Page 28 of Spring Showers

Taking the stack of towels in hand, she knocked.

While she waited, she looked over her shoulder to the dancing wildflowers. The lady trio walked by on the path and waved. Thandie pressed the pile of towels to her chest with one hand and waved back to them. “Heading up for lunch?”

One of them nodded and pointed up the ramble. With the sun shining through puffy white and gray clouds in quick passing intervals and a steady breeze, it was a beautiful time of day for the quarter-mile walk, though she would have taken a bike or an umbrella at a minimum if she were them.

Thandie knocked again. With no answer, she used her master key and entered the front door. “Hello?” she called out, just in case Grant was in there. The Bear Cabin was so unlike hers. The walls were made of rolled logs with white chinking. The window frames were painted white to match. A round iron chandelier hung from a long wooden beam at the peak of the ceiling. Despite its small size, the studio space had a cozy appeal.

Beside the entry was a coatrack and a sitting area with two oversized leather chairs and a small game table. A kitchen was tucked into one corner, and a bed and desk made up the opposite side of the room. It was so quaint, but now she felt as though she was violating his privacy by being essentially inside of his bedroom.

A door hung ajar near the kitchen, and she could see a white glossy bathtub and a porcelain pedestal sink with brass legs. She walked in and looked for a place to put the extra towels. Behind the door, she found a narrow linen cabinet and opened it. Inside, she discovered all of his toiletries on the top shelf, in addition to a stack of perfectly good, folded white towels.

She closed the doors and placed the extra towels where he could see them on the back of the toilet tank. There was no way he hadn’t seen the extra towels on the shelf below his personal things! Curious, she opened the door again and inventoried the other shelves. One held several rolls of toilet tissue and a small tray of complimentary toiletry items, such as shampoo and lotion.

The bottommost shelf was left empty. She straightened the rolls and existing towels in their designated places, but paused at the top shelf. A tortoiseshell comb lay perfectly perpendicular to the front edge, and his toothbrush lay in the center of a long, narrow dish. His deodorant, face cream, lotion, hair gel, and under-eye moisturizer stood like little toy soldiers in a row.

He was meticulous, she had to give him that.

“Ahem,” a voice broke her snooping, and she whipped around. “Hi.” Grant gave a wave with his fingers.

The cabinet doors clattered, and items toppled over inside as the door latched. “Um. Hello,” she said. “I was just—um—bringing you extra towels.”

“I hoped you would,” he said.

“You did? Why?”

“I felt really bad about how I behaved earlier. You have a job to do here, and I took advantage of that,” Grant admitted, though it wasn’t quite an apology for the way he recoiled and stormed away from the gazebo.

Something twisted in her stomach. “I hadn’t noticed anything,” she said. “Just two adults enjoying each other’s company. However, I do have a job to do. I put your towels just in there and please let me, or any of the other staff, know how we can make your stay here more enjoyable.”

She was proud of how professional, though slightly cold, she sounded.

“So,” he met her in the middle of the room, his bedroom, and took her by the hands. Warm hands. “There’s nothing between us?”

His question had several meanings. She felt the electricity turn every hair on her arms on end. There was something between them, but admitting that out loud would ruin everything. She couldn’t chance losing her job. She pulled her hands away and broke their connection. His eyes lowered ever so slightly at the sudden parting.

“Grant, I can’t. And if things were different, I think I’d like to get to know you better, like why you line up all your toiletries, that no one else is going to see, in perfect little rows, or why you know more about yoga than I do, or what a man like you is doing at a wellness retreat, alone, in the first place. But that would be out of place for me.”

“I line up my toiletries because I like order.” He paused and closed the distance between them. “I spent a year in Bali learning yoga from a master guru.” He brushed a ringlet behind her ear. “And I think I’d like to know you better, too.”

“In a professional way,” she said quickly and hid the quiver in her voice.

“Of course,” he said and moved out of the way of the door. “Will I see you later?”

“Flower arranging at the dock at three. Then supper. Tomorrow, we’ll have breakfast outdoors. I’ve got something really fun planned.”

“And the bonfire tomorrow night?” Grant asked as she brushed by him.

His hand fell to her elbow, and she paused looking into his eyes. Her breath caught at his touch. “It looks like rain,” she said and put her hand out the door. A drop, and then another landed in her hand. “Wear your poncho.”

CHAPTER14

Grant had skipped the flower arranging event and dinner. He knew better than to miss an opportunity to scout out The Foundry, but he held back. Instead of doing his job, he chose to cower alone in his room all afternoon. This woman, Thandie, had captured his imagination like no other person had done since he had lost so much.

He was utterly distracted from why he was even there. Their shared moments together had been a refreshing realization. For the first time in nearly a decade, he could see a reason for possibly dismantling the walls around his heart. There was no reason he couldn’t do both his job and explore the crack rapidly forming in his defenses.

Grant stood from the picnic table where breakfast had just wrapped up and helped Margret and Anne slide out from the bench. He noticed the awkward bench braces that hindered one’s ability from scooting out with any kind of grace and felt it was probably time for the resort to make an upgrade. His new friends’ jovial spirits had made his trip so much more fun than he had on a typical consulting job, and breakfast had been no exception. Though Thandie hadn’t made an appearance, he had been thoroughly entertained and stuffed.

Light, wispy clouds had shaded them during their breakfast of fresh fruit cut into various flower forms and an array of baked goods made to resemble little ducks, eggs, twigs, and more. Now the sun burned through the high-level haze and cut a line of light down the pathway towards the dock.

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