Beckett tapped the clipboard against his leg, mentally picturing the layout and condition of their largest cabin. “When’s it for?”
“He wanted middle of July. That’s only three weeks away.”
Beckett looked at the list again, grabbed a pen, made a few notes, then looked back at his sister. “See if they can swing first week of August. I’ll move some stuff around and get cabin four ready.”
Cabin four was the largest and the only one that could accommodate a party that size. They had four cabins in total, but Beckett and Gray used two of them, with Jilly and Ollie staying in the family area of the lodge. The lodge itself had ten rooms. He might be able to get one cabin ready, but more than that was beyond his scope of abilities in that time frame.
Ollie came over and opened a drawer between Beckett and Jill. She pulled out a dried fruit strip that looked gross to him. She definitely deserved marshmallows later.
“Beck, that’s a lot. We need to get two of the lodge rooms painted, and there’s three to furnish in total.”
She was telling him things he already knew. Two of the lower rooms had water damage on the walls from years back. They’d had them re-drywalled but were saving money by doing the cosmetics themselves. There’d been no furniture in most of the rooms when Gray took over alittle more than six months ago. Slowly and surely, one room at a time, they were getting there.
Jilly continued, her checklist in her head. “That puts us down three rooms in here. Lots of people want a bank of rooms, or at least side by side, which we can’t offer yet. I feel stuck between trying to bring in more people and us not being ready to do that. I’m trying to learn about Facebook ads, because other businesses I’ve talked to said those were successful for them. But if that works, where will we put people?”
Her breath accelerated. He started to tell her it would be okay. They’d figure it out. They both knew these were platitudes, but generally, they were true. She carried on before he could say anything. “I feel like if we don’t have the lodge up and running at max capacity, we’ll never catch up. We need to be logical and sequential about this. Intentional. I say we do one thing, then move on to the next. This building first.”
Ollie ripped her snack open. “We’re bleeding money.” She shook her head like a miniature adult.
Both of them looked down at her, Jillian with her mouth open and Beckett with a loud laugh.
The front door to the lodge swung open and, as Grayson strolled in looking exhausted but smiling, the husband and wife who’d just arrived came down from their second-floor room. Beckett worried the weight of Gray’s divorce would be replaced with that of getting the lodge up and running. He’d missed having his brother close by and wanted to help make this work.
“Back to work, kid,” Beckett said to Ollie. He grabbed the clipboard, nodded at his brother and left the people-ing to his siblings. “That’s my cue to leave.”
“Don’t be so antisocial,” Jilly said, her greeter smile easily gracing her lips as she turned to the couple. “How are you settling in? Can we get you anything?”
While his sister tended to the guests, he met Gray in the center of the large lobby. It was a gorgeous building, with stained-wood wallsand thick, sturdy beams creating a vaulted ceiling. At night, when they lit the fire and turned down the lights, he could almost smell the history of the wood. Of course, there were usually too many things to do. By the time he got that moment of quiet or solitude to really breathe it in, he was ready to fall face down on his bed.
“Hey. How’s things?” Gray asked. A few days’ growth shadowed his jaw.
“Good.”Talk to him about the other store.If he took it, the money would be good, but he’d be starting over, somewhere else. “Brian is good with me using my banked holidays to play out the rest of the summer.”And then he told me he wondered if I want to help him grow his business by managing a new store.“It was nice to sleep in my own bed for a few nights.” Not that he’d slept much, since decisions and ideas plagued his brain. He’d been toying with the idea of opening his own bike rental place on Smile. Most tourists came by ferry, some on their own boats. It would give an option other than walking through their quaint little town. He was surprised someone else hadn’t beat him to the punch, but this was his shot to make his own way doing something he loved in the town he loved. But he’d worked at Brian’s Sports since he was a teen and felt a loyalty to the man almost similar to the one he did to his family.
Beckett remembered renting bikes and touring one of the islands with his family one summer. He was about twelve and hadn’t been stoked about the idea, but it turned out to be one of his favorite memories. Smile was the perfect place to offer something like that, and he could be the guy who did it. It would even tie in to the lodge, but he didn’t want to stress Gray out with the thought of taking on more responsibility. Beckett had some savings; he’d priced things out for a start-up rental shop. But every time he thought to follow through, he got sidetracked with helping others.
“Tevin called.” Grayson ran both hands through his dark brown hair. His brother was older by two years, but they shared a lot of the same physical traits: height, hair, eyes. They looked like their father,and Jill looked like their mom. “The cruiser needs a couple more parts. He won’t get it back to us until next week.” Tevin worked on the mainland and Smile as a mechanic and all-around handyman. He was also a friend of theirs, so if he could get it back sooner, he would.
“Mom and Dad are coming in July. Dad will be able to look after the boats and take care of some of the other maintenance.”
“Okay. You heading to your cabin?”
“Yeah. I’ll drop my stuff, then I want to take a look at cabin four. Jill has possible renters.”
“We’re not ready.”
He shook his head, gave his brother a light shove. “Which is why I’m going to look at it. I need to fix a couple spots on the dock.” He thought of the woman in room one. “And the pathway has some loose stones.”
“Okay. You’re good for the tour tomorrow?”
“I am.”
Gray clapped Beckett on the shoulder and, knowing his sibling well, Beckett felt the gratitude in it. They were all tired. But it would pay off. They’d keep working together and all of them would get where they wanted to be. For him, right this minute, that was between the sheets right after something to eat and a cold beer. But he hadn’t even reached the exit when the front desk phone rang again.
Five
Presley couldn’t blink. She was positive her eyes had a thin sheet of ice coating them. Adding the sheet to the two blankets bundled around her did nothing to stop the shaking.
She padded to the door, shuffling beneath the weight of the down comforters, which she had thought would be warmer. She hoped whoever was knocking knew how to sweet-talk her thermostat, because she’d tried everything, including googling “how to turn off AC” with the make and model number of the controller.
