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Brooke’s lips quirked. She seemed to find him amusing. “Don’t worry, Sterling,” she said in the tone one might use with an agitated preschooler. “She does this sometimes, and she always comes back perfectly fine. She knows how to take care of herself.”
“But anything could happen. A rockslide, a slip. She could twist her ankle and be stuck with no way out. There are thousands of variables outside of her control. Hundreds of things that could go wrong no matter how experienced or well-prepared she is.”
And he doubted she was as well-prepared as Brooke might think. She’d been upset last night, and emotional people didn’t make smart decisions.
“She has a locator beacon with her in case that happens.” After a moment’s hesitation, she stepped forward and rubbed his arm soothingly. “Look, I think it’s sweet that you’re worried, but sometimes everything gets to be too much for Kat to deal with and she has to get away for a while. Especially at certain times of year. Dates that remind her of Teddy.”
He frowned. “Her husband?”
“Yeah. Today would have been their wedding anniversary.”
Immediately, things fell into place in his mind. Last night was the first time Kat had been with a man since her husband died, and it had happened on the eve of their anniversary. He wasn’t an expert in love or grief, but that would be enough to tilt anyone’s world off-axis. Especially if she held some sort of misplaced guilt over her husband’s death.
He could understand guilt. When his mum died because they couldn’t afford an experimental treatment, he felt like it had been his fault—that he’d failed to save her. But regardless of understanding Kat’s feelings, his stomach squeezed at the thought of her, alone in the forest and wallowing in self-recrimination. His chest tightened with pain on her behalf. He wished he could have helped last night. Wished he’d been a different man, one who knew how to reach out to a woman who was suffering and lessen her load. But he’d never been particularly good at that.
“How do things work around here while she’s away?” he asked.
“Tione and I keep things ticking along between us.”
He nodded. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”
* * *
An entire dayand night passed with no sign of Kat. During lunch on Monday, Sterling suggested to Brooke that someone go looking for her. She laughed and assured him they had no reason to fear until she’d been gone for more than three nights, but her reassurances fell on deaf ears. He hadn’t been this anxious over someone’s wellbeing since his mother was alive, and he didn’t like it.
In the afternoon, Logan called and invited him over to talk business. Relieved by the distraction, he agreed. To work off his nervous energy, he dressed in sports shorts and a t-shirt, and jogged the distance from Sanctuary to The Den. He nodded to Hugh MacAllister, who was cloistered in the corner with two men of a similar age, and dropped onto a stool at the bar beside Jack, who sat nursing a beer.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
Jack grabbed his hand and thumped him on the shoulder. “Hey, man. Good to see you. Hope you recovered from Friday all right.”
“Nothing to recover from,” he lied. “I can hold my liquor.”
“Good for you, mate.”
Logan served him a whiskey.
“Thanks,” he said, before taking a sip.
“So, what’s on the agenda?” he asked when Logan came around the bar to join them.
“I had a look at what you sent over,” Logan said. “It’s good stuff. I wasn’t sure about some of the price recommendations or the additions you suggested, but I haven’t ruled them out yet.”
“Your prices are lower than the market average,” Sterling told him, leaning forward on his elbows. “And if you look at the numbers, you’ll see that hiring an enclosed trailer for your gear and storing it down by the pavilion makes good business sense. You want to keep your two businesses as separate as possible.”
Logan nodded. “I’ll think on it. The maintenance schedule you wrote up will be helpful.” He made a face. “Now I just need to remember to check it and do as it says.”
“Not necessarily,” Sterling said. “You could hire someone to take care of that for you.”
Logan scoffed. “There’s no one around here who does that kind of work.”
Sterling pressed his lips together, annoyed by the setback to his otherwise good idea. He supposed living in a small town had some drawbacks, and he’d just found one of them.
“Anyway,” Logan continued, “Jack had a look over it and he’d like you to do the same for him. He’d need something a bit different because of the different level of risk associated with his trips, but otherwise, his business is similar to mine.”
“I have equipment that people use when I take them out on excursions,” Jack said. “But I never loan it out the way Logan does. My business is also different in that I’m not directly teaching any skills. I’m more of a guide service.”
“You run Seafaring Adventures?” He remembered seeing the place in the square on his first day in town.
