June
“Joey! Can you come down for a second?”
Joey Peterson looked down from his lifeguard tower and saw Will Weston, head of the aquatics department at River’s End Ranch, walking toward him across the concrete that surrounded the pool. Will was a pretty chill boss and didn’t usually seek out an employee unless something was wrong, so Joey immediately started thinking through everything that had happened in the last week—he hadn’t played any practical jokes on anyone, so he should be in the clear.
He motioned to Catherine, one of the three Kates who also worked at the pool, and she came over to take his spot on the tower.
“What’s up, Will?” he asked as he pulled on his T-shirt.
“We have a guest with some particular requirements arriving tomorrow. An injured Olympic hopeful who needs some rehab. I’m putting you in charge of her,” Will said.
“Sure. What’s her name?”
Will reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Chelsea McAllister.”
Joey blinked. For a second, it felt as though the solid concrete pad where he stood was crumbling beneath his feet. It couldn’t be a coincidence—there wouldn’t be two world-class swimmers with the same name. “Chelsea’s coming here?”
“Yep, arriving with her parents tomorrow morning. They’ve asked that one lane be blocked off for her exclusive use, and they’d like the pool to open at six a.m. so she has two hours of private swim time before the other guests are allowed to enter. She’s paying for all this, and of course you’ll be compensated for those two extra hours in the mornings, if you’re willing to take this on.”
Joey rubbed his face. Of course he was willing—he was saving up for his next semester of college, and those two hours a day would help out. But Chelsea . . . wow. That was a blow right to the gut.
“Are you okay?” Will asked. “I know I kind of sprang this on you—should I ask one of the other lifeguards?”
“No, I’m fine,” Joey replied. “I have some past history with Chelsea, but nothing that will keep me from doing my job. I’ll take care of it.”
“Okay, but only if you’re sure. I don’t want to put you in a position where you’d be distracted.”
Lifeguards couldn’t afford to be distracted. That one moment when their thoughts wandered could be that one moment when a little three-year-old fell in the deep end. “I promise that if it’s too hard, I’ll turn it over to someone else.”
“Sounds good.” Will handed the page to Joey. “I don’t know if you need this, but here you go just in case.”
Joey glanced at it. It was just a list of requested pool times and whatnot. “Thanks, Will. I’m on it.”
“Glad to hear it. That’s a load off my mind.”
Something in Will’s tone of voice made Joey look at him a little closer. “Hey, what about you? You’re looking kind of stressed out.”
Will sighed. “It’s that wife of mine. She’s due in a few weeks and she’s supposed to be taking it easy. So she made me all these charts and stuff so I wouldn’t lose track of what’s going on with the aquatics department, but I think I’m even more confused than I was before she got here to run things. Type A personalities make great employees, but complicated wives. Just remember that.”
“Um, okay,” Joey said. It would be a long, long time before he started thinking about wives, regardless of their personality types.
“Thanks again for taking care of the McAllister situation. I appreciate it.” Will clapped Joey on the shoulder as he walked away.
Chelsea McAllister. Joey leaned up against one of the fence posts surrounding the pool and exhaled. He hadn’t seen her for two years. No matter how long it had been, though, he knew he’d never forget the face of the girl who had broken his heart.
***
“Are you sure there’s nowhere else, Dad? I’d even take a community center.”
Derek McAllister looked at his daughter over the top of his newspaper. She couldn’t believe he still preferred a physical copy of the paper rather than reading the news on his tablet like every other human being on earth. “You’d rather swim in some strange community pool than go to River’s End Ranch? Why?”
“It just . . . I don’t know.” She fished around for some reason—any reason—he’d listen to. “It can’t be as nice as the website looks,” she ended lamely.
Her dad shook his head. “John and Linda were there just three weeks ago and said it was fantastic.”
John and Linda . . . her parents’ best friends, and the experts on absolutely everything. Chelsea was getting tired of every decision in their family being dictated by the whims of John and Linda.
“Besides,” her father went on, “your mother and I deserve a nice trip for our anniversary, and this is where we want to go. You need to train, we need a trip—perfect. Unless you can give me a solid reason why we should cancel, we’re leaving tonight.”
Chelsea stared down at her plate. She’d eaten all the bacon, but the eggs were cold, and she hated cold eggs. She hated mornings. In fact, she’d been feeling pretty hateful in general since tearing the meniscus in her right knee. “All right,” she said at last. “I’m almost packed anyway.” She’d been willing to go when her mother proposed a trip and had been getting ready to leave—until she learned the destination. Now it seemed she really had no choice without making a big deal of it, and she didn’t want to make a big deal of it.
She waited until her dad finished his coffee and left the table, then pulled out her phone and sent a quick text to her friend Sandi. Didn’t you say Joey works at a place called River’s End Ranch in Idaho now?
When Sandi replied with a yes, Chelsea shook her head. Great. Just great.