glanced at the unfinished wall, the partial roll of wallpaper on the floor and the untidy clutter of scissors, rulers and paper scraps. With a rueful shake of her head, she left the room and ran lightly down the stairs.
An elderly couple were in the plant-filled sunroom when she passed, reclining in wicker chairs among the ferns and reading peacefully. Gina paused to smile at them.
“Hello,” she said. “Are you enjoying our Okanagan sunshine?”
“It’s heaven,” the woman said, lowering her book. “We came all the way from Pennsylvania to stay at this place, you know. Friends of ours were here two years ago, and they never stopped talking about how wonderful it was.”
“Really?” Gina said, pleased. “From Pennsylvania?”
The man nodded. “The Piedmonts,” he said. “Allan and Sheila.”
“Oh, I remember them,” Gina said. “They were here in the fall, I think. In fact, I seem to recall that Mr. Piedmont spent most of his time outside taking pictures of the autumn foliage.”
“Allan’s a real camera nut,” the woman said. “Sheila gets so annoyed with him.”
Gina lingered for a moment, exchanging pleasantries with the guests, then excused herself and went out through the French doors.
She crossed the flagstone courtyard, where a young honeymoon couple shared one of the wrought-iron benches near a rose-covered trellis, talking in low tones.
They looked up at Gina with shy smiles as she passed, then returned immediately to their conversation, heads close together and fingers intertwined. Gina ignored the tiny pang of envy she felt. The young couple had a closeness, an almost palpable aura of love that shut the rest of the world out.
She moved to the gate set in the honeysuckle hedge, then trotted across the clipped grass to the orchard.
“Hi, Roger,” she said, approaching the tall man in a plaid shirt and denim overalls who sat under the apple tree whittling. “What’s that?”
“One of the spindles on the back stairway is warped. I’m carving a new one.”
Gina looked in awe at the length of oak, which had been partially turned on the lathe in Roger’s workshop at the back of the house and was now being hand-finished to match the other spindles.
“It’s amazing,” she said, bending to run her fingers along the wooden shaft. “When you’re done, I probably won’t know which spindle you replaced unless you point it out to me.”
“Well, I certainly hope not,” Roger said placidly. He returned to his carving while Gina leaned against the tree and considered how to tell him that his habit of sneaking food to Annabel was a source of great distress to Mary.
It was funny about this pair. Roger and Mary were about the same age, and Roger, like the housekeeper, had wandered into Gina’s life just when she’d needed him most.
She’d still been fairly new in the business then, struggling to make a success of her bed-and-breakfast operation and cope with the mortgage payments. Mary had helped a lot in those early years, with her housekeeping skills and her genius in the kitchen. But Gina was still crushed by the constant repairs that needed to be done, and the prohibitive expense of getting tradespeople out from the city.
Then, one mellow autumn day, Roger had dropped into her world like a gift from the gods, and things had begun to run smoothly.
Roger hadn’t arrived looking for work. He’d actually been a paying guest, an executive from a Vancouver-based lumber company trying to deal with burnout and job stress by taking a holiday in British Columbia’s lovely Okanagan Valley.
Despite his desk job, Roger was a man who could turn his hand to almost anything. He’d entertained himself during his vacation by helping Gina with leaky pipes, ill-fitting windows and warped doors.
When it was time for his holiday to end, he decided he didn’t want to leave. So he simply mailed in his resignation, moved his accounts to the bank in Azure Bay, bought a snug little house and property just down the road from the hotel and stayed on as Gina’s handyman and caretaker.
“I don’t know how I ever ran this place without you,” she told him now, watching as he carved neat grooves into the bottom portion of the spindle. “What on earth would I ever do if you left?”
“You’d manage,” Roger said comfortably. “You’re not a girl who needs help from anybody, Gina. You’re a real survivor.”
She thought about that, enjoying the way the long curls of wood fell away from the oak shaft under his hands. “Everybody thinks I’m so tough and independent,” she said at last. “But lots of times I don’t feel that way at all.”
He smiled up at her. Roger was nearly bald, with a tall angular body and eyes that were blue and tranquil under silvered brows.
Gina sometimes wondered how he’d adapted so readily to this life-style, which must have been, after all, a radical departure from his old existence.
Roger never talked about his past. Apparently he had no family or emotional entanglements, and seemed to be financially independent. At least, he managed without apparent discomfort on the small salary that was all Gina could afford, ate most of his meals with Gina and Mary in the hotel kitchen and passed his free time happily in his little farmhouse. For hobbies, he had his woodworking and a lovely old cello he played with surprising skill in a local chamber-music group.
“Mary’s upset with you again,” Gina said at last. “I promised I’d talk to you.”
Roger sighed. “What did I do this time?”
“It seems you’ve been sabotaging Annabel’s diet.”
Roger looked up, feigning innocence. “Is Annabel on a diet?”
“Roger, you know she’s too fat.”
“She certainly is. She’s probably the most obese poodle in the province.”
“So why do you insist on feeding her table scraps?”
Roger grinned and began to carve another neat groove. “That animal was howling so loud yesterday the couple in the patio room were complaining about the noise. I just gave her an old soup bone to chew on, that’s all.”
“With a bit of meat on it?” Gina asked wryly.
“Maybe a little,” he admitted.
She chuckled, then sobered. “You’re a sweetie, Roger, and you know how much I love you. But you’ve got to stop upsetting Mary that way. Someday this will escalate to the point where I’ll lose one of you, and then I’ll probably have to close the business.”
“Nobody’s indispensable,” Roger said mildly. “Always remember that, Gina. You could get along perfectly well without either one of us. We’re just a habit, you know. A well-worn groove.”
Gina glanced at him sharply, caught by something in his tone. “You keep saying things like that.”
“Do I?”
“Lately you’re always talking about how capable I am, and how perfectly well I could manage on my own. Are you setting me up, Roger? Is there something you want to tell me?”
He shook his head and went back to his careful whittling. “I don’t like hearing you say you’d have to close the place down if one of us left, that’s all. It doesn’t sound like you, Gina. You’re a fighter, not a quitter.”
“I know. But I’ve grown used to having companions in the battle, that’s all. I’d really hate to be all alone again.”
“So why don’t you find some nice young man to work at your side?”
Gina kicked his leg gently with the toe of her sneaker.
“Stop that,” she said. “Immediately.”