Sharing Spaces (22 page)

She returned to the lodge and was climbing the porch steps when she heard Jack's plane approaching. Her heart leapt and she raced down the ramp, feet hitting the dock at about the same time the plane touched down. Moments later the old aircraft taxied around the river
bend into sight and pulled up beside the dock. The engine cut out, the prop feathered to a stop, and the plane's side door popped open. Jack jumped out onto the pontoon, looking as if it were just another sunny day. He flashed her a brief grin over his shoulder as he secured the plane to the dock.

“I come bearing tidings of great joy,” he announced.

“We were getting a little worried about you,” Senna said, struggling to keep her voice calm. After all, he didn't owe her an accounting of his day. “You said you'd be back by ten.”

“Sorry I'm late, but I have good news. Great news.”

In spite of her resolve to remain cool-headed, Senna felt perilously on the verge of tears. “You're seven hours overdue. I don't suppose you have any idea what it's like, waiting for someone who's flying around up in the air in an ancient plane. I was beginning to think something bad might have happened.”

“Well, I did have to make an unexpected landing on the way back home and it took me a few hours to get the old girl up and running again, but Senna, listen to this. I went to see George Pilgrim in the hospital. His surgery went pretty good, I guess, but he needs some treatments and can't come out right away. It turns out he has a daughter in Lab City—” Jack stopped talking and his eyes narrowed. He reached out and grasped her shoulder. “Are you crying? What's the matter? What's wrong?”

“What's wrong?”
Senna wiped her palms over her cheeks. “You're standing there talking to me as if nothing had happened, even though you just told me you had to crash-land that old derelict. You're such an idiot, John Hanson. Such a fool!”

Jack looked bewildered. “I'm sorry I'm a little late, but I'm not used to having anyone worry about me. I would've called but there wasn't a pay phone near the lake I landed in, and it wasn't a crash landing. As a matter of fact, it was a pretty damn good landing, for a beautifully built vintage aircraft whose engine unexpectedly quit.” He stepped onto the pontoon, reached inside the plane and drew forth a box filled with plants. “I brought you some purple petunias,” he said, holding them out as if they were a peace offering. “And some herb seedlings, for the kitchen garden.”

Senna stared at the big box of plants and felt the hot prickle of tears again. She whirled and raced back up the ramp before she could make a fool of herself for the second time. She was churning with anger and frustration and relief. She knew Jack didn't understand why she was behaving this way and she also knew that no amount of explanation would enlighten him. She wasn't sure she
could
explain, because her reaction had taken her as much by surprise as it had him. She had to get a grip on her runaway emotions. Crying, for heaven's sakes! She never cried! And of course he wouldn't understand
why
she was crying because he didn't know how she felt about him.

She fled to the cook's cabin she'd moved into that morning and collapsed on the bunk, taking advantage of the privacy to vent all those hours of pent-up anxiety. Gradually she got herself under control and was blotting her tears and blowing her nose when a shadow darkened the doorway. She glanced up to see Jack standing there, one hand braced on the doorjamb, the thumb of the other hand hooked in the rear pocket of his jeans. He slouched that way for a few moments before step
ping inside. “Look, Senna, I didn't mean to upset you,” he began tentatively, as if he were afraid she would start crying again.

Senna rose to her feet, crossed to the wash basin, and splashed cool water on her hot face. She dried off with a towel, then turned to look at him. “I'm sorry I carried on that way. It won't happen again. At least not today,” she added with a shaky laugh. “I don't know what came over me. I guess I'm just tired.”

“I saw all the baking you did and sampled some of it, too. Maybe we should have a cup of hot tea and sample some more.”

“Or maybe I should lock the sweets up to keep you and Charlie from devouring everything before the guests arrive,” Senna said, leading the way back to the lodge where she put the teakettle on to heat and arranged a plate of cookies and brownies on the kitchen table. She sat down. “Go ahead and tell me the good news. I could use a little about now.”

Jack picked up a cookie, leaned against the counter, and took up where he had left off. “George has a daughter in Lab City who's married to a guy who works in the iron-ore mine. The miners all belong to the Steelworkers' Union, and the union's on strike.” He bit into the cookie with a smug look.

“So George's daughter's husband is no longer working.”

“Correct. And George's daughter is looking for a job to help pay the bills. So I flew to Lab City to meet with them—”

“What?”
Senna interrupted, the dreaded emotions surging back. “That's a long flight! You might have called the lodge and told me you were going, or are you
going to tell me that all the phone lines were down in Goose Bay?”

Jack turned off the burner under the boiling water and filled two mugs. He set the teakettle back on the stove and plopped a tea bag in each mug, placing one in front of Senna. He leaned against the counter again, picked up another cookie and continued as if she hadn't spoken. “Mary, George's daughter, met me at Tanya Lake with a friend of hers. We talked business. Those two gals know how to cook and clean, Senna. They both raised big families. They're hard workers, good people. I told them how much work there was, how hard it would be, and how long the days were, and it didn't phase either of them. I'm picking them up next Wednesday. They said they needed that much time to take care of loose ends. And we have another guide. George's grandson can start in less than a week. So there you have it. Three more full-time workers that'll do anything you tell them to do.”

“Until the strike is over,” Senna pointed out.

“The feeling is that this strike is going to last a long time and things are going to get pretty grim. Money's already tight.”

“How much did you promise them?”

“They asked for nine dollars an hour, plus room and board.”

“That's equitable. There'll be gratuities, too, on top of that.” Senna dunked her tea bag up and down in the mug, watching him. “The next time you decide to change your flight plan, Hanson, please call me first? That's only fair, especially if I have to tell you when I'm going into the woods searching for wolves.”

“Okay.”

“What was wrong with the plane's engine?”

“Fuel filter was clogged.”

“Does that happen often?”

“Nope. Never happened before. Believe me, that plane is properly maintained.” Jack finished off the second cookie.

Senna hesitated. “Jack, I think we should contact Thunder Air Service and have them fly our clients in.”

Jack's expression became carefully neutral. “There's nothing wrong with the Cessna.”

“Nothing wrong? You just had to make an emergency landing. Maybe you're okay with that, but our clients might feel otherwise. Thunder Air uses brand-new Twin Otter float planes that can carry six passengers and all their gear, and their rates are competitive.”

Jack said nothing for a few moments but she could tell from the set of his jaw that he was getting hot. “I take it you've already inquired.”

Senna nodded, still dunking her tea bag and judging the negativity of his reaction. “Your plane can only carry four passengers. We have twelve people arriving tomorrow. Granted, they're not all coming at the same time, but you'd spend the entire day ferrying them to the lodge then turning around and going back for the next group. That's three heavily loaded trips in a very old aircraft.”

“The Cessna can handle it, but go ahead and call the flying service, if that's what you want to do,” he said, stalking out of the kitchen without touching his tea. His anger with her was so great that he didn't come up to the lodge to see if she'd cooked anything for supper, and long after sunset she could hear him down by the guides' cabin, splitting wood with a vengeance. Senna
knew that she'd insulted his beautiful plane, but he had to face reality. They had a business to run, and there was no contingency in place for emergency landings in a plane old enough to be hanging from the ceiling of an air and space museum.

She phoned Thunder Air Service and made the arrangements for three trips the following day, the first arriving at 2:00 p.m. and the last guests just before supper. She gave them her credit card number to cover the charges and added that to her little notebook, wincing at the rapidly climbing total.

That detail taken care of, she kindled a fire in the woodstove that heated the hot tub and made sure that the stove was cranking before filling the firebox to the brim. Back in the kitchen she set up the sourdough starter and put it in a warm place to work overnight. She put the meat for the following day's dinner into a marinade and then tucked it back into the refrigerator. Then she worked in the garden, a small plot she'd turned over just outside the back door. She planted the herb seedlings Jack had bought and potted the petunias in the two rustic planters Charlie had hewn for her from two sections of spruce log. The planters flanked the base of the main porch steps, and even though the seedlings were small, they'd soon fill the space with a mass of bright color. She gave everything a good drink of water, then washed up in the kitchen and made a stack of sandwiches and a pitcher of iced tea and carried them, along with two beer mugs, down the path toward the sound of an angry man at work.

Jack had stripped down to his undershirt, and although the evening was chilly, he was sweating. He spotted her and split the piece he had just placed on the
stump, then sank the ax into the stump and put his hands on his hips as she approached. He was studying her like a frowning scientist again, and she counterattacked with what she hoped was a calm and pleasant expression.

“I thought you might be hungry,” she said, setting the plate on a wall bench outside the cabin door. “Has Charlie eaten?”

“Eaten and gone to bed, which is where you should be. Tomorrow's a big day.”

“I know, but I thought a 10:00 p.m. snack might be good after all the work you've been doing. Sit with me. Please, Jack, don't be mad.”

Jack picked his flannel shirt off a nearby tree branch and pulled it on, wiping his brow on the sleeve. “I'm not mad,” he said. “I'm too damn tired to be mad.” He sat down with a weary sigh and leaned against the cabin wall. “And you're right. Probably not many guests would appreciate the plane breaking down en route to the lodge…not that she ever would. That clogged fuel filter was just a freak thing.” He took the cup of iced tea Senna handed him and drank it down without stopping. She refilled it and he emptied it again almost as quickly. His breathing slowed as he gradually relaxed. He drank the third mug more slowly, then picked up a sandwich, contemplating the river. “She's a good reliable plane.”

“Maybe you could use her for ferrying clients to those nearby lakes you told me about, the ones loaded with ten-pound brook trout and giant landlocked salmon, but I really think we should let the commercial airlines fly the guests and their gear to and from the lodge. It's a liability thing, and I don't know what kind of insurance we carry on that plane.”

“Never thought about that,” he admitted. “She's in
sured, but not as a commercial carrier. That'd probably be pretty expensive.”

“
Wicked
expensive.”

He looked at her, then gazed back down at the river and uttered a short laugh. “You think about all the details, wedding planner. Every last undesirable one.”

“That's my job. Now eat your sandwich, Hanson, because if you feel up to it, the hot tub should be just about ready.”

He stopped just short of biting into the sandwich and looked at her again, meal forgotten. “Say again?”

“I just thought, after splitting all that wood, that you might enjoy one more soak before we open for the season. Unless, of course, you're too tired, in which case I completely understand. Last night I was too exhausted myself to really appreciate it.”

Jack dropped the sandwich on the platter and lurched to his feet. “Good God, woman, no red-blooded man on this planet could ever be that tired. I'll be there just as soon as I get cleaned up and changed.”

 

J
ACK WAS HUMMING UNDER HIS
breath as he took his swim trunks down from the peg on the cabin rafter. He was singing arias as he ran to the river and plunged into the icy water to scrub the sweat of hard work and frustration off him. He was walking on air as he headed back to the guides' camp, picked out a clean flannel shirt and pair of jeans, towel-dried his hair, scraped off his five o'clock stubble, and brushed his teeth for good measure. “This is your lucky night, Hanson,” he told the reflection in the little mirror above the sink. “Don't blow it.”

Jack turned away from the mirror, his self-confi
dence flagging. He reminded himself that Senna's “very dear friend” had found a buyer for the lodge, the lodge that Senna's grandfather had dreamt into being and Senna had brought to life. Secretly Jack had hoped all along that she'd decide not to sell, that she'd decide that being partners with him was the best of all options, but she hadn't. She'd only agreed to stay for another two weeks. Still, that was two weeks more than he'd expected to get, and that gave him two more weeks to convince her that this was where she belonged. Senna would get the lodge through its maiden voyage. She'd make it happen, and she'd make it happen the right way, the way the admiral had envisioned. And who knows? Maybe in two more weeks she
would
fall in love with the place and change her mind about going back to Maine and that very dear friend of hers.