Page 2 of Arctic Panda's Secret Mate
Haisley had the perfect Christmas planned. Dorothy was going home to see her mother and Haisley was going to have Mountain Crown Chalet to herself, mull some cider the old-fashioned way, sit in front of the fire, and do absolutelynothingfor ten whole days but watch the snow fall.
When Mr. Barnum upended her lazy ambitions with a notification that the chalet had been hired out at the last minute, Haisley was disappointed, but not crushed.
Fine. They’d rented out the chalet. That wasn’tentirelyunexpected. Even though Mr. Barnum insisted on hiring it out in whole instead of room-by-room, which drove it up out of the casual tourist market, they could still count on regular weddings and reunions and anniversary parties. Haisley could cook for a bunch of stuffy guests with impossible expectations and clean up their unreasonable messes and listen to them argue unhappily about the weather and the stock market while they drank wine worth more than her car. It would be harder without Dorothy to help with housekeeping, but she’d managed the whole chalet before,and she had enough time to get the kitchen fully stocked before they got there.
But then Mr. Barnum dropped the other shoe.
Her services weren’t needed.
They were bringingtheir own cook, and had opted out of cleaning services during their stay. They wantedcompleteprivacy, and that meant Haisley was homeless.
She was going to have to drive thirty miles to the nearest town, atChristmas, and pay holiday tourist prices at a hotel…assuming they even had room. Winter tourism in Alaska was huge, with everyone wanting to see the northern lights and ride a dog sled. Her attempts to make a reservation so far had been met with busy signals and tired laughter.
She hauled her suitcase hopelessly out to her car on the morning that the guests were incoming. She was going to end up like a nativity scene, camping out in someone’s garage. She wasn’t pregnant (it would take a holy miracle, given her nun-like life) and didn’t have a mule or a carpenter, but her car was as stubborn as a mule, and maybe she could make bathtub gin in an ActionPacker to stay in the seasonal “spirit.”
The car in question was covered in a thick dust of snow behind the lodge and more was falling. Some of it fell into the seat as Haisley wearily opened the back door. She didn’t bother brushing it out, because the heater in her car was terrible at best, and it would never thaw to melt into the back seat. She shoved her suitcase in and slammed the door hard enough to knock more of the snow off into her boot, where it melted at once and made her sock wet.
Then came the third shoe.
The car wouldn’t start.
She’d driven it the day before, but now it was as dead as a doornail, in classic Christmas Carol timing.
The battery was fine, at first, but she wore it out trying in vain to get the engine to turn over. She pumped the gas, wondering if she’d flooded it. Modern cars weren’t supposed to do that. Not that this was very modern. The windows still had hand cranks, even though the locks were powered.
Haisley tried and tried, and then wept over the steering wheel when it was all futile.
She didn’t have anywhere to go anyway.
After she’d felt sorry for herself for a few minutes, Haisley gave herself a shake.
She had a few options. She could throw a hundred dollars at hiring an Uber, to take her to Fairbanks, where the only rooms to rent would be out of her price range anyway.
Or…she could go back inside. Her room had an ensuite bathroom. She could camp out there, raid the kitchen in the middle of the night, and they’d never evenknowthat she was still around.
Mr. Barnum had said the party wanted the chalet to themselves, but he hadn’tspecificallytold her that shecouldn’tstay there, had he? If they never saw her, what was the harm?
It wasn’t the run of the chalet that Haisley had hoped for, sitting in front of the fireplace or using the honeymoon suite hot tub, but her room was nice enough and the great room had a lot of books to read. The wifi was decent; she could probably stream Hallmark movies on her laptop. There was even an extra mini fridge in the utility room that she could set up for herself.
She dragged her suitcase back out of the car and returned to the lodge with a glimmer of hope. Maybe it wouldn’t be the magical Christmas of her dreams, but she was still going to make the most of it.
3
TRISTAN
Tristan sat in the very back of the rented van, sharing the back bench with Chef and Magnolia.
“Have you got enough room?” Magnolia asked kindly. She was, to be blunt, an overflowing woman, in both girth and personality.
“I promise that I do,” Tristan said.Barely.
Bearly!his bear chortled. He loved puns.I’m a bear!He also wasn’t that bright.
Tristan certainly wasn’t going to complain about what space he had. He’d been granted an all-expenses-paid vacation to Mountain Crown Chalet on a private jet, with a private room. And Magnolia was the last person that he would complain about; she was literal royalty, though she never lorded it over anyone in any way, and Chef, her mate, ruled the kitchen with a golden spatula. They were two of the most beloved people from the resort.
Tristan couldn’t help but feel out of place. Everyone in the van clearly knew each other well, having conversations that referenced events that Tristan hadn’t witnessed,finishing each other's sentences, and sometimes giving each other meaningful, secretive looks.
Tristan was trying very hard to take Travis’s insistence that he come as a compliment rather than a punishment. This was areward,not anexile.He’d worked hard helping with the rebuilding of the resort and earned a place in… very strange company.
