“Huh.” He looked as stunned as she felt. Being a site manager for a vacation property was a job you lived in the summer season, not just one you went to for your allotted hours each day. Quieter in the fall and winter, sure, but still no place to have a baby. Jessalyn hadn’t given any indication that she was pregnant, nor had she told them she’d be quitting or taking maternity leave or anything. “Well. What do we do?”
“I’m thinking I won’t get anywhere on the phone with them. Big hospital, privacy concerns, and all that. Maybe the best thing to do is go visit her. Brewster is a little over an hour away, according to Google Maps. But you’re the one with the vehicle, so it’s your call.”
He grinned. “I’d be happy to go for a drive with you. Bet I can get us there in under an hour.”
“Don’t be a fool. We’re in no hurry; keep to the speed limit.”
He just laughed. “Do we need to do anything else first, or are we going now?”
Oh, the attitude of him. She gave him a quelling look, the one that warned students on the training floor they’d better settle down because Miss Whelan was done with their goofing around. “Since you were so kind as to bring me this nice mug of tea, I’m going to drink it. Without rushing. I also need to see if we have any check-ins coming this afternoon that we’d have to be back for. Then we can go.” She turned to the computer and called up the booking program again.
“Right.” He dropped onto one of the sofas, leaning back and hooking one ankle over the other in a nonchalant fashion as he sipped his coffee. “Anything I can do?” He didn’t look like he was aiming to do much of anything, sitting there like that. He got his phone out of a pocket and began playing with it.
“Just drink your coffee.”
The rain was coming down hard enough that even Eamonn couldn’t rocket along the freeway as he pleased. It took them an hour and a half to get to the hospital in Brewster, and gusts of hard wind rocked the sturdy truck. He drove with both hands on the wheel.
“We were supposed to have one check-in this afternoon and two tomorrow, and all three of them have canceled because of the weather,” Nell told him. “Looking on the bright side, we don’t have to hurry back for anything, but that’s about it. June’s part of our peak season and Wildforest expects all properties to be full or nearly full, especially coming into the weekend.”
He blew a raspberry at that. “And they think you can control the weather?”
“They don’t look at that. They look at the sales figures for the month and how they compare to other properties and previous years.” Once again, all the reasons she hated her job pressed in on her. She particularly hated the pressure to magically produce ever-better sales figures and glowing reviews from happy guests.
“We’re a team now. Uncle Tommy won’t give us any grief.” He didn’t take his eyes off the road, but she could see him smile.
Don’t you see how that’s worse? That I’m being protected because he’s your uncle? She took a deep breath. He couldn’t help benefiting from nepotism, and why should she fight it? After all, she had to swallow the casual misogyny that made her job harder, so maybe it was only fair that she benefit from his protection, even if it was unjust and infuriating and not even meant for her.
They drove for a while without talking, listening to a mix of classic rock.
“You don’t listen to current stuff much,” she said after a while. “Don’t you like to discover new music?”
He didn’t answer for a moment, then replied, “I don’t want to hear any Smidge songs.” Something about the way his mouth was set, and his white knuckles as he gripped the steering wheel harder, told her he didn’t want to discuss it.
“Fair enough.” She liked classic rock as much as newer music, anyway; she’d only asked out of idle curiosity. Signs for Brewster began to show up on the freeway and the GPS prompted them to take the next exit. “Let’s stop somewhere and get flowers,” she said. “We’ll get in to see Jessalyn more easily and with less questions if we look like visitors.”
He nodded. “Clever.” A quick online search found a florist nearby, and he pulled up to wait while she ran in to choose something.
At the hospital, they followed the directions for the labor and delivery department, then simply asked for Jessalyn Roberts at the nursing station. The nurse sitting there smiled, seeing the pretty bunch of white freesias and baby’s breath that Nell carried. “Aren’t those flowers lovely? I’m so glad she has some visitors, the poor girl — all alone, with her husband deployed. She had quite a scare, but with proper care, she should be all right now.”
“We were worried,” Nell said.
“And how do you know her?” the nurse asked. Clearly, they didn’t just let any random people walk in without questions.
“Work,” said Eamonn, with a charming smile that caused the nurse to take a second look as she wondered why he looked so familiar.
“I’m her supervisor,” Nell added.
The nurse nodded, apparently satisfied. “Aren’t you kind, to visit a co-worker. She’s in 4B, just down there on your left. And you’ll find a vase under the sink in the bathroom.”
When they walked into Jessalyn’s room, the first thing they noticed was how young she was — young, very thin, and all round belly under the blanket on the bed. She looked fragile, with an IV in one arm and a vital signs monitor hooked up to the other. She gazed at them in surprise and a blend of pleasure at having visitors and puzzlement as to why they’d come.
“Hi there, Jessalyn,” said Eamonn, again with that charming rock star smile.
The young woman’s eyes widened in astonishment. “Oh my goodness! You’re…” Her mouth opened in wordless surprise, then she squealed, “You really are! You’re Easy from Smidge!”
“And you must be Jessalyn from Champagne Cascades,” he replied. Nell jabbed him with her elbow and handed him the flowers. Might as well let him do the whole rock god act. She can tell her friends Easy brought her flowers in the hospital. He winked at Nell, closed the distance to the bed, and held the bouquet out to Jessalyn with a flourish.
Nell ducked into the bathroom to find the vase that the nurse had mentioned. When she emerged with it, Jessalyn was clutching her flowers and gazing up at Eamonn — Easy, because he was wearing his rocker persona and doing the suave charm thing — with a gooey fan-girl expression on her face. Meet-and-greet man. Nell wanted to stomp her feet and kick things out of rage, have a full-on toddler tantrum. Can’t you see this is fake? He’s putting on an act for you! There’s no such person as Easy! And you lick it up like cream for a cat, Jessalyn. Have some dignity. She was just wondering how to break into the conversation and bring it around to the subject of work and what had happened, when he turned to her with a smile and drew her forward to the bedside, saying, “Jessalyn, this is my friend Nell. She works for Wildforest, and she’s here because we got a phone call saying you were missing.”
“Missing!” Jessalyn’s eyes got really round. “Oh my goodness, I guess no one told Mary or François. My husband is down as my next of kin but he’s on deployment — he’s in the Navy — and I never thought…” She looked worried. “Oooh, that’s really bad. Am I fired?”
“No one gets fired for a medical emergency,” Eamonn assured her, in a tone of voice that suggested it wasn’t even a possibility. Oh, you’ve never been poor, or a woman, my friend, Nell thought wryly. We get fired for medical emergencies all the time, especially baby ones. They just come up with something that sounds plausible. But he could probably pull strings with his uncle to make sure Jessalyn kept her job, if he wanted to.
“We just need to put something in our report to explain your absence,” Nell said soothingly, taking the flowers from Jessalyn and placing them into the vase, which she set on the bedside table.
“Oh. I was at work, you know, having my coffee and doing all the things, and I know I should have eaten something, but I woke up late and… you know how it is sometimes. The thi
ng is, last week I failed my glucose test and my doctor started me on insulin right away because it was so bad. I’ve been really good for a whole week about not eating sugar — or anything nice…” And Jessalyn burst into tears.
“Fuck me,” Eamonn muttered, looking at Nell with a what-do-we-do expression on his face.
Nell pushed him out of the way, gently, and perched on the bed next to Jessalyn, patting her shoulder. She snagged the tissue box from the bedside table and put it into the younger woman’s hands. “Giving up sugar sucks ass at first,” she agreed. “But it’s not so bad once you get used to it.”
Jessalyn sniffled. “So I went hypoglycemic. Got confused and dizzy and might have had a seizure, apparently. They say I passed out and gave myself a concussion, falling. I came around on the office floor and somehow managed to call 911. I didn’t know what had happened at that point. I should have just eaten a cookie or something.” She sobbed again, probably thinking about the cookies she wasn’t supposed to eat.
Blow your nose already, Nell wanted to snap. “Okay. So you’re pregnant and have gestational diabetes. Are you okay to keep working ’til your due date?”
“I have to! I need the money and benefits. It scares me to be totally dependent on Mike’s salary, especially when he’s out of the country and in harm’s way for months at a time.”
Nell nodded. “Fair enough. But you have to take care of yourself. With your permission, we should tell Mary so she can keep an eye on you in case you have another hypoglycemic episode, okay?”
“Sure. Mary’s nice.”
Is she implying that I’m not nice? But Nell decided that Jessalyn just meant she didn’t mind having Mary keeping tabs on her health and safety. “I understand why you didn’t want to tell Aidan about your pregnancy, but if you’d like, I can help you sort out things like maternity leave coverage and a childcare plan if you’re coming back to work afterward. Don’t worry about that now, though. We’ll talk when you’re back at Champagne.”
“Okay. I’m supposed to meet with a dietician tomorrow. Maybe they’ll release me after that?”
With a concussion and poorly-controlled blood sugar, Nell thought that was unlikely. “There’s no pressure. You’re on sick days right now, so it’s all good, even if they keep you ’til Saturday. Eam— Easy and I will take care of everything at Champagne.” She corrected herself before using his name. He was wearing his stage persona for Jessalyn, and maybe he didn’t like to mix that with his private self. She made a mental note to ask him.
Jessalyn shot an admiring glance at Eamonn. “How come he’s here with you? You’re so lucky! Are you guys dating?”
Nell shook her head, just as he said, “Not yet, but I live in hope.” And he winked at her.
That made Jessalyn giggle, apparently delighted by what she saw as a romance unfolding.
Then a nurse came in to check Jessalyn’s blood sugar, and she shooed the visitors away. As they were leaving, Nell overheard the nurse saying to Jessalyn, “Your visitor, honey, he looked a heck of a lot like that bass player who was part of Smidge and—”
“Not just looked like, it really was him!” Jessalyn replied. “Easy. He’s my new work supervisor’s friend…” Nell rolled her eyes as they headed down the hall to the elevators, with Eamonn being Easy and flashing his star-quality winks and smiles for all the nurses.
As they got into the truck, Eamonn swiped at the rain soaking into his hoodie, then looked something up on his phone. “I don’t know that I can do another two days of this rain without a jacket, and there’s a Walmart in Chelan. Want to go shopping?”
Nell looked down at her wet shoes. The idea of having a rain shell and gumboots was awfully appealing. “The weather’s getting worse, though. Shouldn’t we get back to Champagne and off the road?”
“It’s only half an hour down the freeway,” he said. “My truck has good tires. It’ll be fine. Come on, you don’t want to spend the next forty-eight hours getting soaked every time we have to run from the office to the dining room, do you?”
“Not really, but…”
“I mean, that’s altogether the wrong kind of wet, isn’t it? I’d much rather you were wet for me.” He shot her a flirty look, then laughed as she processed what he’d said.
“Ugh, pervert.” She smacked him on the upper arm, not hard, but deliberately hitting a pressure point.
“Ow. Peace! I was just kidding.”
The wind and rain were truly nasty. Nell looked at the sodden parking lot and how everything that could move was shaking and banging in the wind. Not nice to drive in. But Eamonn was a confident driver and he seemed to think they’d be fine. And she hadn’t planned to be on-site longer than overnight, or in bad weather — she definitely needed a few things. “All right,” she told him. “Let’s go shopping.”
They didn’t talk much on the road, and this time he didn’t put music on.
“I’m definitely buying rain boots,” Nell said, after a while. “Having wet shoes is the worst.” She made a mental list — a pack of cotton panties, because she hadn’t brought enough for more than the night or two she’d expected to be there, and a pack of athletic socks so she wouldn’t have to suffer damp or bare feet while she waited for the two pairs she’d brought to dry. Something to read. A rain shell. Could I splurge for less-embarrassing pajamas?
“My work boots are all right in the rain,” he replied. “But I need a jacket.”
In the Walmart, they took baskets and split up to find what they needed. She didn’t want him watching her choose underwear and presumed he didn’t need her looking over his shoulder while he picked out whatever necessities he had on his list.
Socks and undies were inexpensive and she just wanted basic white; the same ones she usually bought to wear with her taekwondo uniform. No issue there. But there were no black rain boots in her size — only bubblegum pink, a pastel floral pattern, electric orange, and dark purple with silver stars. She opted for the purple with a resigned sigh, wondering why footwear manufacturers seemed to think grown women would want colors and patterns that looked like they belonged on Barbie dolls. At least the price was acceptable.
She made her way to the women’s outerwear section, hoping she could find something marginally tolerable. At least in terms of cheaper rain shells, the color selection was painfully pastel and not at all her style. It just has to keep the rain off. She shuddered at the thought of voluntarily walking around in a lilac or rose jacket, even for the bargain price of $19.95. But some of the nicer jackets came in sensible colors. She stroked her fingers over the sleeve of a hip-length hooded jacket in olive green. Waterproof, lightweight but warm enough for a summer storm. Fleece-lined and machine washable. It cost a bit more than she’d wanted to spend, but if she put up with the pink sleep set she had and didn’t buy new pajamas, she could make it work. She ought to skip getting a book as well, but she wanted to have something new to read in bed at night, as long as they were stuck at Champagne.
“Hey.” Eamonn appeared behind her. “Found something you like?”
She shrugged. “I was just trying to decide…”
“Nice color for you. What makes you hesitate?” When her involuntary glance toward the price tag betrayed her, he nodded and flipped it over to see the price. “I’ll buy it for you, no problem. You’ll look cute in it.”
Nell grabbed the jacket and stuffed it in her basket. “No. You can’t buy me something like this. I’ve got it.” She stomped away, turning back to add, “I just need to look at books, then I’m good to go. And I’m not damn well cute.”
The amused look on his face told her he’d been deliberately winding her up. He’s impossible! As she strode away, she indulged in a little fantasy of meeting up with him at an MMA sparring session and taking him down. But she wasn’t imagining him bruised and bleeding, she realized — she didn’t actually want to see him damaged. She was thinking about having him pinned down under her, tapping out, admitting that she’d won
.
They heard the first roll of thunder just as they got back to Champagne Cascades. “Looks like we’ve upgraded ourselves from heavy rain to all-out storm,” Eamonn said.
“I like thunderstorms,” Nell said, “all that power.”
He laughed. “You might regret saying that. Let’s go get some lunch.”
They got their umbrellas and splashed over to the dining room. It made a pleasant change to step inside with feet still dry inside her rain boots, and peel off her wet jacket to hang on the coat rack by the door.
The Princes and the newlyweds were sitting together, consuming soup and sandwiches. Mary seemed glad to see Nell and Eamonn, and waved them over to where she stood at the pass-through to the kitchen. “Come in with me, if you don’t mind,” she said. “François and I want to talk to you. Not in front of the guests.”
“Sure,” said Nell. They followed Mary into the kitchen. “What’s up?”
François looked up from the broad worktable in the middle of the room, where he was doing something with pastry. “Allo! How are you liking the food?”
“It’s great,” Eamonn said.
“Delicious,” Nell chimed in. “We’re lucky to have you here. Mary said you two wanted to talk to us?”
The cook nodded. “We’ve been hearing the weather reports on the radio. Storm warnings and now a flood watch.”
Flood watch. For a resort on a river, floods were naturally a concern, though not usually in the summer. “That’s not good.” Nell pulled out her phone to check the weather app. “Do we get flooded out often?”
“Eh, no, it’s not a worry for our safety here,” François assured them. “We’re on high ground; the cascades take the water downhill and well away from the resort. But if the river floods further down, it can wash out the freeway. Sometimes the State Patrol closes the roads if there’s a high risk of flash flooding.”
Nell thought for a minute. It wouldn’t fall under site safety if the site was on high ground. Travel safety risk, then? “Okay. We need to inform the guests.”
Rock God in Exile (Smidge Book 2) Page 8