Mending Places (31 page)

Discomforted and anxious, she turned back to her room. Her heart rejected the notion that Micah could be betraying her. That he could be
feigning feelings just to secure his convenient position. She had initiated the relationship, she reminded herself. And he had fought the attraction at first.

She didn’t know what to believe anymore. Closing the door behind her, she entered her bedroom and slid under the covers again. She thought of their last outing together, the day they’d spent fishing and hiking. The kisses by the lake, the frolicking in the grass. The moment she’d realized she loved him. Had she fallen in love with her betrayer? Her heart argued no, but her mind refused to ignore the compelling evidence that said otherwise.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
 

Her sleeplessness showed at church later that morning. She’d had trouble keeping her mind on the sermon; instead, it was filled with bills, suspicions, and questions. She needed to resolve this whole mess. After lunch Hanna keyed the reservations into the computer, including names, addresses, and specifics about their room and shuttle service. Next, she deleted the two guests who’d called to cancel. As she keyed in shuttle-service information, she heard Devon enter the lodge.

“Hey, I’m back.” He leaned against the doorframe. “Did you say you needed the keys to the van?”

“Yeah, just toss them on the counter. Your schedule for this week is over there too.”

Hanna hit the shift key, but her finger slid off, and she inadvertently pressed a couple of keys at once. The program closed out without saving any of her changes.

“Shoot!” She looked at the keyboard, wondering how she’d made her work disappear.

“What’s wrong?” Devon peeked in.

“I don’t know. I accidentally hit one of these keys, and everything disappeared.”

His footsteps neared as she stared at the screen in frustration. “What did you hit?”

She told him what had happened. He leaned over her with one hand on the mouse, the other on the keyboard, surrounding her with his
body. The space grew claustrophobic. Her pulse drummed in her ear. The heavy scent he wore brushed her nostrils, and she turned her face away from his neck.

“Here. Just click here and do this,” he said.

No longer was she concerned about the information she’d lost. She’d type it in ten times over if only he would remove himself from her space.

“Hanna, I have—” Micah’s voice penetrated her senses.

She looked at the doorway as he stopped on the threshold.

“There we go.” Devon straightened proudly. “All taken care of.” He squeezed her shoulder.

“Hey, Micah,” Devon said on his way out the door.

Micah jerked his chin upward in greeting and watched Devon saunter away before stepping inside the office and shutting the door. “You all right?”

She drew a deep breath and let out the tension. “I’m fine. He was helping me retrieve some documents.”

“When do his classes start again?”

“Two more weeks. I’ll be glad when he’s gone, even though I’ll have to start running the shuttle.” She gave him a sad smile. “
If
there are any guests to pick up. Our reservations are dismal.”

“I know. Hang in there, baby.”

He squeezed her shoulders, and she relaxed under his hands.

“You look tired.”

“Thanks.” She smiled sarcastically. “Actually, I was up early. I mean very early. But then, you should be tired too. I saw you walking down the hall toward your room as I left my room.”

His hands stopped and his eyebrows inched upward. “I didn’t come out until just before church.”

She felt as if she’d walked through a fuzzy web of confusion. Why would he deny it unless he had something to hide? “No, I saw you in the hallway at four-thirty.”

“Hanna, I didn’t come out of my room until eight-thirty.”

She shook her head. “It had to be you. I even saw you going into your room.”

His jaw slacked. “You saw someone going into my room?”

“Micah. It was you. I’m sure of it.”

His gaze shifted around the office as if searching for the answer. “I guess I could have been sleepwalking.”

She breathed a laugh. “Sleepwalking?”

“I don’t do it very often, but I hope that’s what it was. The alternative isn’t very comforting.”

“I’m sure it was you, so relax.” Hadn’t he mentioned before that he was a sleepwalker? That explained it all, didn’t it? She pushed away the thread of doubt and rolled her chair closer to him. “So, you sleepwalk, huh? Got any interesting stories to tell?”

He laughed and pulled her chair even closer. “Well, there is the pizza story.”

“Do tell.”

He folded his arms across the back of the chair and laid his chin on his arm. “When I lived with Jim and Jan, they had this brown Lab named Snickers.”

“Snickers?” She grinned.

“You know, like the candy bar. Anyway, Jan woke up one morning to find an empty pizza box on the kitchen floor—we’d had pizza delivered the night before. She knew Snickers couldn’t open the refrigerator door, and Jim swore he didn’t do it, so …”

“You fed the dog pizza in the middle of the night?”

“Hey, I didn’t remember doing it, they just laid the blame at my feet.”

“I think you ate the pizza in the middle of the night and laid the box on the floor so they’d blame the dog.”

“And I think you need another good tickling.”

The last days of August approached, and Hanna’s mind was muddled with worry. Natalie’s court date approached, and she prayed every day
for God to give her sister peace. And there was Gram, who appeared to be doing fine, but Hanna knew she must be in turmoil about the months ahead. Then there was this business with the lodge. Soon she would need to do the bills, but a sense of dread had made her put off the task. Business was sluggish, and she knew when the last subtraction was punched into the calculator, there would be a minus sign in front of the numbers. Not a good place to be when skiing season was still two to three months away.

The one good thing was that Devon was gone. With his departure, there was one salary she wouldn’t have to pay. But if business didn’t pick up, it would be a moot point. Just the thought that someone might succeed in sabotaging their lodge made her heart seize with anger. If they did go under, she would make every effort to find out who it was and keep the property from their dirty hands.

Finally, on the last day of August, Hanna sat at her desk and pulled the bills from the tray. She did the payroll first, then proceeded to the dreaded expenses, starting with the mortgage payment and subtracting from their bank balance as she went. By the time she’d paid the mortgage, their money was gone. And she still had a stack of invoices.

She propped her elbows on the table and covered her face with her hands. Had it all come down to this? What had happened to her plan to save the lodge? It had started out so promising with reservations galore.

A sudden thought struck. Where were the bills from the magazines that were running her ad? She flipped through the ledger and looked for the last payment to those magazines. That was strange. She hadn’t paid the monthly fee since June, which meant they hadn’t billed her.

Should she call and straighten it out or count her blessings that she didn’t have to pay those bills? She debated a moment, then flipped her Rolodex open to the
Travel America
card and dialed their number. After listening to messages and being transferred from one department to another, she finally got through to the right person.

“Hi, Cindy, this is Hanna Landin from Higher Grounds Mountain Lodge.”

“Hi, Ms. Landin, what can I do for you?”

“I placed a full-page ad to be run in every issue until the end of the year, but I just realized I hadn’t received a bill the past two months.”

“Hold on a moment, and I’ll pull up your account.”

She heard Cindy tapping the keyboard for a moment, then silence.

“Yes, here it is. Your ad ran in June’s edition, then you asked us to cancel the ad in mid-June—”

“What?”

“You canceled the ad in June, so it hasn’t run since that first time, that’s why you haven’t been billed.”

“But—but I didn’t cancel the ad.”

“I’m sorry. I have a notation right here on the screen, and I remember taking the call. Would you like to begin running the ads again?”

Hanna’s mind spun. She hadn’t called. Maybe Gram. “I know I didn’t make that call. Did the caller identify herself? Maybe it was my grandmother.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s happened.”

Well, Hanna did. She clenched her jaw. Her pulse sped, and heat spread to her face. Their little interloper had done it again. This prank had no doubt cost them in reservations, but at least it could be remedied.

“Could you please restart the ad as soon as possible?” She’d have to worry later about how to pay for it. At this point, if the business didn’t turn around, it was all over.

“Sure, I’ll do that. The deadline for next issue is tomorrow, so we still have time to get it in there. I’m really sorry about the mistake.”

“That’s all right; it’s not your fault.”

She got off the phone and flipped through the Rolodex again, this time looking for the other magazine representative. She had the extension number for him, so she got through right away. Sure enough, the
same thing had happened there. She requested that the ad begin running again and hung up the phone.

How long would this go on? How many other ways had this person interfered with their business that they hadn’t discovered yet?

“Knock-knock.” Micah’s voice called from the doorway.

Hanna turned. “Hi there.”

“What’s wrong?”

She sat back in her chair. “Am I that transparent?”

She saw him take in the stack of bills, the payroll envelopes, and the desk calculator. “Uh-oh. It was as bad as you thought?”

“Worse. I haven’t even paid two bills, and we’re already in the red. And that’s not all.”

“Don’t leave me in suspense.”

“I just found out that someone canceled our magazine ads. Remember how we were busy through June, but business slacked off in July and August?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, my ads ran in June, then someone phoned the magazines pretending to be me and canceled the ads. They haven’t run the past two months.”

“But can you start them again?” Micah asked.

“I did, but that doesn’t solve this problem. I can’t even pay the bills.” She gestured to the desk.

Micah picked up the payroll envelopes and shuffled through them. “Paychecks?”

“Umm-hmm.”

He pulled his own from the pile and tossed the rest on the desk. Then he ripped the envelope in half.

“Micah—”

“There’s one you don’t have to worry about.” He pulled his wallet from his pocket and sifted through it.

She watched, confused.

He pulled two paychecks from his wallet and ripped them in half too.

“Micah, you can’t do that!”

“I already did.” He stuffed his wallet back in his pocket.

“That’s your pay; you don’t work here for free.”

“Look at it as a loan then, if you want. Pay me back when the lodge is back on its feet.”

“That may be never,” she said.

He held out his hands and pulled her from the chair into his arms. “Not if I know you. Besides, the ads are running again. Use the money. I want you to.”

She looked up at him, inhaling the musky scent of him. “Anyone ever tell you you’re stubborn?”

His lips tipped in that crooked grin she loved. “Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Am not.”

“See? Stubborn.” She nuzzled his nose with her own.

“You love me that way.”

She stilled, searching his eyes. Her heart lurched madly, and she swallowed tightly. “You’re right.” She planted her message in her expression. Let him make what he wanted of that.

He opened his mouth.

She laid a finger on his lips. He’d gotten her message. She could see it in the stirring of his smoky eyes. “You don’t have to say anything.”

Her finger fell as he stared at her lips. Then he slowly lowered his face to hers.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE