“Tell me where they’re at, and I can be there in minutes,” he replied anxiously.
Again, she let him stew. She knew it was mean, but it was her way of getting even over his putting Stephanie on that unpaid leave of absence.
“Melanie, tell me what’s wrong. Please!” He shouted so loud she had to hold the phone away from her ear.
“I need you to listen, and I don’t want you to interrupt me. Is that clear?”
She heard an intake of breath over the phone line. “Okay. I’m listening.”
Melanie made fast work of telling him what she wanted and when she wanted it. He complied as fast as Jessica Rollins had. Maybe graphic design isn’t my calling after all.
Thirty minutes later, Stephanie was showered, dressed, and looking like a million bucks.
“Now, I want you to get in my car. We’re going out for lunch.”
“Melanie, I know you’re trying to cheer me up, and I really do appreciate it, but I have to be here when the girls get home.” She looked at the clock on the stove. “And that’s in two hours. I don’t see how we can go out to lunch and actually enjoy ourselves in such a short period of time.”
“Did I say we were going to enjoy ourselves? Hmm, I don’t believe I did. Now go.”
“Well, I hope you know I feel like a fool, all dressed up, looking so silly, just to eat lunch. And we’ll have to go to a fast-food place because that’s all I have time for. And I won’t take no for an answer, not where my girls are concerned,” Stephanie said adamantly.
“I’ve arranged for my mother to be here when they get home.” She really hadn’t, but she would. “You have way too much blusher on. Go wipe some off before we leave. You look like Ronald McDonald.”
“I really don’t like this side of you.”
“Tough. Go wipe your cheeks. Now.”
Stephanie turned around and headed for the bathroom.
Melanie called her mother and explained the situation. She was more than willing to help out. She said she would be waiting at the bus stop for the girls and from there she would take them to Chuck E. Cheese, if Stephanie didn’t mind, of course. Melanie assured her she wouldn’t but reminded her mother not to forget to take her cell phone, because Melanie knew Stephanie would want to call and check on the girls.
Stephanie came out of the bathroom as soon as Melanie hung up the phone.
“If I didn’t know better, I would think you were up to something. But I don’t know better, at least not today. So let’s just have lunch and enjoy ourselves before the girls come home. It might be fun just the two of us for a change. We can order junk food.”
“Yes, and we will as soon as you get in the car.” Melanie practically shoved her out the door. “I told you my mother would be here just in case we ran a little late, and you’re going to have to trust me on this one.”
“And you want me to trust someone who says she doesn’t trust people who say trust me?”
“Did I say that?” Melanie asked, as they loaded into her Lincoln Navigator.
“Yes, you did.”
“Well, I’m telling you now that you have to trust me. You don’t have to like me, just trust me.”
Stephanie took a deep breath. “Turn the heat on, it’s freezing. I really wish you would tell me what’s going on. I don’t like surprises.”
“Tough,” Melanie said as she maneuvered down the long, winding drive. Evergreens topped with a heavy layer of snow flanked the sides of the drive. It never failed to remind her just how beautiful Colorado really was.
Exactly twenty minutes later, they pulled into the main parking lot at Maximum Glide.
Stephanie looked as though she were ready to do battle. “What are we doing here? This is the last place I want to be right now.”
“Tough. It’s where you need to be. There is someone here who wants to talk to you. Now get out, or I will carry you over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes.”
“I’m not sure I want the girls to see you like this. It might scare them,” Stephanie teased.
“Right! They love me any way I am, and we both know that.”
“Yes, they do.”
As they trudged across the parking lot, snow crunched against their boots, the sound barely audible over the crowds on the mountain. The previous week’s blizzard conditions were long gone. In their place the sun was as bright as butter, the sky as blue as a robin’s egg, and the snow as white and clean as freshly beaten cream.
They hurried inside the main offices because even though the sun was out, the temperatures were still in the teens.
“We’re having lunch in Patrick’s office. I told him to order in from The Lodge,” Melanie explained.
“I don’t know why I agreed to this, but remind me when we leave to wring your neck.”
Melanie tapped on Patrick’s door, then opened it before he had a chance to tell them to come inside.
Just as she had commanded, there was a table set for two, an exquisite crystal vase with one single yellow rose, and a bottle of Cristal chilling in a bucket of ice.
Stephanie glanced at Patrick, then back at her friend turned harridan. “Tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”
“It isn’t,” Melanie said. “Enjoy lunch.”
She hurried out of the office before Stephanie even had a chance to ask what was going on. She saw the table, the rose, and the champagne.
“Please, come in and have a seat.” Patrick motioned to the chairs, which Stephanie recognized from The Lodge.
“Just so you know, I’m not here because I want to be. Melanie seems to think this is…I don’t know what she thinks, but let’s just get this over with.”
“You sound like you’re headed for the guillotine.”
“It’s probably not as bad,” she responded, then sat down in the chair Patrick pulled out for her. Surprise, surprise. She didn’t know he had manners.
“You can tell me that when I’m finished with what I have to say. I took the liberty of telling Jack to wait on our food. You might not want to be in the same room with me when I say what I need to say, something I should’ve said a long time ago, and I would have if I’d had the guts to admit it to myself. But better late than never, so here it is.”
“Look, if it’s about my job, I probably shouldn’t have walked out the way I did. I was just so worried about Amanda and Ashley, then you made that comment about…well, you know what you said. I was embarrassed and just wanted to leave. So if you’re going to apologize, then fine. I accept.”
“Actually,
