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At least, when it came time to living in the real world.
As the light snow picked up around him, he tried to come up with his battle plan. Dusty wasn’t going to defeat him. She just wasn’t.
Unless that meant she cuddled him after, anyway.
Ben wouldn’t exactly fight her on that.
Hell. The woman was destroying him. And she didn’t have a clue.
13
Dusty madeit back to the front desk after helping with hostessing in the dining room for a small rush. Kody trotted along next to her like that was where the big doofus belonged. She’d already shooed him out of the dining room once.
He’d waited in the lobby just outside the hostess podium andhowleduntil she made it back to him. Like he was lovelorn or dying or something.
The guests—mostly locals—had all laughed, thankfully. Kody could be a handful. He loved the inn. And the attention he garnered there. He was spending the night, for sure.
Maggie was out at her cousin Gil’s again tonight, and Clint was off with the Weatherby brothers helping one of them repair his roof before the snow hit again. Neither of them could drive into town to get him. Kody was going to hang out with Dusty. He liked that.
Marin looked up. “When I told you to get out and find yourself a man to follow you around like crazy, Dusty, I didn’t think he’d have yellow fur.”
“I called Maggie. She’s going to come get him in the morning if the weather cooperates. She and the kids are spending the night at Gil’s again tonight. She thinks one of the new hands may have left the door to the horse trailer open and Kody slipped in with the horse they took across town. Blended in with the hay. He likes to go for rides.”
“They are taking turns with Gil and Sage, I think.” Marin greeted the dog with love and hugs—Kody was undeniably in love with Marin, too. Come to think of it, Kody was in love with just about everyone he met. Especially women. He really was a good-natured dog. “Gil had to go to Finley Creek with Fletcher, I believe. First time since what happened with Bruce Tyler and Morris Preston. He didn’t want to leave her. Gil would only go to Texas if someone stayed with her. I believe Claudia has Sage duty tomorrow night. I thought I’d join them for a few hours if the weather cooperates.”
A look passed over Marin’s face. Dusty understood. Marin and Claudia had once been the closest of friends. Just like Dusty and Nikki. Until the day Claudia’s father had almost killed Marin.Thathad seriously changed things.
Marin had pulled away from Claudia sharply back then—which had hurt Claudia a great deal. Now they barely talked at all. Claudia had been through real hell lately, too.
“I’ll call. See if Sage needs more company, too.” Maybe Dusty could go, be a buffer between her two friends somehow. Claudia worried her lately. What had happened to Gil and Sage and Junie had nearly cost Claudia her life. Twice. That had to have Claudia seriously reeling. Even if Claudia was the type to keep that to herself.
“In the meantime, are you sneaking this hot blond into your room tonight? Or does he need his own room key?” Kody was nosing his way behind the half-door that led to the rear of the front desk. He knew his way around the inn. She’d dog-sat him several times before. They usually just kept him in the family wing or behind the front desk.
Well, she wouldn’t count the times he’d gotten loose and wandered into the dining room, looking for handouts. Or gotten into the elevator and somehow pressed buttons to get to the bottom level. They’d found him swimming in the pool with some of the younger guests once. It had been memorable. The kids had loved it. Dusty and Marin had had to wade in to get him out.
“I think he may be throwing me over for you tonight.” He liked to sit behind the front desk and greet guests, too. He was a very social creature, Kody the Gunder-dog.
“We’ll just let him end up wherever he ends up, then.” Marin typed something into the computer. She usually ran all the night reports, and credit cards, and audits, right at midnight, and took the six-p.m.-to-one-a.m. shift behind the front desk, four nights a week. “As long as he stays out of the pool this time. He seriously doesn’t understand that swimsuits are required.”
She and her cousin kept talking, while Dusty settled in for her shift. They had other employees on duty within the hotel now, but it was a Wednesday, one of their slower nights.
On Wednesdays, guests were more likely to see a Talley working around the hotel of the evening than of any other time. It was more cost effective that way. And that was when they did their business meetings and planning all that was required to run two successful businesses.
Dusty loved the routine of it, but sometimes, she wondered if she’d be able to do it forever. She didn’t know if she wanted to live at the inn until she was old and gray.
It would be nice to maybe have a quiet place of her own. With a yard. A big one, large enough for a big goofy dog. They had Chloe. She had been Miranda’s before Miranda had moved to St. Louis, and Miranda had asked Dusty to keep her when Miranda had left for the FBI. But Chloe was almost fifteen now. They wouldn’t have her forever. And she had been Miranda’s first.
Dusty had never picked out a puppy for herself before. She wanted to experience that someday. And having her own house. That was a secret dream she’d not shared even with Nikki. It could be close to the inn. Like her uncle Gerald now. He just lived a few blocks over. Close enough to help when needed.
A pang of guilt went through her. Herfamilylived in the inn. And they stuck together. They always had. It had hurtwhen first Miranda and then Charlotte had left. It had been what her cousins had needed to do for their own happiness, and she was in full support of that. But each time one had left, it had changed things.
Dusty was starting to suspect she wasn’t going to be so great withchangegoing forward.
She didn’t want to change things for the rest of her family again, just so she could have a house, with a house payment and a yard to mow.
Daisy and Dixie had other, full-time jobs. They worked part-time shifts around the inn and diner when they could. Darcey and Marin loved the inn and the diner—and the two crazy women worked fifty-plus-hour weeks between the two places. Marin had needed a few months’ time away, to breathe, she’d said. But she was back full-time now, mostly running the diner, and doing four shifts a week at the inn, too. Darcey had scaled back at the radio station, from five nights a week, four hours a night, to three nights, three hours. Eventually, Dusty suspected her sister would quit the radio station. She didn’t love it that much.
Not like Darcey loved the inn. Darceylovedthe inn more than any of the rest of them.
