward sort of pat with his right arm.
“I’m so glad you agreed to do this,” his sister said. “You made it impossible for me to refuse, didn’t you?”
“Don’t blame me. It was all Pop’s idea, and Andrew’s the one who ran with it. Though I probably should confess that Spence might have mentioned to Harry Lange how much we’d like to have you volunteer here and I believe Harry might have mentioned it to Judge Richards during one of their poker games.”
Charlotte stepped away from her brother and gave Genevieve a cool smile. “Hello, Genevieve. We’re glad you agreed to help, too. We have a strong core of volunteers already, but we’re always glad for more.”
Genevieve had enough experience with polite falsehoods to recognize one when she heard it. She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. Charlotte probably blamed her for her brother’s troubles in the first place.
“I’m happy to help.” She was an old hand at polite falsehoods herself.
Spencer Gregory stepped up. “Good to see you again. I didn’t have the chance to say hello when we saw you at the airport last week.”
He really was gorgeous up close. She didn’t follow baseball but she knew Smokin’ Hot Spence Gregory was a nickname given only in part for the man’s fastball. Oddly, despite those long lashes and that particularly charming smile, he didn’t make her nerves flutter at all, unlike others in the room she could mention.
“My father loved to tell business associates from out of town how you used to be our paper boy.”
“I hope I was a good one.”
“The best, according to my father.”
Spence smiled and gestured to the other two people.
“Dylan, Genevieve, this is Eden Davis, our executive director, and Mac Scanlan, who just started this week as our program coordinator.”
“What is your role at A Warrior’s Hope?” Genevieve asked, trying to keep things straight in her head.
“I’m the director of the entire recreation center. A Warrior’s Hope is only one part of what we do here.”
“But it was his idea and he’s the fundraising genius behind it.” Charlotte smiled with far more warmth than she had shown Genevieve. Spence aimed that charmer of a grin down at her, and even if she hadn’t seen them together at the airport, she would have easily picked up that the two of them were together.
The once-fat-and-frumpy Charlotte Caine was involved with Smokin’ Hot Spence Gregory. She still couldn’t quite believe it.
“It’s become Charlotte’s baby, too. She organizes all the volunteers.”
“What do you think we’ll be doing?” she asked. “I’m really good at filing, correspondence, that kind of thing. And I’ve had a little experience with fundraising for a few charities my family supports.”
“Just for the record, I’m not good at any of those things,” Dylan offered.
Charlotte gave her brother a sly smile. “I’ve got just the project for both of you. Yesterday Sam Delgado, our contractor, and his crew put the finishing touches on several cabins for our guests. The first group to use them will be coming in first thing Monday morning. Before they arrive, we need to decorate the cabins for Christmas. That’s where you two come in.”
CHAPTER FIVE
This was his version of hell.
Yeah, he had spent a combined total of six of the past ten years in the Middle East through his various deployments, four of those in direct combat. He was a trained army ranger, sent in to dangerous hot spots for difficult missions.
He had seen and done things that kept him up nights—and had spent months in rehab, a very special kind of misery.
He would rather go back to living in a tent where the sand seeped into every available crevice, wearing seventyfive pounds of gear in a-hundred-twenty-degree weather without showering for weeks, than endure this torture his wicked sister had planned for him.
He stood in a large storage room in a back corner of the recreation center surrounded by boxes and crates.
“Isn’t there something else I could be doing right now?” he asked, with more than a little desperation.
“I can’t think of a thing,” Charlotte said cheerfully. “We want these cabins to be perfect, a home away from home for these guys—and one wo
man—while they’re here. We want to make this a perfect holiday.”
He wanted to tell his sister she was wasting her time, but he had already tooted that particular horn enough. “We’ll do a fabulous job. Don’t worry.” Genevieve beamed with excitement. Why shouldn’t she? This was probably right up her alley. Hang some lights, put up a few ornaments. Nothing so uncomfortable as actually talking to any wounded veterans—present company excluded.
He remembered what she had said earlier—that he made her nervous and it had nothing to do with his physical disfigurements.
He didn’t believe her. Not really. How could he? She was a perfect, pampered little princess and he was scarred and ugly. They were Beauty and the Beast, only this particular beast couldn’t be twinkled back into his old self, the one without missing parts.
“I’m sure you will, Genevieve,” Charlotte was saying. “You have such an instinctive sense of style. When I heard about your little, uh, legal trouble, I knew you would be perfect to help us get the cabins ready for their first guests.”
Genevieve looked surprised and flattered at Charlotte’s words. “I graduated with a degree in interior design,” she said. “Eventually I hope to open my own design firm.”
“Then you really are perfect.”
“I’ll do my best. I saw some really beautiful lights in Paris. They had these little twinkly snowflakes and each one was unique. They were stunning. You don’t have anything like that, do you?”
Charlotte pressed her lips together to keep in the smile he could see forming there. “We didn’t buy our lights in Paris this year,” she said with a dryness he wasn’t sure Gen would catch. “You’ll have to be content with the cheap ones from the big box store.”
“I suppose we can make those work,” she answered.
“You’ll have to, I’m afraid.”
“What about the trees?”
“Also from a big box store. But they’re all prelit, which is a big plus.”
“We’ll make it wonderful. You’ll see. Won’t we,
Dylan?”
“Wonderful,” he repeated. Why did he suddenly feel as if he’d been dragged by a couple of high-school cheerleaders to help decorate for a homecoming dance?
He could really use a beer right about now.
“Aren’t you supposed to be working?” he asked Charlotte, mostly to change the subject from snowflakes and Christmas trees. “Who’s running Sugar Rush while you’re here bossing around the reprobate help?”
Her haughty look rivaled anything Genevieve Beaumont might deliver.
“I have a staff, you know. They’re very qualified to run the place without me.”
“Even at Christmas, the busiest time of year?”
“Even then. I took today and Monday off so I can help Eden and Spence get everything ready for the group coming in next week.”
She glowed whenever she talked about the things she loved: their family, her gourmet candy store in town, A Warrior’s Hope…and Spencer Gregory and his daughter, Peyton.
He still wasn’t sure how he felt about Spence and Charlotte together. When they were growing up, the man had been one of his closest friends. They had gone on camping trips together, played ball, even doubledated a time or two.
Their lives had taken very different paths in the years since Spence’s mom used to work at Pop’s café,
Dylan’s to the military and Spence’s to a life of fame and riches—and eventual scandal—in Major League Baseball. Dylan still wasn’t convinced the guy was good enough for his baby sister but it was obvious the two were crazy in love.
“I hope this doesn’t sound rude,” Genevieve said, “but I have to say it. You look completely amazing.”
Charlotte looked startled. “Thank you. Why would that be rude?”
“Just because…you know. How you were before.”
Charlotte had always been amazing, as far as Dylan was concerned. Kind and funny and generous. Trust Genevieve not to be able to see past a few extra pounds.
“I just think it’s fantastic. It must have been so difficult to lose all that weight when you spend all day surrounded by all those empty calories at your store,” she went on. “How did you do it?”
Charlotte looked a little disconcerted by the blunt question. “Willpower, I suppose.” Her gaze flickered to Dylan then back to Gen.
“The truth is, when Dylan almost died last year, I realized how off track my own life had become. While he lay in a hospital bed fighting to survive, I realized my own unhealthy habits were slowly killing me. I had been given the precious gift of life and I was wasting it. Dylan’s challenges had been thrust upon him, but I was choosing mine every day. It was pretty sobering.”
How had this become about him? Dylan shifted, wishing he could still tell his sister to shut up—though even when they were kids, if Pop had heard him, he would have had to scrub dishes at the café for a week.
He didn’t like to think about that miserable time when antibiotic-resistant infections had ravaged his system and left him as weak as a baby—and he especially didn’t like Charlotte giving Genevieve one more reason to see him as an object of pity.
He jumped up. “I’m going to start hauling some of these boxes down to the cabins.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Charlotte said. “I can grab a couple of the guys who work at the recreation center to help.”
“This is why I’m here, isn’t it?”
Before she could argue—something his little sister had always been very adept at—he stacked a couple of boxes and lifted them with his arm, bracing them against his chest with his prosthetic.
“Don’t be a stubborn jerk,” she said. “I’m sure there’s a dolly or cart or something. You don’t have to carry all these boxes down to the cabins by yourself.”
“I’ve got it,” he snapped and walked out before either she or Genevieve could stop him.
It was going to take him the whole damn afternoon to carry all the boxes down but he didn’t care. He would take monotonous physical exertion any day over seeing that pity in Genevieve’s eyes.
When he returned from carrying the first load of boxes to the five small cabins along the river, he found Genevieve and Charlotte loading a couple of wheeled carts with more boxes.
He frowned. “You didn’t think I could carry them on my own?”
“This is about efficiency,” his sister answered. “I won’t let you spend four of the remaining hours you owe us schlepping boxes back and forth when the three of us can do it this way in a few trips.”
Okay, she had a point, though he didn’t want to admit it.
“Fine,” he muttered, then directed his efforts to stacking the carts better for maximum-load capacity.
He ended up pulling one of the heavily laden carts while Genevieve and Charlotte maneuvered the other one together and he tried not to notice the nice rear view that had landed him in this mess in the first place.
He had to admit, his sister was right—as usual. They had all the boxes transported to the cabins and dispersed among them in only an hour, with Charlotte directing where everything should go.
The log structures weren’t anything fancy, maybe a total of about six hundred square feet each. They seemed well laid out, with a large living area combined with a kitchen then two separate bedrooms and a roomy bathroom. Probably because they were so close to the river and the inherent flood potential, the cabins were built above grade but the cleverly designed landscaping created a natural wheelchair ramp into each one, which made it far easier to roll the carts to the porches.
The decor inside was what he considered Western chic—a lot of antlers, rich colors, cowboy themes. Each had big windows to provide warm natural light, with sweeping views to the river on one side and the mountains on the other.
“That should be the last of it,” Charlotte said as they carried the final box inside the cabin farthest from the main building.
Genevieve pulled off her fluffy mittens and looked around
at the space. “Goodness, it’s tiny. There’s hardly room for a Christmas tree in here,” she exclaimed.
Charlotte looked amused. “This is bigger than most base housing. Am I right, Dylan?”
He shrugged. He had always rented off-base when he wasn’t deployed. Sometimes a guy needed a break from the life. “The whole place would fit inside your bedroom, right?” he asked Gen.
She frowned, giving the matter serious consideration. “My room at my parents’ house, maybe. But I lived in much smaller places in Paris. You wouldn’t believe how tiny the flats there are—and how much they charge for them. It’s really quite absurd.”
He didn’t comment since his only experience with Paris was a layover once when he was en route to a mission in Central Africa.
“I was planning to put the trees up there in the corner between the sofa and love seat.”
Gen moved to the spot and slowly revolved with her arms out, gauging the space. “That should work.”
Charlotte glanced at her watch. “Actually, let me rephrase. I was planning on the two of you putting the trees up there. I’ve got to run.”
A ridiculous little spasm of panic burst through him, in no small measure at the idea of being alone in these cozy little cabins with Genevieve.
He had to wonder if his sister wanted a little payback for her frustration with his attitude these past months since he had returned to Hope’s Crossing.
“You two should be able to handle this without any problem. These are the keys to all six cabins. As you saw when we dropped off the boxes, the layout is the same, only the furniture and colors are different. You can set up the Christmas trees in the same spot in all of them. Just lock up when you’re done. See you.”
She left in a rush, leaving behind a long, agonizing silence.
Yeah. Definitely his version of hell. He couldn’t imagine a deeper misery than an afternoon putting up Christmas decorations with Jahn-Vi-Ev Freaking Beaumont—even if she did look particularly lovely in a fancy little tilted knit hat that matched her scarf and roses in her cheeks from the past hour’s exertion.
She gave him a sideways glance, and he thought he saw nerves in her gaze. Maybe she wasn’t any more thrilled about being in an enclosed space with him right now.
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