Page 32 of Where the Waves Kiss the Shore
Kasia let the silence drag, wondering if Tierney would have the guts to say anything aboutthatnight. With her arms crossed, she leaned against the counter and waited.
“I’m also sorry…” Tierney held her gaze. “For what happened that night after the pub. I should never have put you under anypressure.” Her throat moved as she swallowed, but she stood her ground.
Kasia chuckled to let her off the hook. “You didn’t put me under pressure. We were both drunk. It happened.” She had a flashback to Tierney so obediently naked in her bed and hoped her reaction didn’t show on her face.
“Can we put it behind us?” Tierney moved closer. “I want to make this work, and we don’t need the distraction of awkwardness about that night.”
Kasia held her arms wide. “It’s as if it never happened.” But ithadhappened, and the longer Tierney stood in front of her, the more memories resurfaced. You couldn’t help who you were attracted to. The challenge was to not act on it…again.
“Great.” Tierney reached past her and lifted her backpack from the counter. She pulled out her laptop and sat at the kitchen table. “I’ve started a business plan based on some of the ideas you told me about before. If we can get it in shape and satisfy Dad with the figures, I think we can get his backing.”
Kasia was unconvinced, but she liked that Tierney was showing an interest. And she was surprised that she had actually been listening when she’d shared her ideas. She pulled up a chair alongside, and they talked through ideas and discussed where they needed to get quotes for work, completely engrossed until Joey appeared on the back stairs.
“Come and take a look now, Tierney. Let’s see what needs to be done.”
Tierney nodded and closed the laptop. She ambled toward the stairs before turning back to Kasia. “Do you need any help with preparing the rooms?”
Kasia blinked to hide her surprise. “Thank you. Perhaps later this afternoon, you could make the beds?” She was sure she’d need to go around and fix them when Tierney was done, but any help was better than none.
“Yeah, sure.”
After Tierney followed Joey upstairs, Kasia wondered if things between them could return to some sort of normality. Much as she’d laughed off their night together, that inner feeling of guilt didn’t leave her. It was why she preferred her encounters to be discreet and fleeting, andneverwith her employer.
Peggy’s suite in the hotel was everything Kasia’s room was not. Situated on the upper floor of the hotel and accessed by a private flight of stairs, the lounge and bedroom had the same aspect as the more expensive rooms in the hotel, looking out over the harbor and beyond to the mainland. In the dead of winter, when heating in the rest of the hotel had been turned to minimum to save costs, that was where she sat with Peggy, playing music, laughing over a board game, or reading and enjoying each other’s company in silence. It would take some time to get used to being there without Peggy. But she didn’t know how much time she had left.
She turned back to her chores, taking some time to look out at the view and ground herself. Whatever was to come, she would try her hardest to keep the hotel going. Tierney wasn’t a bad person. Kasia could be polite with her, friendly even. Although not so friendly they’d end up back in bed. If Tierney really was trying to take some responsibility for the business, perhaps they could make it work. If not, at least she’d know she did everything she could.
SIXTEEN
Tierney got backfrom her last trip to the recycling bank to find the reception area buzzing with the weekend’s guests. Kasia spotted her peering around the door and called her over. She recalled from her visits with her granny that guests were always pleased to meet a member of the Walsh family, as if it somehow made their stay at the hotel more authentic. Kasia introduced her, and she greeted them instinctively, all the while wondering how Kasia had managed over the summer season with just a handful of seasonal helpers and no Walsh family members to take control. Tierney was starting to wish she’d asked more questions after her granny had died, instead of putting aside thoughts of the island to avoid her grief. Kasia had been left in a horrible situation, and no one had seemed to care.
The work Tierney was putting in renovating the suite at the hotel was her way of trying to make amends. Kasia had earned comfortable quarters after all the work she put into running the hotel. When Kasia had talked about her granny’s rooms laying uncared for, she’d seen a hint of the same grief she was feeling, and a sense of shame had run through her.
If Peggy had been around to see how her family had treated Kasia, there would have been a lot of people going away withtheir tail between their legs. Her granny had been able to express the perfect level of disappointment and quiet anger that meant she’d never had to raise her voice if one of her children or grandchildren had acted badly. Her disapproval had been enough to make them instantly remorseful.
She escaped the visitors after giving them her top tips for what to do on the island and ran up the back stairs to inspect her completed project. With help from Joey, she’d removed most of Peggy’s personal items, but left a few of her most loved photographs of the island. A box of old photos and personal effects she couldn’t yet bear to get rid of went to the attic, and everything else went to the recycling bank, or to the community center to be sold in the next charity sale. She’d removed all of the worn furniture and replaced it with the almost unused furnishings from the extra rooms at the holiday cottage. Her dad would never know, and the house didn’t need so much furniture when it was rarely used.
The only thing she’d left in place was her granny’s beloved leather armchair. Old and battered but cozily comfortable, the chair featured in her last memories of her granny sitting there with her favorite blanket over her knees, looking out over the harbor from the floor-to-ceiling window. She would give Kasia the option of keeping it or moving it to the cottage. She lifted the blanket from the back of the chair and inhaled the familiar lavender scent her granny loved so much. Removing the personal items had come with a lot of tears, but she knew she was doing what her granny would have wanted, and that helped with the sense of loss.
Kasia had been banned from the rooms while the work was being done, but now she’d finished, Tierney was excited to see her reaction to her new quarters. She texted Joey.I’m done here. Come over later, and we’ll do the big reveal.
Her phone rang almost immediately. “Hey, sorry, I’ve got plans for this evening.” The line crackled. “I’m still out on the boat. Why don’t you just show Kasia? You don’t need to make a big deal of it. Just invite her to move up there.”
“Aw, we worked on it together. I wanted you to be here when she sees it.”
She couldn’t fathom what plans Joey would have more important than showing Kasia what a great job they’d done.
“I just helped haul furniture up a very narrow set of stairs. You did all the work. Just remember, Tierney, this is about giving Kasia a comfortable living space, not showing off how much work you’ve done,” Joey shouted against the background wind noise.
Tierney lifted the handset away from her face and stared at it while she let the flash of anger fade. Was that what she was doing? It wasn’t what she had intended when she started the work, but the more she’d worked to get it just right, had she lost the point of why she was doing it? She put the phone back to her ear. “Point taken. I’ll just show her and ask if she wants any changes.”
“Grand. I’ve got to go now. Let me know how it goes.” The line went dead.
Tierney wandered back down the stairs, feeling slightly deflated. Kasia was in reception looking at the booking system. “Hey, is everyone…checked in okay?” The operational details of running the hotel were a little hazy. Even when she’d stayed as a kid, it had all seemed too routine to pay much notice. Should she have been helping her granny more back then?
Kasia raised her head momentarily then went back to the screen. “Yes, thanks.”
Tierney took a deep breath and moved behind the desk. “Do you want to show me how everything works? So I can help out a bit more.”
