might be a recluse, but he was also an innkeeper.
“I keep extras for guests who forget them. Remind
me and I’ll go get some.”
“Bless you,” the teacher murmured, apparently not
having considered the benefits of halitosis.
He handed out flannel sheets and duvet covers, they
picked partners and rooms. Fortunately two of the
rooms each had a pair of queen beds, so the three boys
went in one of those and three of the girls in the other.
Another pair of girls shared a room and Fiona claimed
the first room at the head of the stairs.
John went in with her to help her make up the bed.
Setting the armful of linens on a chair, she looked
around with approval.
“Dieter told me the lodge was really nice. This is
lovely.”
He’d bought the place as-is, but it was in good
shape. Her room was typical: polished plank floors
with a rag rug to add warmth, a bed built of peeled
Ponderosa pine and covered with a puffy duvet,
antique pine dresser with a mirror that showed a
wavery reflection. The artwork varied from room to
room, giving each character. She was in the one he privately thought of as the Rose Room, with cottage-style paintings in which roses smothered fences and
arbors and tangled in old-fashioned hedgerows. He
tended to put women in here.
With quick, efficient movements, he and Fiona made
up her bed with snow-white sheets and duvet cover.
When they’d finished, she looked at him over the bed.
“I don’t think you told me your name.”
“Fallon. John Fallon.”
Her smile was a thing of beauty, somehow merry and
so warm he had the sudden illusion of not needing the
fire downstairs. “It’s nice to meet you, John Fallon.
You’re a kind man to try to hide how much you wish
we hadn’t shown up on your front porch.”
He thought of himself as a decent man. Decent
enough to do the right thing when he had to.
“I usually have guests. You’re not putting me out.”
What was a little white lie?
“We’re just surprise guests.”
And nonpaying ones, he presumed.
Again, she seemed to read his mind.
“I’ll make sure you’re reimbursed, at least for the
food. I teach at a private school.” She nodded toward
the voices drifting from the other bedrooms. “Most of
their parents are pretty well-to-do.”
He only nodded. “That would be appreciated.”
Again her teeth closed briefly on her lower lip. “I
hate to ask, but… We ate at four o’clock. I suspect the
boys especially are starved.”
John had once been skinny like the one kid. He
seemed to remember eating from morning to night and
never feeling full.
“Sandwiches?”
“Sandwiches would be great.” She treated him to
another smile, this time relieved.
They met at the foot of the bed and had one of those
awkward moments where they both hesitated, started
forward, shuffled, until he finally waved toward the
door. “After you.”
It seemed to him that her cheeks were a little bit
pink. Did she feel some of the pull that had him half-
aroused and uncomfortable?
He couldn’t imagine. With his scarred face and
obvious limp, he was more likely to be an object of pity
than lust. His throat momentarily tightened. Had that
moment been so clumsy because she’d been trying to
defer to him since he was disabled?
“I’ll get started on food,” he said shortly, and left her
to the kids.
Like a bunch of locusts, they showed up in the
kitchen all too quickly and began filling plates. A couple
of the smaller girls barely nibbled—one was Asian, a
tiny thing with glossy black hair down to her hips, the
other thin and plain with braces that pushed her lips out.
Those two, he remembered, had taken the room with
one bed, and now were quieter than the others.
Two girls were arguing loudly about some math
question, while another flirted with the stocky boy who
seemed more interested in piling food on his plate. The
teacher looked dead on her feet.
She swayed, and John stepped forward, but she
rallied and said, “Wow! This is great. Thank you.”
They took seats around the long, farmhouse table
that occupied the middle of the enormous kitchen, John