Inn & Out (A Romantic Comedy) (Five More Wishes Book 2) (5 page)

“Stop,” Thor says, his voice firm, appearing in the hallway at the top of the staircase. He holds his hand out palm forward. “Wait until I can help you.”

“I’ve got it.”

“No. Wait for me.”

Thor’s very bossy. It’s irritating in a sexy way. A lot like Fifty Shades, but without a red room, and except that I’m allowed to keep my pubic hair.

“Fine,” I say. Carefully, he walks toward me, wraps his arm around my waist and looks down at me, as if he’s memorizing my face. One nose. Two eyes. It’s not difficult, but he takes his time doing it. “Ready?” he asks, his voice low and velvety smooth.

“Yes?” I say like a question.

We head down the hallway, his body protecting me from falling through the hole in the floor. When we get to the stairs, he runs ahead, taking two stairs at a time. By the time I make it downstairs, the paramedics are here taking care of Bert.

His leg is at an angle, but the paramedics are giving him a shot, and he doesn’t seem to be in too much pain. He’s dressed a lot like Jean in overalls and a plaid shirt, but his beard is longer than hers.

“Look, Jean. She’s just like her mother,” Bert says, looking at me. I gasp. I have a handful of pictures of my parents, but that’s it. I haven’t looked at them in years.

“She’s one of those naked ones, though,” Jean says. “And she’s porking Thor.”

“Lucky man. I love a good-looking redhead with long legs,” Bert says.

“I’ve never had red hair,” Jean points out. “Or long legs.”

“I’m not porking Thor or anyone,” I insist.

“Really?” one of the paramedics asks. “You want to go with me to the Summer Sizzle Festival on Friday?”

“Hey, pick her up on your own time, Casanova. As a taxpayer, I pay your salary, you know,” Bert growls.

They put him on a stretcher and wheel him out. Jean stays back with us, and we stand on the front porch, watching the ambulance drive off.

“At least I’ll have peace and quiet for a while,” Jean says. “Let’s talk business, Thor.”

“Business about what?” I ask.

“About fixing up the place. I’m the contractor. I’m the idiot who took this job.”

***

“I’m not porking him,” I say, sitting at the kitchen table with Jean and Thor.

They’ve been talking for fifteen minutes about repairs on the house. There’s some kind of agreement between Jean and her husband and Thor. They’re going to do the repairs and get free room and board in return. So, that’s what Eleanor’s guest house will be used for. I’m not sure about the wisdom of hiring a couple of geriatrics to do major renovations, however. It’s not just the four artificial hips that are making me slightly antagonistic toward Jean and her husband. It’s her constant assertions about a romantic attachment between Thor and me that’s got me pissed.

“You said that already,” Jean says. She turns her attention to Thor. “I can give you six hours a day, five days a week, four weeks off a year plus all federal and state holidays plus five days off for the Communist Power to the People retreat in Maui. If that’s okay with your girlfriend. You know, if it interrupts your porking schedule. And you cook all of our meals, of course.”

I pound the table with my fist. “We’re not porking!”

“Jean, you’re a communist?” Thor asks.

“Card carrying since 1954 as an ‘up yours’ to McCarthy. I knew his sister. She told me things that would curl your chest hair.”

Thor already has curled chest hair. It’s on full display at the table because he still hasn’t put on a shirt. I take his semi-nudity as a provocation, which has got me picking at my cuticles in frustration.

“You’re a terrible communist,” Thor says. “How about two weeks vacation and eight hours per day?”

“How about three weeks, six hours a day, and cable?”

“Three weeks, six hours a day, satellite dish basic plan, and you go to Maui on your own time.”

They go at it for another fifteen minutes. I never knew communists were such hard negotiators. I mean, I guess Stalin wasn’t a pushover, but I don’t think he ever insisted on a paid vacation to Maui.

Finally, they come to an agreement. Thor and I are going to put Jean and her disabled husband up in the only habitable structure on the property and feed them with Thor’s delicious food while Jean does some construction work when she’s in the mood and it doesn’t upset her political sensibilities and if her arthritic hip isn’t acting up.

Oh, boy.

This place is never going to be up and running.

Jean’s phone rings. “I’m coming!” she shouts into it after a minute and clicks it off. “Deal,” she tells Thor. “They’re sending Bert home. We’ll move in tomorrow. Eggs and waffles for breakfast?”

Thor takes a deep breath and nods.

“I’m glad you’re taking over the place,” she tells him. “I like seeing you wind up here. A little tame for a Navy Seal, though, right?”

He flashes his eyes toward me. It makes sense that he’s a Navy Seal. He looks like he’s at attention, and I can imagine him jumping over walls and killing terrorists.

After they shake hands, Jean leaves Thor and me staring at each other over the table. “That’s not me, anymore,” he whispers.

“What?”

“The SEAL thing. That’s my past, not my present. Now, I’m an innkeeper.”

I don’t believe him. He’s got SEAL written all over him. If his back were any straighter, he could be used as a ruler, and his body is all kinds of SEAL. I know because I’ve seen and felt every inch of it.

“So you used to be a SEAL?”

“Retired as of last month.”

“And now you’re a keeper of a rundown inn, and this is your plan?” I ask. “Bert and Jean?”

“Jean is the best woodworker on the island. She made the staircase banister forty years ago.”

“The staircase banister is nice, but now I’m not sure she can even climb the staircase.”

“She came in fifth in last year’s triathlon,” he says.

“She did?”

“No, of course not.” He smiles. It’s the first time I’ve seen him smile, and it nearly knocks me over. “But I need help, and I want it done right. I’m not in a hurry.”

I sigh. I’m in a big hurry. The hurriest of hurries. I don’t have a Navy SEAL military pension to keep me fed. So, I’m not going to wait around. I’m going to implement my plan to make money off this dump, ASAP. I’ll call it the ASAP Plan or the ASAPP for short. Or maybe I won’t name it. But I’ll definitely start it soon. I can’t be expected to bathe with mice forever.

***

It’s been an awkward week. Even though I haven’t fallen on naked Thor or gotten a faceful of his penis, again, we’ve spent a lot of time in close proximity. The inn is moving along slowly. So slowly that I wouldn’t exactly call it progress.

Jean and Bert moved into the guest house on the inn’s property. The guest house is beautiful with plumbing that works and a tiled shower and satellite dish TV. To her credit, Jean has kept to her word and is working on the inn for a full six hours a day. Minus an hour for one of Thor’s gourmet lunches and another hour worth of yelling at Bert and Bert yelling at her.

I’ve never seen two people argue as much as Bert and Jean. The fights run the gamut from his breath to her use of a buzz saw to the ever popular argument about all things Bonanza. I’ve never watched Bonanza, but after seven days with Bert and Jean in the house, I now know every detail about Hoss and Little Joe.

It’s a good thing that Thor isn’t in a hurry because Jean works at a snail’s pace. I wanted her to start with my bathroom, but that seems to be way down on the list. First on the list, after nailing some plywood over the hole upstairs, is the downstairs floors. Jean has been on her knees, re-planking, sanding, and whatever one does to floors for the past week, but she does it twice because whatever she does, Bert tells her to do it again. He sits in his wheelchair with his leg outstretched in a cast, and for some reason she listens to him. Marriage is a strange thing. I don’t pretend to understand relationships.

While Jean and Bert re-write Bonanza, when Thor isn’t cooking, he’s outside re-landscaping. Unlike Jean, he works fast. He’s cleared a pathway to the front door and planted colorful flowers on either side. Today he’s out back, trimming trees. Not that I’m watching him, but I have caught glimpses of him through the windows while he works shirtless, his body tanned and hard and dripping with sweat.

Not that I’m looking. Not that I care.

Not that I’m looking.

Not that, you know, I care.

Oh, mama.

I’m only interested in his landscaping in as much as it falls into my plans to get the inn flush with cash so that I can leave and lead the perfect, enlightened life while sipping vanilla lattes. I don’t care a thing about how Thor’s jeans hug his hips, as he saws dead tree branches.

“Where’s Thor?” Jean asks, coming up behind me. “I don’t smell anything, and I need my lunch at noon on the dot. Otherwise, we’re going to have to renegotiate my contract.”

Bert wheels up next to her. “Ask him if we’re having beef. I don’t like fish. He did fish on Monday, and I had indigestion all afternoon.”

“That was from the pound of toffee peanuts you ate after lunch,” Jean says.

“I don’t know what he’s cooking,” I say. Thor is in charge of the kitchen and rules it like Stalin suffering from PMS. I don’t know where he learned to cook, but he could give the Barefoot Contessa some pointers. I’ve gained three pounds in one week.

“Go find out,” Jean insists. “Or does that cut into your relaxing time?”

That’s a dig. She’s saying that everyone is busy except for me. But what she doesn’t know is that I’ve been busy, too. Plotting. I spent ten dollars on creating a flyer to publicize events at the High Tide Inn. If the house isn’t ready for guests, the property with the amazing view is. Lots of events will bring in tons of money. So far, I’ve kept my plotting secret from Thor. I thought he suspected something when I snuck out this morning to go to Kinkos and hung up flyers around the village, but I played it off as going for a walk. Fool. Like I would ever go for a walk.

“What are you waiting for?” Jean demands.

“Go and let Thor ogle you a little,” Bert says, wheeling his chair around so his outstretched leg is pointing at me.

I cough. “Thor doesn’t ogle me,” I say. Lately, they’ve been holding back from the porking talk, and I thought the speculation about us was over.

“I was planning on changing his name to Thor Ogler,” Jean says, still on her knees, inspecting the floor. “It’s like his eyes can’t focus on anything except for a leggy redhead.”

“No ogling,” I insist. But there have been a few times when I’ve felt Thor’s gaze when my back was turned. I figured he was shooting daggers at the woman who took half of his inheritance, but could it have been ogling?

“No ogling,” I repeat.

“Do they call it something different these days, Jean?” Bert asks, honestly curious. “Maybe we’re using the wrong word. Oh, I know. He’s snartching you! That’s the word. Right, Jean?”

“Or skank-shanking. He might be doing that?” Jean asks.

“No snartching. No skank-shanking, whatever that is,” I say.

Jean stands and dusts off her pants. “Are we still talking about this? Go tell him to get going with my lunch or I’m going to report him to the Red Woodworkers of the People’s Socialist Contractor Collective.”

I’m pretty sure that she made up that organization, but she’s holding a sander, and I’m pretty sure she could kill me with it if her lunch is delayed. “Okay. I’ll go ask,” I tell her, only because I’m more afraid of her than I am of Thor. Wearing her overalls and plaid shirt, she looks bigger than he is, and there’s more than even odds that she fights dirty.

Outside, it’s another beautiful day on Summer Island. Lots of blue sky with wisps of clouds and a refreshing ocean breeze that cuts through the summer heat. The back of the house leads out to about three acres of woods. Thor has stacked dead branches in a large pile, as he continues to clean out the trees. It’s looking great. I didn’t notice before, but there are several picnic tables, which will do nicely after they get a coat of paint. It’s a perfect venue for an event.

Thor is sawing a low-hanging dead branch off of a tree. His back is to me, and I watch as his glistening muscles twist and bulge while he works. I bite my lower lip and try to think about something entirely unsexy, but at this moment, everything seems sexy to me. Oatmeal seems sexy. Ditto sand. I look at Thor’s body and think that sand is very sexy.

Thor senses me watching him and turns around, startled. “What are you doing here?” he asks.

What am I doing here? What am I doing here? I have no idea what I’m doing here. Something about sand and sex. Or maybe oatmeal? No, I was ogling. I’m an ogler. Worse, I’m a skank-shanker.

“Uh,” I say and bite my lower lip. His front is even better than his back. He’s holding a hand saw, and his bicep is bulging. He’s got all kinds of bulges.

Sand.

Think sand.

“It’s looking pretty good out here,” I say, finally.

“Thanks. It’s getting there. I love this place. I played out here every day growing up.”

“Were you neighbors? How did you know my aunt?”

“My father worked for the inn,” he says, putting the saw down and wiping his brow with the back of his arm. “Eleanor more or less brought me up.”

I want to ask him more about my aunt and what it was like growing up here with land to roam and people to care for him, but I’m sort of pissed off that he had all of those riches while I was left to fend for myself with an uncaring foster family. Why was I thrown away, while he was welcomed in?

“Jean is hungry,” I say, finally remembering why I came out here.

“It’s only 11:30. She’s like a cat. She keeps trying to move up meal time.”

“And Bert wants beef.”

Thor sighs. “Those two are eating me out of house and home.”

I’m eating him out of house and home too, and suddenly I feel guilty about it. He’s single-handedly supporting me and hasn’t complained once. Soon I’ll bring in money with the events, but he doesn’t know that. “I have eight dollars I can give you.”

“Keep your money,” he says. “You don’t eat much.”

He picks up a branch and tosses it on top of the pile. If I can’t pay him, I decide to help him with the trees. I grab another branch and heave it on the pile. “Ouch.” A splinter has wormed its way into my thumb. So much for karma.