Winter Love (Love Collection)

by Natalie Ann

She only had two more shifts scheduled at the lodge and then she could leave. She’d be able to get through them, she hoped.

  ***

  “Are you going to talk to her before she leaves?”

  Zeke turned to see Erika standing in the doorway to the barn. He was feeding the horses right now. Doing anything he could to avoid being in the lodge and running the risk of seeing Kendall.

  “No.”

  “This is her last shift,” Erika pointed out, like dumping not only salt but bleach in an open wound.

  “I’m fully aware of that. She knows where to find me if she wants to say goodbye.”

  “She came to see me before she started earlier,” Erika said.

  He didn’t think it could hurt worse...he was wrong. “What did she say?”

  “Not much. She just wanted to thank me. She said she was sorry she couldn’t stay longer, but it was time to move on. She asked how you were doing.”

  “She knows where I am if she wants to see how I’m doing.”

  Erika laughed and walked forward. “Even I’ve been staying clear of you, Zeke. Along with every employee. No one has ever seen you this way. Not to mention Kendall said she was positive you were avoiding her.”

  He ignored the comment about avoiding Kendall. “What way is it that people have seen of me?” he asked, brushing his hand on his thigh to wipe the spit Sally left from the grains she was eating out of his hand.

  “Miserable. You’ve never been miserable a day in your life and no one knows how to handle it. Me, though. I know what is going on. This is exactly what I warned you about. I’m going to have to pick up the pieces.”

  “They’ll get over it. They’re used to dealing with you. And no one said you had to do anything for me.”

  “Insulting me isn’t going to help your case any,” she said, laughing at him.

  “What do you want from me?”

  He couldn’t tell his sister that he could barely stand to be in his own house each night remembering the time he and Kendall spent together there.

  The meals she cooked for him.

  The hot tub.

  The sauna.

  Even climbing on the sled made him miserable, which was why all his equipment was still in the barn where he’d moved it for her. Deep down he was hoping she’d come back.

  He wasn’t going to get that wish, it seemed.

  “I want the old Zeke back.”

  “Maybe you’ll see him once she’s gone.”

  “Don’t fool yourself,” Erika said. “Talk to her. Go see her. Have some closure.”

  “She came here to get her own form of closure. She got it. She doesn’t need it from me.”

  If Kendall did she would have sought him out at any point. As much as he was avoiding her, she could have found him if she really wanted to. She obviously didn’t.

  “You’re so stubborn,” Erika said, then walked away.

  At the end of Kendall’s shift, he hadn’t sought her out and she hadn’t made any attempt to see him. He finally decided to give in and go see her at the hotel. Maybe Erika was right, though he wouldn’t admit it to her.

  When he got to the front desk, he asked what room Kendall was in. He figured they wouldn’t tell him, but since he’d gone to school with the person working the front desk, she’d told him, “Room 434, but she checked out about twenty minutes ago.”

  “She left?” Zeke asked.

  “Yes. She wasn’t scheduled to leave until tomorrow, but she just handed in her key early.”

  “Thanks,” he said, walking out.

  He went back to the restaurant and into the bar, grabbed a bottle of whiskey and a glass, and went back home. If he was going to get drunk, he might as well do it in his own home so no one could witness it. The sympathetic looks coming his way when he grabbed the liquor bottle were bad enough.

  He stopped to get the mail from the mailbox at the start of his driveway and saw an envelope in there with his first name on it only.

  Once he got to the house, and in the kitchen, he opened it up, not surprised to see it was from Kendall.

  I came by to tell you thank you for the memories. To thank you for helping me get through some things. And for making me believe things I never thought were true. I wish you well in life, Zeke. I hope you’ll remember our time together as fondly as I will.

  What the hell did that mean? What did he help her believe? And why couldn’t she just tell him in person rather than leave without a trace?

  Wait! Her blog. She always posted her next destination.

  He ran to get his computer and pulled it up, but there was nothing there. Nothing had been posted by her since yesterday.

  Home Again

  Four full days had gone by since Kendall had posted anything on her blog.

  He’d been checking it nonstop for any signs of where she might have gone.

  Sure, he could have texted or called her, but he figured she wouldn’t answer. If she really wanted to talk to him, she’d reach out. Instead, all she did was leave that stupid letter that contradicted the woman who left his house weeks before.

  “I guess Kendall stopped traveling,” Brittany, one of his bartenders, said.

  “What?” he asked. He’d walked in to get some lunch. His staff wasn’t giving him such a wide berth anymore. Of course he was talking a bit more now.

  “Her blog. I heard some of the people in the kitchen saying she finally posted and that she was back home in Vegas.”

  He walked out of the restaurant and into his office and pulled it up. There wasn’t much there other than a statement that she was back home like Brittany had said and that she’d post an update shortly on what she planned to do with her blog.

  He’d been checking out all her social media pages and hadn’t seen anything posted there in days either. It wasn’t like her to be so quiet. It was like she fell off the face of the earth.

  But now she was home again.

  ***

  Kendall had been home for a week. Though she was glad to be back in her own bed and feel the nice warm sun on her face, let alone ditch the winter clothes she’d bought, she found she wasn’t all that excited to be here.

  It amazed her how well she’d gotten along with so few possessions while traveling. Just a few suitcases of clothing and her laptop. That was all she needed.

  Even in Lake Placid, she was fine with so few items. But here she was back at her apartment now for the past several days staring at things that held no meaning to her. If that wasn’t bad enough, she was going to have to do something with her parents’ house. Her childhood home.

  She didn’t want it. She couldn’t live there. It just held too many memories.

  She desperately wanted to hire someone to go through the house and clean it out but knew she needed to do it herself. And knew the trip had been prolonging this task too.

  She’d learned a lot about herself while she was gone.

  She avoided things when she wasn’t ready to face them.

  She put it off and hoped they’d solve themselves.

  She discovered that life wasn’t that simple.

  Since she didn’t have a job, she figured she’d start with her parents’ house. This morning she detoured to the store and bought a bunch of boxes.

  A neighbor had been caring for the property for her while she was gone. It’s not like there was a lawn to mow or snow to shovel. Nothing like that.

  She’d never had those thoughts before and wondered why she did now. Why she wondered or thought about what Zeke might be doing. If he was outside doing what he loved.

  If she’d ever met someone that was one with nature, it was Zeke Collins.

  She remembered the day he’d said he’d never been on a plane before. That he very rarely left the Adirondacks.

  Talk about opposites. She’d traveled more in her life than not. Zeke hardly left at all. Yet he seemed to be the most down to earth person she knew. One of the happiest she’d ever come across.

  She unlocked the fron
t door and realized the house smelled musty. Not fresh like the flowers her mother loved that her father brought home at least once a week.

  As she made her way through, she was starting to feel overwhelmed about the first thing she should do. How was she going to get rid of all of this and should she? Maybe it would be better to donate it all. Call some organization and see if they’d just come and take it.

  She couldn’t do this right now. Not by herself. But who would she call? She really didn’t have as many friends as she thought she did. If she did, they would have contacted her when she returned and no one did.

  It was all too hard and she was already breaking inside from leaving Zeke. For the first time in a long time, she really felt alone in the world.

  ***

  Zeke shut the door to the taxi and looked around the strip. This was nuts. How did people live and work here? How did they breathe!

  It wasn’t just the traffic that was horrible, it was the number of people just walking around, running in between buildings. Yep, there was the naked dude with the guitar over there posing with a bunch of tourists.

  Zeke found where Kendall worked and walked in. The place was huge and elegant. High end. More high end than other restaurants in town, he knew, because he’d looked up everything he could about her when they first met.

  But seeing this and knowing this was her life and how she lived, now he knew why she had to leave. Lake Placid didn’t come close to offering this. Collins Lodge never did either. It was like comparing a mouse to an elephant.

  He was suffocating already. If there was such a thing as a fish out of water, he was flopping around on the floor right now, but damn it all, he was going to tell Kendall how he felt. If she told him he was alone in those thoughts, he’d go back home and figure his life out, but he was determined to let her know he missed her. That he wanted her back. That he wanted her in his life.

  That he loved her. No more running and hiding from feelings or fear of rejection. He was here and he was going to face it.

  Kendall was the woman who made him believe he could have a relationship with someone and be taken seriously. The one who made him feel things he’d told himself he would never be able to find.

  “Table for one?” he was asked.

  “Actually, I was wondering if Kendall Hendricks is working.”

  The hostess looked right and then left and pulled him aside. “We try not to say her name too loudly or the owner and manager get really mad.”

  “Why?” he asked, wondering what the hell could be going on.

  “At first they liked all the publicity of what she was doing and customers asking when she’d be back, but then she started to focus on that wedding piece and when that turned into more questions, the owner got furious. Aaron never saw his restaurant as a place for weddings and he’d never conform to it.”

  “What does that have to do with Kendall?”

  “If that wasn’t bad enough, he found out she was working when she should have been traveling. I guess she stayed someplace in the mountains for a bit. Wait. It’s you!” the young hostess said. “The hot tub and snowmobile dude. You’ve been in some of Kendall’s videos.”

  “That’s me,” he said, wanting to cut this conversation short. “Do you know if she’s working today?” he asked again.

  “Oh. Sorry. It’s just you’re much hotter in person. She doesn’t work here anymore.”

  “What?”

  She lowered her voice and whispered, “They fired her two weeks ago. They decided that there was too much focus on her and not on everyone else or the food. I think it was a dumb move on their part. We were crazy busy over her videos and blog. I’ve lost count of the number of people asking about her.”

  Zeke was thinking back and realized she must have been fired when she was still in Lake Placid. Then why didn’t she tell him? Why didn’t she stay? Was that why she was looking for him on that last day?

  “Do you know where she’s working now? I’m trying to reach her.” He thought maybe he’d appeal to the dewy look in the hostess’s eyes. “I wanted to surprise her. She doesn’t know I’m in town so I can’t really text her, now can I?”

  “Oh, that’s so romantic. Hang on, let me go ask someone. I know I shouldn’t do this, but I’ve seen so many videos of the two of you. I’m surprised she was willing to let you go.”

  Zeke didn’t drop his smile, but he sure the hell felt like it.

  He stood there looking around the restaurant while someone else was seating guests. “Here you go,” she said, handing him a piece of paper. “No one knows where she is working, but here’s her address if you don’t have it.”

  He took it and said, “Thanks,” then walked out the door.

  Loud and Clear

  Kendall finally worked up the courage to go back to her apartment. After she’d cried for longer than she’d like to admit, she left and just drove around town looking at everything that was so different than Lake Placid. Vegas and Lake Placid could be considered two different planets in some people’s eyes.

  She tried to think of any friends she could call, but the sad truth was, Josie was the only friend she really talked to outside of work. Everyone else was family or co-workers and that was probably why no one reached out to her when she returned.

  Family didn’t live here and she wasn’t working now.

  What was keeping her here? Why did she feel she had to come back so badly? Because it’d been her home for over sixteen years?

  Who was to say she couldn’t have a home somewhere else now?

  Since she was currently unemployed, she had plenty of time to think about that. She’d be busy dealing with her parents’ house and possessions for the foreseeable future anyway. It was probably a good thing she wasn’t employed.

  Her steps faltered when she walked down the hall to her apartment.

  She had to be dreaming. Imagining things? Maybe this was a mirage that she’d heard so much about in her life.

  Zeke couldn’t be sitting on the floor outside her door with his phone in his hand.

  But he looked up and saw her, then stood up fast and made his way to her.

  Yep, it was him.

  He was real.

  He was stunning.

  And he was pissed. She’d never seen him pissed before. Hurt, yes. But never pissed off.

  “What are you doing here, Zeke?”

  “Come to get you and bring you back. God, I need to get out of this place,” he said, shaking his head.

  “What!”

  “You heard me. I’ve been nice. I’ve been funny. I’ve given you space. I was upset that you left without saying goodbye. I was upset you left, period. But what really pissed me off is you left to come back here and didn’t even have a job. Didn’t really have a reason to come back!”

  “This is my home,” she said. Someone opened a door in the hallway and looked out. “Can we take this inside, please?”

  “By all means,” he said in almost a half snarl. She was trying to figure out the reason for his mood.

  She unlocked her door and he followed her in. “First off. I thought it was best that we had that break before I left.”

  “You thought it was best, but you never asked me how I felt.”

  “You couldn’t have had a problem with it since you never once came to see me those last two weeks. You avoided me at all costs when I was working so I figured that was your way of moving on.”

  He opened his mouth and then closed it. “I was giving you space.”

  “I didn’t say that we shouldn’t see each other though,” she argued.

  “Really? Because I would think leaving my house and going to a hotel for two weeks said it loud and clear.”

  He had a point. “I just was getting too close to you. I needed a little time to myself to prepare to leave. I never said I didn’t want to see you at all,” she repeated.

  “You could have sought me out.”

  “Why, when you were avoiding me? Everyone said you
’ve never been miserable before. This unhappy. Add that to not wanting to see me, and I figured you couldn’t wait for me to be gone.”

  ***

  Zeke couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  Had Erika been right all along? Should he not have given Kendall space and tried to talk to her at some point? Sought her out to see if there was some way they could make it work. Even if it was long distance?

  “I repeat,” he said. “You left me.”

  “Because it hurt too much to stay with you knowing I was leaving.”

  “What hurt?” he asked.

  “Really?” she asked. “I thought you were smart. I thought you watched all my videos. It was right there for you to see.”

  Had he been so blind because he was trying to get her to stay that he didn’t realize all he had to do was ask? No, he’d asked her. She said a few weeks and that she couldn’t make promises. He wasn’t blind.

  “What was I supposed to see? I asked you to stay, if you recall.”

  She flushed. “You were supposed to see I thought I was falling in love with you. I stayed,” she argued. “I stayed more than a few weeks. Even when I left your house I stayed another two weeks in Lake Placid and worked for you. I didn’t see you once in that time.”

  “Because it hurt too much to see you there and know I couldn’t have you! That you were going to leave anyway. You want to talk about seeing things? You couldn’t see what I felt for you?”

  “Why couldn’t you tell me?” she asked.

  Beat the hell out of him. Rejection maybe? He’d felt that enough in life and was just terrified of it again. That he was finally serious about someone in life and she didn’t feel the same way. “You could have said it too. You’re the one that didn’t want to be there. You’re the one that had an agenda and a goal and a checklist. You met it all. You said it was time to go.”

  “You’re right, I did. Because I knew you’d had flings with women before. I didn’t want to be someone that wouldn’t leave. I didn’t want to be someone that hung on. I’ve heard all about you getting around with women. I figured if I left, if you really wanted me to stay, you’d have let me know.”