by Sandra Hill
“I didn’t realize the place was quite this . . . old,” she admitted, looking around the room. “I knew Mike and Penny had run into a lot of expenses they hadn’t counted on, like having to replace the roof and installing a new boiler, that sort of thing, but I had no idea . . . ”
She scowled at the drawer pull that had come off in her hand, then tossed it on top of the night stand.
Stan stifled the urge to take her in his arms and comfort her. It wasn’t comfort he wanted to offer her, he reminded himself, and it wasn’t smart to let himself get confused about that sort of thing.
“The way things are these days,” he said, “some big developer will buy the place and turn it into a getaway for the rich.”
Dana nodded. “Or tear the lodge down and sell the land for luxury homes.”
At the thought, they both stared glumly out the window at the shrouded trees and the silently falling snow.
“Well, that’s the way things go sometimes,” Stan said gruffly, straightening. Life had a way of slamming you when you least expected it, and there didn’t seem to be a damn thing you could do about it.
“Yeah, that’s the way it goes.” Dana shoved off the bed. The wooden bed frame creaked again, louder this time. The kind of annoying creak that would wake up half the people in the lodge if anyone tried anything athletic on that dippy mattress.
Dana didn’t seem to notice. After a moment’s hesitation, she crossed to where he stood and grabbed the edge of the open door, which opened into her room. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to change.”
Stan relaxed, grateful for the change of conversational topic. This was sex. He understood sex. This was like playing at home with the home field advantage.
He smiled down at her. “I don’t mind.”
Her delectable Madonna’s mouth curved into a frown. “After I shut the door.”
He stepped forward, into her room.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Her hand, palm out, slammed into his chest. “You’re staying on the other side.”
“Sure you don’t need any help? I’m real good with zippers.”
“Out!” She pushed. He backed up.
“Just say the word and I’m your man. Zippers. Shoes. Stockings.” He gave her what he hoped was an encouraging leer. “I give great back rubs.” She pushed harder. “Shoulder rubs, too. Belly rubs. Foot rubs. Rub rubs?” he added hopefully as she shoved him back onto his side of the doorway.
She started to swing the door shut, then froze. “There’s no lock on this door.”
“All right!”
Those ice blue eyes hit him.
“I mean, that’s too bad. Really.”
She slammed the door in his face.
Stan grinned at the unlocked slab of pine, then turned, whistling, and went to check the mattress on his bed.
To Dana’s immense relief, Reba drafted Stan to help Emma and Betty in the kitchen—Mike hadn’t been able to get a cook on such short notice—and assigned her to help with the Raggedy Ann and Andy assembly line Callie had organized in the dining hall.
However much the Brigade might enjoy their adventure, they took their responsibilities seriously. Work before fun. Or rather, with fun. Even as they worked, the Brigade was chattering and laughing and quarreling. They were like a family, Dana thought wistfully, scanning the room, only they had come together out of a shared concern for those less fortunate than themselves rather than by the chance that threw families together—or tore them apart.
Reba and Ethel were busy digging through the boxes of stuff the Big-Mart manager had donated, sorting out what could be given away into their appropriate piles—cosmetics, toiletries, clothes, toys, and household gear—and setting the rest aside for future use or for the yearly rummage that helped fill the Brigade’s coffers.
Maudeen was madly clicking away on her computer, figuring out what they had and what they’d need and for whom, while Dr. Meg and Morey—who was sporting an impressive pair of suspenders with fat Santas dancing up and down their length—busily wrapped the gifts and labeled them. The colorful pile of finished packages already buried one table and threatened to spill onto another. They’d had a last-minute request that they make a second stop at a shelter near Snowdon, which had had an unexpected influx of new people who’d been stuck by the storm, so Maudeen was having to do a bit of juggling. The Big-Mart donations were going to come in handy.
“My, my. Look at this.” Ethel held up a hideous plaster parrot in brilliant shades of purple and pink and puce. “What do you think?”
“Rummage sale!” everyone chorused.
“And this?” She dragged a soiled and slightly tattered floral wall hanging out of a box and held it up for inspection.
“Rummage sale!”
“No, wait!” Maudeen cried. She pounded the computer’s keyboard, squinted at the screen, then pounded some more. “Yes, here it is,” she said, beaming in satisfaction. “Mrs. Shirley Eisenstock. She’s one of the newbies at the Snowdon shelter and the manager there thinks she’d really enjoy something pretty to brighten up her family’s cubicle.”
“I can fix it,” Dana offered. “A little cleaning and ironing and a bit of mending and it will look good as new.”
“You’re going to clean the cubicles?” Ethel asked, puzzled.
“She’s going to fix the hanging for the cubicle,” Reba said, enunciating clearly. “Turn up your hearing aid, Ethel.”
Instead, Ethel dived back into the boxes. “Oh, goodie! Shoes!”
Maudeen rolled her eyes heavenward, then went back to pounding the keyboard.
In the main lobby, clearly visible through the open doors of the dining hall, John and the colonel, with the twin’s enthusiastic if slightly less than helpful assistance, were wrestling with a tall, rather scrubby pine tree that JD and Slick had chopped down earlier.
Mike, in a bold effort at optimism, had sworn he chose that tree because he needed to clear it out so several younger, stronger trees would grow better next summer. Everybody had carefully avoided mentioning that he wouldn’t be here next summer to see them grow. Penny had broken down at the thought of this last Christmas tree at Moose Lodge, then laughed through her tears when Morey had stuck an enormous red bow behind his ear and swept her into a whirling waltz across the floor.
Brave soul that she was, Penny had immediately put aside her own pain and dredged up two sewing machines for the doll manufacturing. Callie and Dr. Maggie were making the old Singers roar as they stiched up arms and legs and a small mountain of doll clothes. Dana was embroidering faces and doing any hand sewing that was needed.
Despite their pleas of ignorance when it came to sewing and dolls, Slick and JD had been drafted into the doll brigade, too. Under Callie’s sharp-eyed supervision, they were cutting cloth and yarn and stuffing the finished dolls as fast as they could go. To Dana’s amazement, the five of them had already produced seven good-sized dolls and promised to have the rest finished long before bedtime tonight.
But not before supper! Tantalizing smells of chili and cornbread and a chocolate cake baking in the oven wafted from the kitchen where Stan was slaving away. The promise of supper made Dana’s stomach growl.
The thought of Stan made her ache.
Thank God she hadn’t gotten assigned to the kitchen, she thought, scowling at the pile of doll faces she still had to embroider. She was really very pleased she was out here working on the dolls. Absolutely, overwhelmingly delighted.
For the fifth time in as many minutes, she glanced up when the double doors to the kitchen swung open, only to droop when it wasn’t Stan who walked through.
Irritated, she stabbed her needle into the doll’s face she was embroidering. Right into the eye.
She was glad he was in the kitchen and she was out here. Glad, glad, glad! Yessirree, GLAD!
“You look like you could strangle someone if you got half a chance.”
Dana looked up, startled, to find Reba standing beside her, smiling.
Reb
a set the furled wall hanging on the table, then gestured to the chair beside her. “Mind if I join you?”
“Oh! No. No, of course not. Please.” Dana swept her sewing stuff off the chair and onto the table in front of her.
“I just wanted to thank you for all your help,” Reba said, settling into the chair as gracefully as she did everything else. “We’re all very grateful. For the mending and the entertainment for the kids, and especially for finding this lodge. I don’t know what we’d have done if you hadn’t. The Parkers are absolutely wonderful.”
Dana ducked her head to hide the sudden blush. “Actually, it was Stan who made it possible. If he hadn’t agreed to pay all the extra costs, and triple time for the kids who are helping Penny and Mike—”
“Stan’s doing all that?”
Dana nodded, suddenly worried she’d said something she shouldn’t have. “Mike told me. I don’t think Stan wants anyone to know.”
Reba smiled. “I suspected he might have done something like that. It’s just the sort of thing he would do.”
“It is?” Dana asked blankly, then wondered why that surprised her. She’d read those articles about all his volunteer work with kids.
The trouble was, whenever he looked at her, everything went out of her head except the charged sexual awareness between them and the knowledge that she could have him if she would just let down the barriers she kept between them. Not for long. Not for forever. But she could have him for awhile. And wasn’t that better than never having him at all? She wished she knew. Things would be a lot easier if she did.
“Stan said you’d never met before yesterday,” Reba said. Not prying, exactly, but clearly curious.
Dana frowned, then turned the doll’s face over and knotted off her thread. “That’s right.”
“Somehow, I find that hard to believe. You seem so . . . comfortable together.”
“We do?”
Reba nodded. “I know you’re always quarreling, but that doesn’t mean anything. Stan obviously likes you. A lot.”
He wants me, Dana silently objected. But only for now. It wasn’t the same thing at all.
Rather than reply, she changed the topic. “Slick’s very nice.”
Reba flinched, then forced a smile. “Yes, he is. Just ask any woman who’s not deaf, blind, and senile.”
For a moment, Dana wasn’t sure she really heard the doubt in Reba’s voice that she thought she heard. But then she looked into the other woman’s eyes and realized that, in her own way, beautiful, cool, calm Reba, who was never uncertain about anything, was just as uncertain about Slick Merrick and her feelings for him as Dana was about Stan Kijewski.
The insight was so unexpected, so stunning in its impact, that Dana almost stopped breathing.
“Guess I’d better check on things in the kitchen,” Reba said, pointedly getting to her feet.
Callie, who was working at the next table, had been listening to the conversation. She glanced at Reba’s retreating back, then at JD, who was unrolling the enormous ball of red yarn he’d made that afternoon and cutting it into the prescribed lengths for the dolls’ hair.
“I can’t believe you’re making me destroy this work of art,” he grumbled. “Look at it! Round! I got it round, not lopsided. Do you know how hard that is to manage? And now you want me to cut it up?”
“Yes, I want you to cut it up,” Callie said, ignoring his grumbling.
“Round and firm and fully packed.” He patted the ball of yarn lovingly, like a lover pats a loved one. He was looking straight at Callie when he did it. “I’m telling you, it’s a work of art. The Sistine Chapel of yarn balls. You should be more appreciative.”
Callie snorted. “I’d appreciate it cut up. Properly cut up! Don’t just whack it off like that,” she added, leaning across the table to slap his hand. “Measure it! You cut it wrong and we’ll have to trim everything.”
JD heaved a huge sigh and reluctantly turned back to his measuring. “Women!”
“Men!” Callie shook out the red-and-white gingham fabric with a snap.
“You can say that again!” Penny Parker walked up right then. Mike, laden with boxes and covered in cobwebs, was three steps behind.
Seeing him, John and the colonel abandoned their efforts with the tree and came bustling into the hall with the twins hard on their heels.
“Did you find them?” the colonel asked, beaming like a schoolboy. “Did you find those ornaments? And the lights?”
Mike nodded, setting the boxes he carried on a nearby table, then brushing off the dust and cobwebs that covered him. “The lights were new last year, but I think some of those ornaments go back to the thirties, maybe earlier.”
“We’ve never used them,” Penny explained, “but we thought, since this is the last year . . . ”
She deliberately shrugged off the thought, then glanced at the tables covered with dolls in various stages of construction. She shook her head in amazement. “You guys are incredible.”
“And we’re all grateful you and Mike could take us in.” Whatever lay between her and JD, in the short time she’d been on the bus, Callie had made the Brigade’s mission her own.
“Besides, I’m delighted to meet someone who’s my size,” she added, laughing. “Reba and Dana could have been models, they’re so tall and slim and gorgeous. I was beginning to feel a little lost in their shadows.”
Dana blinked in surprise at the unexpected compliment.
Penny, as confident in her own way as Reba and Callie were in theirs, smiled back. “I know just what you mean. Whenever Mike and I fight, he’s always accusing me of hitting below the belt, but I just tell him I’d have to stand on a stool to reach anything higher.”
She flashed a wicked look at her husband, who laughed. “Leave me out of this! A man hasn’t got a chance, especially not when you women aim below the belt!”
Penny wrinkled her nose at him, eyes alight with laughter, totally unfazed by the sexual innuendo.
Dr. Maggie beamed approvingly over the wild thatch of red yarn hair she was sewing for a doll, then glanced at the colonel, who was looking at her with an odd light in his eyes. The minute he caught her glance, however, his attention snapped back to the dusty boxes of ornaments that Mike was opening.
Dana, who’d been following the exchange with fascinated interest, would swear he was blushing under that tan.
At that moment, Ethel emerged from her boxes to hold up a pinkish plastic tube with a rounded tip. “Now, whatever in the world is this?”
Morey giggled and snapped his suspenders. Dana blushed. JD and Slick grinned.
Maudeen glanced at the twins, then leaned across the table and, in a low voice, tried to explain.
“What?” said Ethel. “What did you say?”
Maudeen tried again, a little louder this time.
“A grater?” Ethel frowned at the thing. “Doesn’t look like any grater I’ve ever seen.
“I said, it’s a vibrator,” Maudeen roared, frustrated. “Damn it, Ethel! Turn up your hearing aid!”
“What’s a vibrator?” one of the twins asked, craning for a better look.
“It’s . . . errr . . . ” said their father. “Ask your mother. She’ll explain.”
“It’s something for . . . uh . . . old people,” said their mother. She snatched one of the boxes of ornaments off the table and handed it to the boys. “Here. Why don’t you see what’s in here. And don’t drop anything!” she added as the twins, the plastic thing for “old people” already forgotten, began ripping at the tape sealing the box.
“Three D batteries,” Ethel murmured, squinting at the fine print on the side. “Say, Maudeen. You wouldn’t want to sell me this, would you? This and three good, strong batteries?”
Morey, eyes sparkling wickedly, said, “You know, I was gonna suggest we each make a bow for the tree and hang our wishes on it, but by the look of things, John isn’t going to need to. He just got his wish answered early.”
Dana watched as
John Ross turned three shades of crimson, then, grinning, winked at his wife.
It was all a little too much for her to take in—the laughter, the closeness, the teasing. The constant noise. She was accustomed to the muted sounds of the forest and the silence of her own house. There’d been times during the course of the day when she’d wanted to clap her hands over her ears and run for the hills. And yet the energy, the human warmth, were a welcome balm, too.
She’d never realized just how alone she really was . . . until now.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sudden appearance of a small, black-haired boy at her elbow.
“Are you the story lady?” he asked, gazing up at her hopefully, the box of ornaments already forgotten.
“Well, I—” She smiled. “Yes, I guess I am. And you’re . . . Tyler, right?”
“How’d you know?”
“Most folks can’t tell us apart,” Taylor informed her, magically appearing on her other side. “Sometimes not even Mom and Dad.”
“I guess I’m just used to looking for all the little signs that others miss,” she said. “You have to, if you’re going to work with forest animals.”
“Real animals?” Tyler asked. “Like deer and moose and stuff?”
“Like lions and tigers and bears?” his brother added, wide-eyed.
“Well, deer and moose, anyway,” Dana said, smiling. “I’m afraid New England’s a little short of lions and tigers.”
“Reba says you know lots of stories,” Taylor said.
“Lots and lots of stories,” Tyler added hopefully. “About bears and wolves and stuff.”
“And stuff,” Dana agreed. “Would you like me to tell you some?”
Two dark heads nodded in unison.
Stan gave one last, vigorous stir to the huge pot of chili he’d made under Emma Smith’s stern supervision—she’d disapproved of the way he chopped the onions—then set down his spoon and pulled off his apron. Mrs. Smith would never notice he was gone. She was too busy fussing over the cake she and Betty were whipping up.