The warm voice wrapped around me like a blanket on a cold rainy day. It was the kind of voice I could listen to narrating a dictionary and still hold me in rapt attention. My eyes shot open in surprise, and I started to skitter in one direction as I swiveled my head searching for the owner of such a magnificent voice.
Eyes so dark I could have sworn they were black met mine. I froze like a deer in headlights. The man was a good foot taller than my mere five feet five inches frame, and I had to crane my neck to look at him. A corner of his wide, full lips picked up into an arrogant grin that proved devastating on my nerves. He took a step forward, not breaking eye contact with me, and I mirrored his step backward. Again, he stepped, his long legs giving him a wide stride. But as I retreated further away, heat searing my cheeks, I felt the shelf pressed into my back. It was my only warning for the tower of paint cans that tumbled to the ground in a loud crash.
He chuckled as I spun around to take in the damage. My cheeks burned hotter as I swore under my breath. This man was going to think that I was an imbecile, incapable of conversation or controlling myself. I knelt and began stacking the cans one by one.
“I’ll go find someone to help you,” he said to my back.
“You could do it yourself,” I called over my shoulder, but he was already gone.
Surrounded by a heap of scattered paint cans, I sat on the floor, contemplating how my life had gotten to this point. No man had ever unsettled me so thoroughly. I could not remember a time in my life when I was speechless in front of anyone. Yet this stranger, another oddity to add to the mix, had completely unraveled me to the point of being clumsy.
When a store clerk found me, the cans had stopped rolling, but I still had not moved. The cans were righted, and I peeled myself off the floor and left, not bothering to get whatever I came in to buy. I needed to clear my head. Reliving my relationship with my father, not remembering what I came to get from the store and the man in the aisle…Here in Voss, everyone knows each other…who is he?
Chapter three
Alexander
"Ithasbeenaweek, Alexander. Are you planning on hiding in this office for your entire visit??"
I pulled my attention from the screen toward the woman standing before me.
“No, Asta," I tell her, my words coming out in a snap. "But seeing as there is a business I must run, there is not much I can do about my current use of time, is there?"
The older woman does not flinch at the tone I have seen make grown men cower. I doubt there is anything that could bring her to her knees.
"Alex," she softly chides, "I am only worried about you. You have not spoken but three sentences to me. You have only left the house once, and that was to go to the hardware store two days ago. I would be remiss in my duty to your grandfather if I did not verbalize my concerns. Even he did not work this much."
With that, she spun on her heels and left the way she came. I shook my head, my nerves grated by my own presence. It had, in fact, been two days since I had been at the hardware store…that encounter in the aisle. What an eye-catcher she was. She had stolen some of my focus. But as much as I hated to admit it, Asta was right. I had locked myself in this office long enough. If there were anyone who knew my grandfather well enough to comment on his routines, it would be her.
She had been the housekeeper of this estate since my grandfather had first bought it decades ago. She and her husband, Igor, had spent their entire lives running this place. It had been his job to maintain the property, but no one had replaced him since he died a few years ago.
After arriving last week, I decided to take a few days off from my usual business work. Within two hours of arriving, I was stalking around the house, my mind running in circles over how to solve the issues I was observing. I usually think better when my hands are busy, so I got to work pulling weeds and nailing down the porch. That had been days ago. When Asta saw the haphazard job I had done on the porch, she suggested I call her nephew.
"I know the house is not in the condition you expected," she explained, "but I have had the hardest time finding someone to do the work since my husband passed. The young men here always seem to run off searching for opportunities bigger and better than Voss had to offer. Luckily, my nephew just moved back to town. He has been helping at the Ottestad farm when he can. I am sure I could ask him to help here too. I hate to take him away from that poor girl."
Absently I asked, “what girl?”
“Oh, the young Ottestad. She was working day and night to save her family farm. What does she know about farming anyway? She is all sophisticated…" Asta did not finish her sentence; she ran to the kitchen as the oven started ringing.
I wondered if it could be the woman from the hardware store.
Running my hands through my hair, I pushed back from the desk, rose to my full height, stretched, and walked to the kitchen, following Asta. Regardless of the work that needed here, this lodge was still one of my favorite places. Memories lined the hallways in black and white frames. Every inch of the house felt lined with history about where the Fredericksons came from and what they built. The only downside to being here was that I couldn't stop thinking that my grandfather would come around the corner at any minute with a book tucked under his arm and a ready smile.
The thought made me stop in my tracks. That was what this house needed, and no amount of work on the stairs or replacing the stove would fix that. My grandfather was a warm kind of man. He made a point of making whoever he was talking to the most special person in the world to him.
An intelligent, cunning businessman was tucked in somewhere, but he never let it tarnish how he cared for people. I wondered how I would stack up if someone compared us; I doubted it would go favorably for me.
“You miss him,” Asta said from behind the kitchen counter, a bowl of who knows what in her hands. The smells of whatever she was cooking spread throughout the house.
"Yes," I answer.
“Your grandfather was a great man,” she continued, reading my thoughts. “Do you think he would be proud of the man you have become?”
I turn to look at the housekeeper then, taking her in as I cock my head. Her pale skin still showed her age and a life spent laughing. Her blue eyes felt more like steel than the sky. The white hair she wore in a loose knot at the nape of her neck made her look more elegant standing in a rundown kitchen with an apron around her waist than most women I had seen in gowns at galas. She was more than a foot shorter than me, but her slender, petite frame did not hide the confidence in her even if she wanted to. It was the kind of fire that pushed her to ask impetuous questions like the one I was now avoiding answering.
“I do not know,” I finally say.
She has no response to that other than a hmph. Her attention was drawn back to the bowl in her hands and I, having been dismissed, continued to my room.
