Can you work this Saturday? We’re short-staffed.
Tossing the phone, she fell back into the pillows, stared at the white popcorn ceiling. Ten days to herself at a lodge where the highlighted feature was getting lost in nature. Nature. The place with the bugs and bears and itchy plants.
Looking from side to side, she took in the room. Simple. Clean. Closet beside the door, dresser with an old television on it.Please, Camping Gods, have Netflix.The door to the bathroom was slightly ajar but she didn’t have the energy to go check out the tub.
Starting to shiver, she pulled the comforter around her, snuggling into the surprisingly comfortable bed. Curling onto her side, burrowed like a hibernating bear, she waited for the tears to come. They’d likely freeze when they did and she’d be surrounded by icicles. Little Emmett-I’m-an-idiot icicles.
Ten days. She’d become one with nature, make a plan for moving forward, spend time doing what she wanted, maybe find a new hobby.
Everything would be okay. Presley hadn’t been much older than Ollie when she realized people didn’t make good choices just because you hoped they would. Or because you’d have chosen differently in their shoes. She’d grown up forcing herself to put a happy spin on things that disappointed her. Maybe Emmett was right about that part. InPride and Prejudice, Lizzy Bennet said to her naive sister:All theworld are good and agreeable in your eyes.Maybe it was time to take the rose-colored glasses off.
This trip was a chance to figure out what she really wanted, because she’d been plodding along to some imaginary finish line, obviously not paying attention to the signs. She’d thought she and Emmett were happy, that she was on the fast track to promotion—told herself at every turn that things would work out. When they didn’t, she told herself they would next time. She thought of Ms. Twain asking if she wanted more responsibility even as she watched Presley take on more and more at the hotel. It’d be easy to blame others for not listening to her, but it could be she needed to start listening to whattheywere tellingher.
She shut her eyes and let the images of how she had thought this week would go sift through her mind like a slideshow. Then she imagined a garbage can and envisioned herself dumping all of those images into it. She was a blank slate, an empty photo album. How she filled it was up to her. Whatever she chose, she’d be wiser. Stronger. A better version of herself. One who wouldn’t have been caught off guard by Emmett’s behavior because she would have seen it coming.Look out, world, there’s a new version of Presley Ayers coming your way. Get ready. This Presley camps.
Four
This ought to be interesting,Beckett Keller thought as he watched the gorgeous, preoccupied woman head for her room. He’d left enough space between them that he didn’t hear whatever his sister said to her, but he’d noticed Jilly’s scrunched face. Something was up with the wary-eyed traveler. He winked at his niece, Ollie, then leaned down and asked what room he got.
“You’re silly, Uncle Beck. You sleep in your own bed.”
The kid meant the bed here at a cabin his brother, Grayson, kept for him. At the moment, he had more than one bed to choose from, since he hadn’t given up his apartment in Smile. When Gray had asked if he’d help out with the lodge, Beckett jumped on board. He was at a crossroads in his own job at a sporting goods store in Smile, trying to decide if he wanted to accept a promotion that included relocating or pull a complete one-eighty and do his own thing. He’d taken all of his vacation time so he would have the next five weeks to figure out an answer.
He hadn’t planned to stay on the island, but the entire place was a to-do list. As soon as they fixed one thing, another went. But they dealt with it. That’s what family did. His brother had walked away from his divorce with a broken heart and the lodge. Gray was determined to get one of them back on track, and since he wanted nothing to do with putting himself out there again, the lodge was his focus.
Which meant Beck and Jilly were by his side doing their best to help him stop it from going under. Not an easy task, since it had been well on its way when the deed transferred hands. Beck tried to split histime almost evenly between the island and the mainland, but travel, short as it was, was wearing on him.
“Are we roasting marshmallows tonight?” Ollie bounced on her toes. Jilly shook her head.
He grinned. Bugging his kid sister had changed over the years in delivery but it still felt good. He held his fist out for Ollie. “You got it. You’re my favorite date.”
Ollie clapped, jumping up and down while Jilly called him a jerk with just the narrowing of her eyes.
“Why didn’t you drop your things at the cabin?” Jilly asked, shutting the door now that all the new guests had arrived.
He shrugged the duffel farther onto his shoulder. He should have, but he’d been staring at the back of the woman ahead of him, certain she was going to trip over the rocky path. She looked like she might pass out. He’d seen seasick people before, more than his share. The woman clutched her bag like a lifeline and shook a little when she’d stepped onto dry land. Despite not being at her best—he assumed she wasn’t always seasick—she had an elegance and grace that caught his attention like a fist to the gut.
Beckett had been too wrapped up in concern for her to drop off his things. “Wanted to see my sister and niece.”
Jilly laughed. “Sure.” The phone rang behind the front desk. She raced to answer it but didn’t beat Ollie.
“Hello? This is Ollie. What can I help you with?”
Beckett’s heart melted as he watched his sister gently remind his niece that only the adults answered the phone. Moving around the huge log front desk, he dropped his duffel and picked up Jilly’s ever-present to-do list. No matter how quickly he returned to the lodge, there was always a ton of shit to be done. His personal to-do list was getting longer as a result, but the lodge’s needs were more pressing.
Ollie grabbed her iPad and moved to the little table-and-chair set they’d put out for her. Grayson was so grateful for Jilly and Beck’s help, he’d have built Ollie her own command station if she’d wanted it.With parents who worked long hours, the three siblings had grown up raising each other. They’d always counted on each other. Which was why he hadn’t confided in his siblings about the possible promotion. Could he call it that? Brian, who ran the sporting goods store on Smile, wanted to open a second location, thinking Beckett could run it. But it would mean moving to the mainland. The actual mainland, more than a few hours from his siblings and niece. They’d encourage him to do it, but the truth was, Beckett didn’t know what he wanted. Keeping busy between the two places let him put off making the decision.
While Jilly booked reservations, he checked the tours she’d scheduled. They were operating at half capacity. At one time, this lodge and a few other islands around them had been more than bustling. Like most things, tourism could ebb and flow.
Gray had met Lana, his ex, almost twenty years earlier when her dad bought the lodge, then named something else, on a whim for his wife. Nothing like a little vacation property as a birthday gift for the woman he loved. A lot of the smaller islands were privately owned or developed into exclusive retreats for the wealthy.
From time to time, Lana and her family would come stay and she’d cruise over to Smile in a boat Daddy bought her, looking for fun. They’d all been teenagers, and Beckett and Grayson—Jilly usually had her head buried in a book—were used to teen tourists coming in and out of their lives. They’d both had their share of summer crushes and the kind of heartbreaks that came from falling fast and hard in the way that was uniquely dedicated to being young. Gray and Lana had shared more than a couple of summers making heart eyes at each other—a fact Beckett had loved to goad his brother about. But time, distance, and life had made her just another summer crush until Lana had come to Smile for a girls’ weekend about six years ago. She and Grayson had reconnected. Fallen in love. Gotten married.
With Gray going to work for Lana’s dad as a general manager for his chain of pharmacies in Chicago, he was too busy to visit much.The lodge was mostly forgotten by all of them. Until Lana asked for a divorce and her father had hired the world’s sharkiest lawyer to make sure Gray walked away with nothing but a run-down piece of property and a few memories.
Still. Grayson had remembered it fondly and in far better shape than it was when the divorce was finalized and they all came to take a look.
“Okay,” Jilly said with a sigh as she hung up. “We need to get at least one cabin up and running. I told that guy I’d call him back, but really, I’m just stalling. We can’t house a party of six right now without splitting them up.” She looked at Beckett, who was still going over the chores.
