A Man Worth Keeping

“So, you’re an inn and spa.”

“Exactly. We were going to wait a few years before adding the spa, but we figured sooner rather than later would help us all keep our jobs.” He grinned again and Delia wondered if anyone ever said no to the guy. No wonder his wife was pregnant. “We’re ready to start advertising the services, but we wanted to get the right person in, someone who we knew could handle the work and had the right philosophy.” Gabe paused, offering her an opportunity to tell him her philosophy.

Funny, she used to have one of those. Now her whole philosophy was surviving the day.

“I was trained in San Antonio,” she said. “I apprenticed at the Four Seasons there and am a registered massage therapist and yoga instructor.”

“The last month and a bit?” he asked. “You have a gap in your résumé.”

Delia forced herself to smile and let the lie slide right off her tongue. “I went to France. Personal reasons.”

“Ah, nothing better than personal reasons that lead you to France. Josie must have loved it.”

The implication that she must have taken her daughter slid through her like poison. “She did. We both did.”

It didn’t even faze her anymore, the lies. Her heart didn’t trip, her hands didn’t go cold, and her face didn’t go hot.

She was thirty-seven years old and a liar, now. Another black mark on Jared’s hell-bound soul.

“I ran my own business for five years previous to France and at the same time worked at a holistic health center as part of an integrated care system for people suffering from terminal illness.”

“That’s all right here, Delia.” Gabe looked down at his clipboard, where she guessed her résumé was. “I’m hoping to find out a little bit about you. About what you think you can offer and what you think we can offer you.”

Right. She felt desperation well up in her gut like sticky tar, clinging to her courage and will, dragging her down to someplace scary.

“I want to be a part of something that people love. Something generous and good,” she said, the truth like an elixir, clearing away the fear and despair, the hunger and sleeplessness. Jared used to mock her for thinking she could help people with her “rubdowns.” But she’d seen the proof firsthand.

But even as she said the words, they felt like a lie. She hadn’t been living a generous life in far too long. Jared’s poison had infiltrated her being and she felt small and bitter. So she reached deep into the reasons she’d become a massage therapist, trying hard in this beautiful place to reconnect with the woman she’d once been. “I want to work side by side with people who work hard to do their best, to provide the best experience for guests. I want to help people recover, to feel better, to step lighter and maybe laugh a little more. That’s why I loved working at the holistic center. I want to make people’s lives a little bit easier—”

“Done. You’re hired.”

Delia blinked and Gabe laughed. “It’s why I started this inn. I wanted to give people a home away from home and you fit into that perfectly.”

She eyed him skeptically. Nothing. Nothing in her life lately had been this easy. When she’d read the ad for this position on the Internet, it had read like a dream come true considering her suddenly changed circumstances—seasonal, middle of nowhere, starting immediately.

She’d applied on her first day in South Carolina and the second she got the e-mail from Gabe asking her to come up for an interview, she’d packed Josie into the car and driven north.

Gabe finally shrugged. “Truth is, we haven’t had that many applicants. Not many people are excited about living in the Catskills in the middle of winter.”

That made her laugh. She wasn’t all that excited about it, either. And she certainly never would have come here if she didn’t have to. But it would be the last place anyone would look for her. She was a Southern woman, with blood as thin as sweet tea.

“But,” he was quick to state, “even if we’d gotten the résumés I do believe you’d still get the job. You’re a good fit—I could tell when you walked in. I have instincts about people.”

You and me both, buddy. She just hoped he trusted his more than she did her own.

She clenched her hands a bit tighter behind her back to stop herself from throwing her arms around him.

“I suppose you’d like to know the particulars?” he asked, and she pretended to be interested.

“Of course.”

“On paper the salary isn’t much but it includes room and board. Tips, of course, are yours. You need to let Chef Tim know of any dietary problems—”

“That’s great.”

“As per your request, you’ll be a contract employee. So no health benefits. Taxes will be your problem. Checks will be made out to Delia Johnson.”

“That’s no problem.” As a contract employee they wouldn’t need her social security number and since Delia Johnson didn’t have one, that seemed altogether best. She could wait to cash the paychecks—living on tips for as long as she could. She could take a paycheck in and get an ID made, maybe. God, she’d never had to worry about this before.

But with food and lodging covered, all she really needed to pay for was gas and the odds and ends that she and Josie required.

Delia shook her head. She didn’t need any more. A roof, food for her daughter, someplace safe for her to catch her breath and figure out what to do next.

“It would be a real pleasure to work here,” she said. “A real—” relief, blessing, gift, godsend “—pleasure.”

Gabe held out his hand and Delia put her clammy palm into his. “Welcome aboard, Delia Johnson. We hope you’ll stay awhile.”

Not likely, she thought, but shook on it anyway.

MAX SHOOK the snow out of his hair and stomped his boots on the rug at the front door. Gabe hated when he used the front door, tracking in snow and mud from outside, which was pretty much why Max used it.

The winter months were slow. All he had to pass the time was building his shed and irritating his brother. And the snowstorm outside was making the former impossible.

I’m thirty-six years old, he thought. I should have more in my life.

He looked up and found the little girl, Josie, staring at him as if he were a wild animal coming in for dinner.

He almost growled just to see what she would do.

“Hi,” she said after a moment.

Max looked around for the mother bear but didn’t see her. Should she see him talking to her daughter, chances were not good she’d welcome that.

He didn’t blame her. Since the shooting, mothers seemed to have a sense about him.

But this little girl looked so forlorn and small sitting at the big table that he decided to risk the wrath of Mama Bear.

“Hi, again.” He stepped over to her table and pulled off his gloves, taking a look at the book she had open in front of her. “Sudoku, huh?”

“Yeah.” Her lip lifted in a half smile and her hair—hidden earlier under her pink hat—fell over her shoulder. Red. Like her mother’s, only a bit more blond.

Max was at loose ends. It was snowing too hard to work. There were no repairs that needed to be done. No point in shoveling snow while it was still falling. Dad had left yesterday for downstate to talk to his lawyer about something. Alice was lying around with her feet up. And his brother must be checking in Josie’s mother, so he wasn’t around to annoy.

“I’m bored,” he said, the words popping out before he’d finished thinking them.

“Me, too.” Josie’s sigh was long-suffering and pained.

“Yeah?” He pushed out a chair with his foot and sat. He liked kids and he especially liked kids with attitude, which Josie had in spades. “Want to hand me one of those puzzle books?”