a bed,” Fiona MacPherson decreed. “We’ll stick to our buddy system.”
Made it harder for a boy to sneak into a girl’s room, John diagnosed with wry amusement. Chaperoning this bunch for a week would be a chore. The school ought to give her a nice fat bonus once she returned the kids to their parents’ custody. Unless, of course, she was in hot water for setting out in the first place on the foolhardy venture to cross the pass.
They trooped upstairs. He showed them the shared bathrooms, each boasting a deep, claw-foot tub, double sinks, piles of towels and open shelving for the guests’ toiletries.
“Oh, eew,” one of the girls exclaimed. “We don’t have toothbrushes or anything!”
He almost kept his mouth shut. Bad breath might make the chaperoning easier. But that was just plain mean. He might be a recluse, but he was also an innkeeper.
“I keep extras for guests who forget them. Remind me and I’ll go get some.”
“Bless you,” the teacher murmured, apparently not having considered the benefits of halitosis.
He handed out flannel sheets and duvet covers, they picked partners and rooms. Fortunately two of the rooms each had a pair of queen beds, so the three boys went in one of those and three of the girls in the other. Another pair of girls shared a room and Fiona claimed the first room at the head of the stairs.
John went in with her to help her make up the bed. Setting the armful of linens on a chair, she looked around with approval.
“Dieter told me the lodge was really nice. This is lovely.”
He’d bought the place as-is, but it was in good shape. Her room was typical: polished plank floors with a rag rug to add warmth, a bed built of peeled Ponderosa pine and covered with a puffy duvet, antique pine dresser with a mirror that showed a wavery reflection. The artwork varied from room to room, giving each character. She was in the one he privately thought of as the Rose Room, with cottage-style paintings in which roses smothered fences and arbors and tangled in old-fashioned hedgerows. He tended to put women in here.
With quick, efficient movements, he and Fiona made up her bed with snow-white sheets and duvet cover. When they’d finished, she looked at him over the bed.
“I don’t think you told me your name.”
“Fallon. John Fallon.”
Her smile was a thing of beauty, somehow merry and so warm he had the sudden illusion of not needing the fire downstairs. “It’s nice to meet you, John Fallon. You’re a kind man to try to hide how much you wish we hadn’t shown up on your front porch.”
He thought of himself as a decent man. Decent enough to do the right thing when he had to.
“I usually have guests. You’re not putting me out.” What was a little white lie?
“We’re just surprise guests.”
And nonpaying ones, he presumed.
Again, she seemed to read his mind.
“I’ll make sure you’re reimbursed, at least for the food. I teach at a private school.” She nodded toward the voices drifting from the other bedrooms. “Most of their parents are pretty well-to-do.”
He only nodded. “That would be appreciated.”
Again her teeth closed briefly on her lower lip. “I hate to ask, but…We ate at four o’clock. I suspect the boys especially are starved.”
John had once been skinny like the one kid. He seemed to remember eating from morning to night and never feeling full.
“Sandwiches?”
“Sandwiches would be great.” She treated him to another smile, this time relieved.
They met at the foot of the bed and had one of those awkward moments where they both hesitated, started forward, shuffled, until he finally waved toward the door. “After you.”
It seemed to him that her cheeks were a little bit pink. Did she feel some of the pull that had him half-aroused and uncomfortable?
He couldn’t imagine. With his scarred face and obvious limp, he was more likely to be an object of pity than lust. His throat momentarily tightened. Had that moment been so clumsy because she’d been trying to defer to him since he was disabled?
“I’ll get started on food,” he said shortly, and left her to the kids.
Like a bunch of locusts, they showed up in the kitchen all too quickly and began filling plates. A couple of the smaller girls barely nibbled—one was Asian, a tiny thing with glossy black hair down to her hips, the other thin and plain with braces that pushed her lips out. Those two, he remembered, had taken the room with one bed, and now were quieter than the others.
Two girls were arguing loudly about some math question, while another flirted with the stocky boy who seemed more interested in piling food on his plate. The teacher looked dead on her feet.
She swayed, and John stepped forward, but she rallied and said, “Wow! This is great. Thank you.”
They took seats around the long, farmhouse table that occupied the middle of the enormous kitchen, John at her right side.
“Everyone, our host is John Fallon.” She reeled off their names, most of which he’d likely need to hear again.
The tall, skinny boy who’d stayed here before was Dieter Schoenecker, the stocky one had the unlikely name of Hopper Daniels, and the third boy was Troy Thorsen. Nordic last name, which didn’t explain his racial heritage.
The girls were a blur. Kelli—with an i, she made sure to tell him, last name he didn’t catch, Amy Brooks, who seemed given to posing and flipping her hair, Tabitha, Erin and…that left someone out, but he couldn’t remember who. Probably the plain, quiet one.
Watching the speed with which the food disappeared, John took mental stock of his larder. They’d be okay for a week, he figured; he kept an emergency supply of canned goods he could dip into if need be.
Fiona took half a sandwich and ate it slowly, as if she had to remind herself to take a bite and swallow. Clearly they’d driven across the mountains that morning, and had probably made an early start to have had time for any kind of competition during the day. Driving for hours through the blizzard had to have wrung her out.
“Why don’t you hit the sack?” he said quietly. “They’re still wound up. I can sort them out later.”
“I’m responsible…”
“You look ready to collapse.”
Dieter Schoenecker, who sat on her other side, heard. “Ms. Mac was Superwoman today.”
She managed a grin and pretended to flex a bicep. “That’s me. Speaking of which—” she pitched her voice a little louder “—have I mentioned that I have X-ray vision? I see through walls.”
“Ahh! Ms. Mac doesn’t trust us.” The Hopper kid clasped his hand to his chest and fell back in his chair.
She just smiled. “Bathroom on the right side upstairs is for girls, left side for boys.”
“Toothbrushes.” John pushed back his chair and stood. His bad leg chose to cave, and he had to brace his hand on the back of the chair until the spasm let up. Without looking to see if anyone had noticed, he left the kitchen.
He grabbed a basket and piled it with toothbrushes, toothpaste in sample tubes, dental floss, the small bottles of shampoo and hand lotion he put out when readying a bathroom for guests, and a couple of packages of feminine products. It might embarrass the girls, but if they were here for very many days, odds were a couple of them would need something.
Fiona stood when he came back. “I’ll take that up.” She looked into the basket. “Oh, thank goodness. I didn’t even think of that as a problem. I’ll distribute all this.” She raised her voice.