by Jill Snow
The woman, tapping her partner on the elbow, exchanged a look with him before she said aloud, “She might be right.” Turning to Ruby, the woman, around thirty years old, straightened her shoulders and announced, “Mrs. Burrows, we’ve received a serious complaint. An anonymous source has told us that your sanitation is not in accordance with the bylaws. Is that true?”
“Of course it isn’t,” Ruby exclaimed.
The two Council members exchanged a look. The man said, “Forgive me, but we’ll have to take a look around for ourselves.”
Lily opened her mouth to refute the claim, but then remembered that very morning when she’d woken up without water. It looked more and more as though Ethan’s suspicions of sabotage were correct. She shut her mouth, holding her dog close as she followed in the footsteps of the two Council members.
They walked toward her cabin as though they had been told precisely where the issue was. Out back, they followed the plumbing line from her cabin to the hole that she and Ethan had found earlier today. They had parted ways when he had decided to go into town to get the proper equipment to fix it. This problem, unlike that of the other cabins, which he had also shown her earlier today, didn’t look man-made. But that, she knew to be deceptive, because she had had running water only yesterday. And she doubted that the pipe had fallen apart overnight. To the untrained eye, it looked as though time had ravaged the pipe until a hole the size of her fist had opened in it, the water pouring out into the forest and creating the seed of a swamp beneath their feet. She didn’t want to contemplate whether sewage mixed with the water. She’d used the toilet at the main lodge.
The moment Ruby saw the problem, she wrung her hands. Her mouth was set in a grim, solemn line. “Lily, have you had any trouble with your water?”
“I had a bit of a hiccup this morning, but it was working yesterday. This could only have happened overnight.” Although Lily stressed her words, from the looks on the Council members faces, they didn’t believe her.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Burrows,” said the man. He looked reluctant, as if he would rather not provide her with yet another violation. “We can’t allow you to operate your campground without proper sanitation. This needs to be fixed, or we will have to evacuate the campground.”
“It will be fixed.” Ethan had come up behind them.
Wookie twisted in her arms and opened her mouth in a doggy grin as she beheld her new favorite playmate.
Ruby pressed a trembling hand against her mouth. “Ethan?” Her voice trembled, a question held in it as he stepped up carrying a toolbox full of the equipment that he would need to fix the pipe.
He set the toolbox at his feet just outside of the marshy puddle that had formed beneath the line. “I was alerted of this issue this morning, and I assure you it will be fixed immediately.”
The woman warned, “You’ll have to replace the entire line. This is too sensitive an issue for you to simply patch over the problem.”
“I assure you, the problem will be fixed correctly.” Ethan held her gaze, his voice steady as he said the words. In that tone, Lily would believe anything that came out of his mouth. Did the councilwoman?
The woman held his gaze for a moment, the corners of her mouth tilting down in uncertainty. At her hesitation, her partner touched her shoulder. In a soft voice, he leaned forward and said, “Pinecrest Lodge has been here for as long as I can remember. Do you really want to shut it down?”
The woman shook her head. “As long as it’s fixed today, I don’t see the harm in letting you off with a warning, Mrs. Burrows.”
Ethan held out his hand, shaking hands with each Council member in turn. “Thank you. I give you my personal assurance that this will be fixed today.”
The man and woman exchanged one more glance before she shrugged. “Then I guess we don’t have any further business here.”
Ruby’s campground was safe—for the moment.
Chapter 14
Fixing the damage on the water pipe from Lily’s cabin was going to take more work than Ethan had anticipated. Unlike with the other cabins, where the pipe had been cleanly cut, this one looked as though acid had been poured over the pipe, causing damage to eat away at the metal like rot. Like the Town Council members had said, the entire pipe would need to be replaced. At least six feet of it.
When Ethan admitted as much to Ruby, she looked even more grim. Her white eyebrows pulled together, low over her eyes.
“I can’t ask you to go through all that trouble.”
From the corner of his eye, Ethan noticed Lily adjusting her hold on Wookie. Guilt gnawed at his stomach as he recalled that she still thought him the handyman on the campground. He felt especially bad because she’d confided in him about the reason she was really here—the contest to win a promotion. Ironically, he’d come out here to get away from people because he had been fed up with them lying to him and now he was doing exactly that to Lily.
“I’ll fix it,” he said, his voice firm. “But if I’m replacing six feet of pipe, I’m going to need to go back down to the hardware store and buy that length and solder it together with the existing, undamaged pipe. I’ve done that kind of thing before, though not in as large a quantity as Greendale’s Town Council seems to want.” It seemed fairly senseless, for a fist-sized hole, but if that was what it took to keep Pinecrest Lodge in business, then that was what Ethan would do.
If anything, Ruby looked even more worried. “You can put the supplies on my tab at the hardware store.”
“I’ll do that,” Ethan lied. “But first, we need to talk about these misfortunes.” He crossed his arms, staring her down. Did she know who was responsible—and if so, why hadn’t she gone to the sheriff with that knowledge?
The old woman glanced from Ethan to Lily and back again. Her shoulders deflated as she heaved a sigh. “Very well. Why don’t we talk back at the lodge? I have a fresh batch of cookies ready to go in the oven.”
If oven-fresh cookies were meant to butter him into forgetting about the troubles on the campground, Ethan had to admit that they did a remarkable job. As the chocolate chip cookies melted in his mouth, he closed his eyes in bliss.
It was Lily’s voice that reminded him of the situation at hand.
“No, Wookie,” she chided her dog. The wooden kitchen chair on which she sat screeched as she pushed back to make room to place the dog on the floor. “You can’t have any. They have chocolate in them.”
Pawing at her owner’s leg, Wookie whined.
Ethan stuffed the rest of the cookie in his mouth and dusted off his hands. Down to business. “Tell me how long this sabotage has been going on.”
“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” Ruby insisted from the counter, where she poured coffee into three mugs. She stirred in milk and sugar and passed the cups around to Lily and Ethan.
As he received his mug, Ethan cocked an eyebrow. “I told you of the pipes at the other cabins only a couple days ago.”
“Yes, that too. Those are the only incidents that I know of.”
He exchanged a look with Lily, who narrowed her eyes. Was the old woman telling them the truth? Might she have forgotten something due to her age?
Ethan indicated the refrigerator with a wave of his hand. The notices he’d first seen had been taken down and stuffed out of sight, but he recalled them altogether too well. “What about all those citations from the Greendale Town Council? I know Carter Pittman has been making trouble for you.”
Her chin set, Ruby wrinkled her nose and looked down into her cup. At the moment, she looked every bit her age, a frail old lady devoid of the spark and stubbornness he knew her to possess. “He makes trouble for me in town, yes. I know he wants my land, not that he’s offered me even half its value. Even if he had, I couldn’t sell.” Her chin trembled as she admitted, “This was my husband’s love and joy. I could never betray him by selling the campground, let alone to someone like Pittman. He wouldn’t keep it open as a tourist destination.” Lifting her gaze, she wipe
d at the corners of her eyes. “It’s lucky for couples in love, you know.”
Although Ethan felt Lily’s gaze, he didn’t turn his head. He couldn’t help but replay their kiss down by the lake this morning. The touch of her lips had been … transcendent. But his woman radar was messed up and he didn’t know if she’d liked it, too. He hadn’t felt any vibe one way or the other and later on at breakfast she’d acted like nothing had happened. Maybe the kiss hadn’t even registered, she’d been half frozen and scared to death. Besides, she thought he was the campground’s handyman and in a few days, Pinecrest Lodge would be in her rear view mirror.
You could follow. It wasn’t as though Ethan didn’t have the money to go anywhere he wanted. But down that path laid disaster. The only reason Lily hadn’t yet tried to use him for his money was the fact that she didn’t know about it. Although a part of him wanted to believe that she wasn’t that sort of woman… History had shown him differently. Everyone was the sort to squeeze him for money, even his own sister.
He had to be careful around Lily. For goodness sake, back at the campfire he’d nearly offered to buy her a newspaper so she could set one up in Greendale and follow her dreams! What madness was that?
No, when Lily left the campground, he couldn’t follow, even if having her nearby helped to chase away the demons he carried since retiring from the Rangers. Besides, he loved nature and the peace of the forest. What would he do in a city again? That life held no appeal to him at all.
“He’s been reporting small issues to the Town Council all along. I don’t know the particulars, but suddenly a pipe breaks and the Council is right there to inspect it. Don’t you find that timing more than a coincidence?”
The hopeful look on Ruby’s face dimmed. “You can’t mean to imply that Carter Pittman is destroying my property so I’ll sell to him.”
Ethan and Lily exchanged a look. “That’s precisely what he’s implying,” Lily said. “No, we’re outright stating it. I know there wasn’t any problem with the water in my cabin before last night. Someone had to have done this.”
“Not Pittman,” Ruby insisted, stubborn. “He’s grown up to be a bit of a sour apple, but he isn’t all bad. He can’t have done it. His daddy was good friends with my husband for over twenty years.”
Although he hated to admit it, Carter Pittman might indeed have tossed aside that past camaraderie for his own means. Ethan had seen it altogether too often. When it came to the question of money, men and women did stupid, selfless things.
Lily drummed her fingers on the table. If the agitated gesture was any indication, she too didn’t share Ruby’s conviction.
Still, the old lady insisted, “Simply because you didn’t notice anything didn’t mean there wasn’t an issue with the pipes. This might have been going on for months.” Her cheeks colored and she lowered her gaze to the table, ashamed. “I’m not as spry as I used to be. In recent years, I haven’t been able to tour the grounds nearly as often as is needed.”
“Have you given any consideration to hiring a property manager? You could avoid this sort of thing in the future.”
Lily whipped her head toward him, her hair stinging as it smacked against his arm. He resolutely ignored her. Somehow, he’d have to explain to her why he wasn’t the property manager, but here at this table was not the place. Ruby didn’t know of the deception between them, and he’d prefer to keep it that way.
Shaking her head, “I don’t have the money for full time help. Especially not with all the cabins up and running. I know, it is a vicious circle, but I can’t change the reality.”
He dropped the subject — for now. “I’ll fix the pipe,” he promised. “But Ruby, something sinister is happening on this campground. Whether you like it or not, someone seems to be determined to stop you from operating. If this sabotage doesn’t stop, they might succeed.”
Chapter 15
Ethan was the property manager at Pinecrest Lodge, wasn’t he? Lily could not get the question out of her head. She spent the next hour chasing Wookie through the evergreen forest and jumping at the snap of every branch or the buzz of every insect. Despite the fact that she was alone, Lily couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched.
This sabotage, it was inconvenient but not dangerous, right?
Are you a reporter or aren’t you? Lily wanted to report real news, the sort of news that women like herself went into dangerous situations in order to verify. She wanted to do something that mattered and if she was going to succeed, she would have to get her hands dirty. Even if she’d never done anything like go undercover to find the truth.
You can’t do that here, anyway. First, she needed to land herself the promotion. Then she would figure out how she was going to swallow her fear and put herself in questionable situations in the pursuit of the truth. What mattered was making a difference through her words, and she was determined to do that.
As if agreeing with Lily’s thoughts, Wookie yipped. Lily jumped. She glanced behind her for the twentieth time this morning. Only trees, the rustle of branches as a squirrel climbed up a trunk, and the swoop of a bird. Nothing dangerous.
When she turned around, Wookie was gone.
“Wookie!”
A distant bark in answer at least gave her a direction to run toward. Lily lurched after her dog, scanning the underbrush for a foot-long ball of fur. She reached the end of the trees first. The clearing opened behind Ethan’s cabin. His black truck sat in front of it, the tailgate down. Wookie bolted past toward Lily’s cabin.
“Not fair,” Lily muttered under her breath. “You have four legs. I only have two.”
At least she knew that her dog would find her way toward Ethan. As the speck of fur disappeared behind her cabin, she slowed to a walk. Ethan must have decided to go straight to work on the plumbing once he’d returned with the supplies. For that, she could only be grateful. She didn’t want to think about going another day without a shower, even a cold one.
The closer she got to the break in the pipe, the more determined she was to make herself useful. She’d cooked breakfast this morning, learned how to light her own campfires. Even if she’d never touched a plumbing pipe before in her life, there had to be something she could do to help.
On the edge of the soft, muddy ground, she found Wookie dancing around Ethan’s form as he crouched. He held a screwdriver between his teeth as he wrestled with a bolt on the side of the pipe. She quickened her step to join him.
“Let me help. Can I hold something?”
His eyebrows set in a determined expression, he barely seemed to notice her as he pulled the screwdriver from between his lips and handed it to her. He used one hand to hold the pipe steady while he jiggled a slightly rusted bolt out of its fastening.
He didn’t even need the screwdriver, from what Lily could see. She was standing there, worse than useless. But what could she do to help?
“Can I hold the pipe steady for you?”
“I’ve got this.”
“Of course you do. You’re the property manager, after all.”
He didn’t say anything, but his shoulders tensed as he continued to work.
“You are the property manager, aren’t you?”
Ruby had introduced him as her handyman…hadn’t she?
“I’m fixing this, aren’t I?”
He didn’t look her in the eye.
She rolled the handle of the screwdriver between her palms as she frowned. Was he hiding something from her? “If you’re the handyman on the campground, why did you recommend to Ruby to hire someone else? Isn’t a property manager and a handyman essentially the same thing?”
Ethan’s fingers stilled on the pipe. He raised his gaze to hers, his dark eyes unreadable. After a moment, he said in a soft voice, “I’m not going to be here for much longer.”
“Oh.”
She should have considered that. After all, she was only here for a week in total. She hadn’t once thought to ask him if he was a permanent worker. Wint
er was coming, and who decided to camp in the middle of winter? It made sense that he was only here seasonally, even if Ruby would probably do herself a favor by employing him longer.
As he returned his attention to the pipe, she said, “I’m sorry for asking. That was weird of me.”
He didn’t answer, which only made her embarrassment grow. Tapping her fingernails on the handle of the screwdriver, she returned to a safer topic of conversation.
“I want to help.”
Wookie squeezed between Ethan’s ankles from behind, turning with a canine smile to earn his attention in front of him.
Ethan released the pipe to catch his balance. Gruffly, he said, “Then take your dog before I trip over her.”
Lily swallowed hard against the sudden lump in her throat. She felt all the closeness they’d built up over the past few days disappearing. Maybe she shouldn’t have questioned his role as handyman. She exchanged the screwdriver for her dog. Her hair fell across her face, tickling her cheek.
This morning, he’d kissed her. She could still feel the phantom brush of his lips against hers. Had that connection between them just been a single moment that was gone? Maybe she’d fooled herself into thinking it was something more.
“I’ll get out of your way.”
As she started to straighten, Wookie held tight to her chest, Ethan shoved the screwdriver into the back pocket of his jeans. He caught her by the upper arm, helping her up and straightening with her. “I’m sorry. It shouldn’t take me long,” he said, his voice rough.
She nodded, unable to meet his gaze. He gently released her arm. After taking a couple steps, frowning, she glanced back. He was already back at work, as if she wasn’t there. Maybe the issue wasn’t that he didn’t want her around or didn’t think she was good enough to help him. Maybe he was in the Man Zone or whatever men liked to say when they were engaged in manly activities like fixing things.