Page 21 of Heart of Stone
Reid
I hated it here.
There was nothing quite like agreeing to subject myself to six months of this place when it was the very thing I’d despised for so long.
Now, I was stuck.
If I wanted this place to cease to exist, I had no choice but to suck it up and deal with it.
But I wasn’t quite sure how much more I could take.
I hadn’t even made it through the second full week, and I was ready to tear my hair out. Every day brought something else I couldn’t deal with.
The work itself wasn’t necessarily the problem. I could manage all the required tasks that my dad had previously handled as owner and operator of the retreat. I’d caught on quickly to all of it. Of course, I didn’t take on all the extra that I’d been informed he liked to do for what I could only assumehe believed was fun. Unfortunately for him and anyone else who preferred his presence, the very last thing I wanted was more time spent in a place I didn’t care about salvaging.
My biggest problem being here was her.
Natalia Barton.
No matter what I did, she seemed to keep popping up.
She’d even taken to decorating my office, even after the showdown with the muffins. Even after I’d lied to her about hating pumpkin.
There wasn’t much that rattled me these days, but there was something about her that made me feel this urge to find ways to keep my distance.
At the very least, she’d been kind enough when she’d gone about decorating my office not to make it look like her own. God, it was like some Thanksgiving fairy had vomited all over the place in there. But in my own office, she’d done just enough to annoy me. And if I weren’t so busy trying to stay on top of the actual work I needed to get done, I might have taken some time to rip the decorations down.
I considered going to her and giving her an earful about it, demanding she remove it all, but I refused to give her the satisfaction of knowing she got under my skin. The woman seemed hellbent on making my life more miserable that it already was. She didn’t need any additional fuel.
As it was, I couldn’t comprehend how she did any of it. Because if there was one good thing I could say about Natalia, it was that she didn’t slack when it came to getting any of her tasks completed throughout the day. Somehow, she managed her responsibilitiesandall the extras.
Natalia was industrious. That much was true.
And she did it all with a constant smile on her face.
God, I didn’t know how she could stand it—being so cheerful all the time. Especially when all her happiness seemed to stem from anything and everything to do with this place.
But as bad as all of it had felt getting to this point, I got the distinct feeling that today was going to be my worst day yet.
Because apparently, I had to participate in something I hadn’t been made aware of until nearly the last minute. Whenever a group was leaving the retreat, there was a farewell dinner of sorts, and I was required to attend. This wasn’t simply one of those things my father did for the heck of it. Evidently, being present at the last meal with the people who’d come to the retreat at Sandstone Heart was a necessity.
I came, but I wasn’t happy about it.
And the minute dinner was served and finished, I was getting out of here. It couldn’t happen soon enough.
Unfortunately, it seemed I was going to have to wait just a bit longer, because I didn’t think dinner would come out as long as someone was speaking. And right now, the program director—Natalia’s friend, Danielle, I believed—was up at the front of the room recapping the group’s stay. She’d been going on and on about all the things they’d done, what they’d accomplished, and some of the breakthroughs that each of the individuals within the group had.
I guess, if I was as caught up in this place as everyone else here seemed to be, I might have found this entertaining or rewarding or some other bullshit term like that.
None of this was of any interest to me.
Not a stitch of it.
And while that didn’t technically bother me, I wished it weren’t the case. If only because it would have prevented my thoughts from drifting.
Sadly, I wasn’t thinking about the work I was missing out on in Pittsburgh. My mind wasn’t on the friends and life I hadbecome more than content with while living in Pennsylvania all these years.
To my utter dismay, my mind was consumed with thoughts of Natalia. Of how frustrated she made me and how she insisted on doing things every day that wouldn’t allow me to pretend she didn’t exist. Like making muffins and calling them a peace offering. I wasn’t about to get myself tangled up in anything like that.
