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“Does Dad’s friend Pete still own that property on the lake outside town?” I asked.
“He does. He tells us all the time to come out anytime.”
I’d spent many happy weekend afternoons on that property, hiking and fishing with my dad. It was something I looked forward to doing with my own kids now that we lived here.
“I think I’ll head over there,” I said. “Tell Dad I’m borrowing a pole from the garage.”
“I will. And wear bug spray, or the mosquitoes will make a meal out of you.”
By that evening, my hamstrings were feeling the effects of my five-mile hike in the woods. I’d showered and shaved before heading out to The Hideout, a popular local bar, to meet up with Grady.
He was at a table with a few other people, and I paused for a second when I saw Shea. She’d been on my mind constantly since the weekend, but I hadn’t seen her at The Moose.
How could I casually say hi to the woman I burned for? My beer buzz had made me share more of myself with her at the cabin than I normally would have, but I wasn’t sorry.
“You should quit,” Avon said to Shea as I approached the table. “No matter who your boss is, that place has always taken advantage of you.”
“I second that motion,” Grady said, clinking his beer bottle against his fiancée’s.
“Hey,” he said, noticing me. “Saved you a seat.”
It was right next to him, on the opposite side of the table from Shea, which I knew was no accident.
“Hey,” I said, meeting Shea’s eyes. “Having trouble at work?”
Her shoulders slumped as she sighed. “Still dealing with the fallout from taking the weekend off.”
I furrowed my brow, confused. “Are your days off usually during the week?”
“What are these days off you speak of?” She smiled weakly.
“They don’t let her take days off,” Grady said. “Can you believe that shit?”
“Not at all?”
A protective instinct surged inside of me. If someone was taking advantage of Shea in any way, I wouldn’t stand for it.
“I had Mondays and Thursdays off when I started there. But then I became the chef, and I lost my most experienced cook because he wanted the chef’s job. I know I sound self-important, but it’s really hard to take time off when you’re in charge of the menu for every meal, seven days a week. If an order from a supplier comes in and something was substituted, I have to come up with a fix for whatever we needed that ingredient for.” She waved her hand. “I won’t bore you guys with all the details, but this is partly on me. I wanted everything to be just right, so I chose to come in even on my days off to make sure things were running smoothly, and then I’d end up staying, and it turned into never taking a day off.”
Grady shook his head. “You should still be able to when you want to, sis. Without Caden calling you every hour to bitch about the things he could figure out himself.”
Shea glared at her brother. “Thanks for screwing with my phone, by the way. That upped the tension between me and Caden by a lot.”
I looked at Grady. “What did you do?”
“I blocked incoming calls from her phone over the weekend,” he said, shrugging. “Because I know Caden. He has no one in his life and he somehow feels threatened when Shea isn’t rotting at the inn with him, so he calls her. Christmas morning, who cares? I’ll call Shea to ask if there are blueberries in the kitchen. Her birthday? Not important, I’ll call her about someone saying their steak wasn’t served hot.”
Shea looked defeated. Since she was already stressed about work, the piling on probably wasn’t helping anything.
“So I heard there’s a toast of some sort by city hall tonight,” I said, changing the subject.
“You haven’t done the Svensday toast yet?” Avon asked.
“I spent most of my time with a six-year-old and a nine-year-old,” I said, grinning. “They like to get ice cream and feed the ducks in the evening.”
“Well, you haven’t missed much,” she said.
“Blasphemy!” Grady gave her a mock stern look. “Toasting Sven brings good luck.”
