The Heart of a Hero (6 page)

He shot her a grin. “I’m worried you’re a bit of a walking disaster, Julia.”

That certainly wiped away those threatening tears. It got rid of the defeat in her eyes, too. He let go of her hand and turned away before she saw his triumph, and grabbed the raised end of the spongy floorboard and popped it free.

“Apparently muscle also matters,” he drawled as he reached in the cavity and pulled out a plastic container. He turned still crouched to hand it to her, arching a brow when he saw her eyes suddenly narrow. “Not a very creative hidey-hole, though,” he added, taking the box back when she started wrestling with the lid—which he popped off before handing it to her again. “Or safe from a fire if this—” He snapped his mouth shut when she pulled out a large plastic bag stuffed with money.

“Julia,”
Olivia said on a strangled gasp. “What on earth are you doing hiding that much cash under the floorboard of a shed?”

Her face draining of all color, Julia darted a worried glance at him, then looked at her boss. “I can’t . . . It’s my and Trisha’s savings,” she whispered.

“But why isn’t it in the bank?” Olivia asked just as softly. “There must be thousands of dollars there.”

“Almost eight thousand,” Julia confirmed, her voice having grown husky again. “And I can’t keep it in the bank because Clay’s sister works there, and I don’t want him knowing I have this kind of money.” She darted another glance at Nicholas, then took a deep breath that squared her shoulders as she looked Olivia directly in the eye. “I’m still paying off a credit card bill he stuck me with.”

“But Julia, bank employees can’t talk about customers’ accounts.”

She looked down at the bag and merely snorted.

Olivia sighed. “Then give it to Nicholas to put in the safe in my office until . . . well, we’ll figure it out.” She looked around the workshop and picked up the box of little soaps. “Is there anything else in here you want to bring? I suppose we could come back for the cones and whatever kindling you’ve already split. But what are you going to do for a source of cedar now?”

“I’ve been paying Reggie to save the butt ends from the mill and stack them in here for me, so I might be able to get him to bring them to the resort. That is, if you don’t mind. I can keep them out in the woods and just cover them with a tarp.”

“We’ll make it work,” Olivia assured her. “You’re my only source of kindling, and winter’s coming. Maybe we can set you up in the woodshed out behind the barn.”

And that explained Julia handing her brother money every week, Nicholas decided as he finally straightened to his feet. He reached down, but instead of taking him up on his offer to help her stand, Julia plopped her entire savings in his outstretched hand, then grasped a wall stud and slowly pulled herself up.

“Who is Clay?” he asked, tucking the bag inside his jacket.

“My ex-husband,” she said, avoiding eye contact with him by looking around the workshop. “Nothing else is worth coming back for.” She gave Olivia a sheepish smile. “The balsam pillows are a wasted effort if they’re just going to keep lugging them off.”

“Or we can make the guests
buy
them in our gift shop,” Olivia said as she headed out the door carrying the soaps. “We might as well get going then, if you’re sure you have everything you want.”

Julia took one last look around, used her uninjured hand to grab the hatchet driven into the chopping block, and followed. Nicholas closed the door and followed the women with a scowl at the realization that his plan to give Julia his scrap lumber had been thwarted—only for his mood to lighten again when he remembered she still needed a source of pinecones.

Chapter Five

Julia woke up to a pounding headache from having cried herself to sleep the night before, the rising sun streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows making her roll over and bury her face in her pillow with a groan. She wished she still cussed, because if ever there were a time she needed to have a blistering tirade, it was now.

She’d never been so humiliated in her life, not even when Clay had started those nasty rumors about her. Despite most everyone believing them—she
was
the daughter of the town drunk, after all—the knowledge that they were lies had still allowed her to hold her head up. But yesterday Nicholas had seen the stark, naked truth about her, and it hadn’t been pretty. She might as well have been wearing a sign that said
Julia Campbell is an utter and complete failure
.

But really, what should she care what Nicholas thought about her? He was just another too tall, too blue-eyed, too maddeningly gorgeous guy. No, the really sad truth was she’d humiliated herself in front of her boss, and Olivia would have to be crazy to entrust the well-being of her Inglenook guests to someone who couldn’t even keep her personal life out of the ditch.

For crying out loud, she was thirty years old, and all her worldly possessions were sitting in trash bags in the second bedroom of Nicholas’s apartment. That had been Olivia’s idea, thinking they might as well not move her stuff twice. Julia had quickly agreed, since she really didn’t want any of her coworkers seeing her lugging a bunch of trash bags from her high-priced hotel room to her temporary apartment after Nicholas moved all of his worldly possessions—most likely neatly packed in boxes—to his likely even more maddeningly gorgeous home.

Yup, she was a failure with a capital
F
.

No, she was a
walking disaster
.

Julia rolled over again, threw back the goose-down-filled, seven-hundred-count, Egyptian cotton-encased comforter and sat up with another groan. For as much as she’d love to continue wallowing in self-pity in this luxurious room, she really needed to get up and get going; certain if she just kept moving, the humiliation demons couldn’t bring her down and gobble her up completely.

Yeah, what did she care what Nicholas thought? She wasn’t interested in catching his interest, partly because men were more trouble than they were worth, but mostly because she didn’t like standing in lines. And Nicholas had a really long line of interested females.

Heck, just last week, Wanda Beckman had been bragging to anyone who would listen that the director of security had
personally
driven her down the mountain when she had missed the shuttle. But what Wanda had left out of her story was that she’d actually hidden until the bus had left. Julia knew, though, because she’d watched the divorced mother of three change out of her waitress uniform, contort herself into a tight pair of jeans and low-cut jersey, spray her really impressive cleavage with cologne, then take a magazine and walk into the maintenance room to wait.

Julia got out of bed with a groan, willing to bet all her worldly possessions that Nicholas had made the trip down the mountain in half the time it had taken him to get her down it yesterday, even as she’d wondered what Wanda had . . . offered the man for thanks. Julia stood in the middle of the hotel room and tried to imagine what it was like to be a walking, talking chick magnet.

Not that Nicholas seemed to notice. Or if he did, not that he seemed to let any of the chicks ever . . . stick. Since he’d shown up in Spellbound Falls a little over a year ago, Julia had never seen Nicholas in town with a woman. He used to come into the Drunken Moose on the weekends she worked, but always with one of his guards, or with Mac or Duncan, or often alone. She remembered he was a good tipper, but she also remembered that when any of the waitresses had tried flirting with him, he’d either politely brushed them off or pretended not to notice.

Guessing nobody’s life was perfect, not even walking, talking chick magnets, Julia headed for the bathroom with every intention of trying out the luxurious marble soaking tub. She stopped when she heard a knock on the door—only to spin around when she realized it had come from the
rear
entrance to the room.

Even though she cleaned the cottages, she knew about the corridors carved into the granite that ran behind each of the five hotel segments, as well as the tunnels that joined the segments together so the rooms could easily be serviced during the winter months. In fact, there was an entire warren of caves connecting the hotels with the pool, conference pavilion, and restaurant, which the guests were also encouraged to use during foul weather. Not that the corridors
felt
cavelike, since some of them were actually large enough to drive a cart down and the myriad glass-topped reflective tubes flooded them with natural light.

“Who is it?” Julia called out when the knock sounded again as she looked at the bedside clock, wondering why housekeeping was so
early
. Dang it, she really didn’t want any of her coworkers knowing she’d spent the night here, figuring it would be bad enough when they found out she’d been given an apartment.

“Room service,” a heavily accented male voice answered.

Really? “Just a minute,” she muttered, sprinting into the bathroom and grabbing the plush robe off the back of the door. She walked back into the room as she belted the robe closed, then opened the rear door a crack. “I didn’t order room service,” she said to a man she didn’t recognize holding a tray of covered dishes. “Oh, is that coffee?” she asked, opening the door wider, only to shake her head. “Never mind. You must have the wrong room. I didn’t order anything,” she repeated.

The guy glanced to the left of the door, then stepped inside. “Numeral seven,” he said, walking over and setting the tray on the table in front of the windows. He pulled an envelope from his pocket and handed it to her. “For a Mademoiselle Campbell?”

Julia pulled out the card and frowned at the handwritten note.

Consider this a blatant attempt to persuade you to accept a proposition I have for you, Julia, although in no way should you feel obligated. I’m afraid Olivia was correct in stating that my apartment is in need of a good vacuuming, and if you were to consider performing that particular task, I would enjoy treating you and Trisha to dinner at Aeolus’s Whisper this evening.

—Nicholas

How . . . lovely.

Well, he knew she worked in housekeeping, after all; but dinner at Aeolus’s? Either the man really hated vacuuming or he’d just discovered there was enough cat hair in his apartment to stuff a king-size mattress. The smell of coffee tickled Julia’s nose, and she realized the waiter had poured some into the delicate china cup on the tray and was now looking at her . . . expectantly.

Oh, he was waiting for his tip! “Just a minute,” she said, going to her purse on the bureau. Dang it, how much did she tip a five-star room service waiter? She pulled out a ten dollar bill, folded it in half, and walked back and handed it to him. “Thank you,” she murmured, opening the
front
door of the room and smiling at him . . . expectantly.

He stuffed the money in his pocket, returned her smile with an added nod, and left. Julia closed the door behind him and locked it, then ran over and grabbed the cup of coffee, blew on it briefly, and took a sip. She gave a hum of pleasure and took another sip, figuring there was nothing like caffeine to cure a crying hangover. Another sip, then she lifted the larger of the domes on the tray and actually laughed. Oh yeah, there must be
a lot
of cat hair, she decided as she sat down and pulled the tray in front of her, if the size of this breakfast was any indication.

She ate the perfectly cooked eggs Benedict, all six slices of crisp bacon, both thick oat-nut toasts—that she slathered with both tiny jars of jam—most of the hash browns, and every last piece of exotic fruit while washing everything down with what was definitely fresh-squeezed orange juice.

“Okay, Mr. Nicholas,” she said with a laugh, saluting the window with her third cup of coffee and leaning back in her chair with an overstuffed sigh. “I guess your blatant bribe worked. I’ll vacuum up your cat hair for just the price of breakfast.”

She was not, however, having dinner with him—even if her sister was included—at Aeolus’s Whisper. Not at the risk of being seen dining with Spellbound’s most eligible bachelor, because she didn’t want to be found dead on a cart path tomorrow morning after being run over by Wanda Beckman or any one of a dozen female workers. And besides, people
dressed
for dinner at Aeolus’s, and her only decent outfit was crumpled up in a ball at the bottom of a trash bag at the moment.

* * * 

Nova Mare’s international employee housing sat back in the woods beyond the resort’s horse barn. The two-building complex consisted of ten apartments on the ground floor with male and female dorms running the length of each building above them. The dorms were usually filled with young men and women from all over the world during the resort’s busy summer season, while Julia believed the apartments were occupied year-round by a few of the nonlocal security guards, some of the reputedly fearless road maintenance crew, a husband and wife horse wrangler team, and several restaurant workers. There were only four children residing on Whisper Mountain: Olivia and Mac’s three—twelve-year-old Sophie, ten-year-old Henry, and two-and-a-half-year-old Ella—as well as the horse wranglers’ teenage son.

Nicholas’s apartment—now temporarily hers and Trisha’s—was an end unit with two bedrooms and two baths, a well-appointed kitchen, and windows on three sides. None of the apartments or the dorms had a spectacular view, but then, everyone spent their days looking down at Bottomless and were probably all viewed out, anyway.

“Didn’t I tell you Nicholas was fast on his feet?” Olivia said with a laugh as she watched her top security guard drive away. She set Ella down and turned to Julia, even as she gestured toward the window. “I just have to show up with Princess Hugs-a-lot, and he vanishes faster than a cat at a rocking chair convention.”

“He doesn’t like children?” Julia said in surprise, bending to pick up Ella when the toddler started tugging on her pant leg and holding up her arms, making Julia chuckle when the girl lived up to her nickname by immediately giving her a fierce hug.

“No, just the opposite,” Olivia said. “Nicholas loves children.”

“Then why vanish?”

“Because the last time he fell in love with a baby princess, he ended up spending the next thirty-one years as her bodyguard.”

“Excuse me?”

“Mac’s sister, Carolina,” Olivia explained. “You’ve met her, haven’t you?”

Julia was forced to merely nod since Ella was now clasping her face, trying to get Julia to look at her instead of Olivia.

“Well, Nicholas’s mother was the midwife at Carolina’s birth, and when Rana suddenly took a turn for the worse, Maude apparently handed the minutes-old infant to him—Nicholas was only seven at the time, I’ve been told—and he refused to give her up for the next three days while everyone focused on saving Rana.” Olivia smiled crookedly. “Actually, he refused to give Carolina up for the next thirty-one years, until he decided Alec MacKeage deserved to spend the rest of his life dealing with her.” She gestured at her daughter, who had forgone clasping Julia’s face in favor of fingering the elastic on Julia’s thick braid of hair. “And that’s why he beats a hasty retreat whenever Ella heads for him with her arms raised, afraid of being saddled with another Oceanus princess for thirty-one more years. It’s also why he swears he’s only having sons.” She snorted, even as a gleam came into her eyes. “Assuming he can find a woman willing to marry him.”

Julia decided she wasn’t touching that little comment with a ten-foot pole. “So Nicholas was a bodyguard before he came to work for you?”

“Among other things,” Olivia said vaguely, walking down the hall. “You don’t have to clean this apartment yourself, Jules,” she continued as Julia followed carrying Ella. “I can have Bev send over some of her staff, and they’ll have this place spit-shined by the end of the morning.”

What, and have them see all my worldly possessions in trash bags?
“Thanks, but I’d rather do it myself,” Julia told her. “And for a bachelor, Nicholas was a pretty good housekeeper. Other than a little extra vacuuming, it won’t be any different than giving one of my cottages a good cleaning between guests.”

Olivia plucked Ella away from Julia and replaced the child with a set of keys. “Well, it’s all yours for however long you need it.” She touched Julia’s arm. “Please don’t run off and rent the first place you find out of stubborn pride. This apartment will just sit empty all winter, so you might as well take your time looking for something that’s nice as well as affordable.” She canted her head, that gleam returning. “Then again, who knows what exciting surprise might be waiting just around the corner for you?”

Julia caught her breath on the hope that Olivia was referring to the Inglenook position. She nodded. “Okay, I won’t. But Trisha and I are paying rent, right?”