FIVE
“SO THERE’S GOOD NEWS, and there’s bad news.” Kayla paced across the room as she always did when she was thinking. “The good news is that all the snow has brought another flurry of bookings. It’s incredible. I never thought we’d be this busy, this soon.”
“Me, I am always this busy, and right now I should be in the kitchen preparing for lunchtime service.” Impatient to be back in the restaurant, Élise tapped her foot on the floor. “What is the bad news?”
“The extra bookings mean that we’re right at capacity.” Kayla sent Brenna a guilty look. “I’ve had to book Forest Lodge. I’m so sorry. I feel terrible about it, but I had no choice.”
Brenna’s stomach swooped. It hadn’t occurred to her that she wouldn’t be able to stay in Forest Lodge over the winter. Dismay was followed by disappointment and concern about where she’d live in the short-term.
Jackson frowned. “Forest isn’t for rent. Put them in one of the other lodges.”
“The others are booked. And they specifically requested Forest.”
“It’s fine,” Brenna said quickly, but Jackson shook his head.
“Brenna has stayed in that lodge since it was built. Why would they request it? It isn’t on the website.”
“They must have seen it on the resort map and liked the position. They offered full brochure price for it, Jackson. What was I supposed to do? We’re running a business, and they wanted Forest Lodge.” Visibly stressed, Kayla rubbed her fingers over her forehead. “Maybe I made the wrong decision. I should have told them we were full. I’m sorry. Look, I’ll call them back. Tell them I made a mistake.”
“No, you can’t do that!” Brenna told herself it was ridiculous to be hurt when Kayla was doing her job, and doing it well. “You’re right. We’re running a business. Not only that, we’re trying to save a business.”
Kayla gave her a grateful look. “The numbers are looking healthy, but maybe I’m getting carried away. Jackson always says that one day he’s going to find people sleeping in the stable.”
“Well it is Christmas,” Elizabeth murmured, and Brenna forced a smile.
“You did the right thing. Don’t worry. When do I need to be out?”
“They’re arriving Saturday because they wanted the week before Christmas. It’s always quieter on the slopes. Then I’ve booked out the full two weeks around Christmas and New Year’s after that.”
“This coming Saturday?”
“Yes. It doesn’t give us much time to get the lodge ready. They’ve made lots of special requests. Tree, extra logs—” Waving her hand, Kayla recounted a vague list, and Brenna realized that someone else would be spending Christmas in Forest Lodge.
“I’ll work something out.” She spoke firmly, as much to convince herself as Kayla.
“You can have a room in the hotel,” Jackson said, but Kayla shook her head as she checked something on her phone.
“Lissa booked the last room this morning. It’s free tonight, but Brenna doesn’t want to be moving her things around.”
Brenna felt a flash of anxiety. She didn’t have the time to hunt for somewhere new to live with less than two weeks to go until Christmas. “I don’t have many things to move. I’m not a possessions person.”
“You need somewhere you can treat as home, and a soulless hotel room isn’t the answer even if we did have one available, which we don’t.”
Jackson intervened. “Firstly, our hotel rooms aren’t soulless, and secondly you’re babbling.”
Kayla looked flustered. “I have a lot on my mind. I’m sorry, Brenna. I know how much you love Forest Lodge, and it’s conveniently close to the ski lift. You could stay with Jackson and me, but we’re farther away so—wait a minute!” Her face brightened, and she turned to Tyler. “You have four bedrooms, right?”
Tyler had been glowering through the entire exchange. “You know I do.”
“So why doesn’t Brenna stay at Lake House with you? It’s stunning since you finished the renovations, and you’re even closer to the ski lift than Forest Lodge, so the position couldn’t be better.” She clapped her hands. “I’m a genius!”
Jackson frowned. “Kayla, you can’t just—”
“I wish I’d thought of it before, then I could have presented the solution with the problem and saved all the anxiety.” Ignoring Jackson, Kayla beamed and paced the length of the room like a general marshalling troops. “Brenna can stay on at the resort, and we can rent Forest Lodge for top rate. This is all turning out brilliantly. Champagne is called for.”
“At eight-thirty in the morning?” Jackson’s tone was mild, and he was looking at Kayla with a mixture of exasperation and amusement.
Brenna wasn’t amused. She was appalled.
Move in with Tyler?
She couldn’t think of anything worse. “I can’t live with Tyler!” She didn’t dare contemplate his reaction. She couldn’t look at him. She didn’t need to because she knew exactly what he was thinking. Because of Jess, he’d been forced to curtail his wild lifestyle, but now he was on the verge of getting back out there again. The last thing he needed was his childhood friend moving in with him. “That’s not a solution. I’ll rent an apartment. I was always going to have to do that once Snow Crystal started to recover, but there was no reason to do it when the place was half-empty.”
“You won’t be able to rent an apartment before Christmas.” Kayla was still pacing. “And even if you found one in the New Year, it wouldn’t be practical for you to be driving backward and forward. That’s why you started living in the resort in the first place.”
Brenna didn’t know which option was worse—the thought of renting somewhere away from Snow Crystal, or the idea of moving in with Tyler.
“I can stay with my parents as a short-term solution.”
“No, you can’t.” Tyler’s voice held none of its usual humor. “Visiting drives you insane, so living there is not an option. You can live with me. Jess and I have loads of room. It makes sense.” Those blue eyes locked on hers, and everyone else in the room faded into the background. It was just the two of them and her feelings, which were so huge, so out of control, she thought surely he’d see them.
He read her so well, but for some reason he was blind to this one thing.
She should tell him. She should stop avoiding the issue and be honest about how hard it was for her. That’s what he would do.
But she wasn’t going to do that in public, so instead she gave a shake of her head. “It wouldn’t feel right.”
“If it makes you feel better, we can share the cooking.”
“You’ll come off worse from that deal. I’m a terrible cook.”
“You
