Chapter 4

“So that’s it! The ten-cent tour!” Katrina put up both hands with a flourish while Emma scribbled one more thing on her notepad. They’d been wandering the facility for two hours now, and Emma was pretty sure even with twelve weeks here, she’d never remember half the names of the staff and patients.

“Thank you.” She looked left and right but wasn’t sure where they now were in comparison to her—well, Bette’s—office.

“Not sure how to get back home?” Katrina smiled. “Two lefts and a right.”

“Thanks.” Emma felt her cheeks flush. “I appreciate the tour.”

“Don’t worry. The layout’s only confusing for a couple of days. You’ll get the hang of it soon enough.”

“Well, luckily, I’ll be in the office most of the time, I imagine.”

Katrina nodded, but Emma could see a faint wrinkle develop between her eyebrows. “Sure. Of course.” Then she waved and turned to head back down the hallway they’d just traversed. “All right, back to work for me. Time to serve up some of Horace’s delicious lunch.”

Emma turned to head back to the lobby and the relative safety of her office, the quiver that had settled itself in her stomach Friday afternoon growing a tiny bit bigger as she surveyed the gleaming floors and pale peach walls of her temporary domain. She was, for all intents and purposes, actually in charge of this little operation, and though she’d always craved more responsibility, she’d never pictured it coming in this form.

She was in charge of all of these nurses, all of these LNAs, all of these patients.

Gah.

She hadn’t had nearly enough time to grasp this before she’d been boarding a plane, hastily packed luggage hopefully following her. And now she was here, and she was the boss, and she knew nothing about how this place ran from any other angle than the paperwork.

Katrina had been lovely on the tour. She’d been gracious, sweet, and welcoming—but also cautious. Duncan had mentioned how much the staff loved the real director, and the number of times Katrina had thrown Bette’s name out made that more than clear.

Yes, she had her work cut out for her, stepping into Bette’s apparently über-capable shoes. She just kept praying that nothing bad would happen on her watch.

Please nobody die, she repeated to the ceiling as she started walking back to her office.

Two lefts and a right later, she was firmly…in the dining room. And if she remembered correctly, that dining room was nowhere near her office. Great. Either Katrina had given faulty directions or she’d lost the ability to remember a series of three instructions.

If she got so easily lost, imagine how their dementia patients felt.

The scent of—something she couldn’t identify, actually—hit her nose, and her stomach growled. She hadn’t dared trust her gut with anything but dry cereal at the hotel this morning, and she suddenly realized how hungry she was.

She also had the beginnings of a ginormous headache, given that her required daily caffeine dosage had ended up on her shirt, rather than in her stomach.

“Lost already?” a deep voice came from behind her, making her whirl around in surprise. Oh, lordy. It was him—the ungodly hot guy who’d seen her naked before she’d even clocked in this morning.

Jasper.

She felt heat fly up her neck as he smiled, and she struggled to connect her brain to her mouth in order to answer.

“No. Yes. Sort of. Maybe?”

Oh, smooth, Em.

“That was definitive.”

“Sorry. I know where I am. Just not entirely sure how to get back to where I meant to be. You’re still—here?”

“I’m back, actually.”

She tipped her head. “Exactly how much coffee does this staff drink in a day?”

“Not here to deliver coffee.” He laughed, pointing at a table over by a big bank of windows. “My father’s a resident. I’m here for lunch.”

“Oh!” Emma looked toward the table where he was pointing. “I didn’t realize. I thought—well, coffee.”

Oh, for God’s sake. She was a professional administrator with three master’s degrees. How had she lost the ability to form actual sentences?

He smiled, and she pictured high school girls falling at his feet years ago. “I’m also the coffee guy, yes. But only because I want a happily caffeinated staff looking after my dad.”

“Naturally.”

“You settling in okay? Even though you’re lost and wearing pink pajamas on your first day?”

Emma looked down. She’d almost forgotten about the scrubs. Now she could return to feeling self-conscious about them, thank you very much.

“This place is a lot bigger than it looks.”

“You could always try the bread-crumb approach, but the rats would probably get to the crumbs before you could get all the way back.”

“Rats?”

He laughed out loud, and the sound of it tickled her right between the ribs at just about the same moment she realized he was just tormenting her.

“Not nice.”

“Sorry.” He smiled. “The rats are actually under control now. We brought in some snakes to take care of them.”

“Awesome.”

He cocked his head. “So rats you fear, but snakes you don’t?”

“I grew up in Florida. Unless it’s an Everglades python, I can handle the whole snake thing.”

“Good.” He shivered. “Because they scare the hell out of me with their slithery little hissy selves.”

Emma laughed at his expression and his word choice. “You’d never survive down South.”

“No plans to, so we’re good.” He winked. “Excited for snow? We could see some practically any day now.”

She took a deep breath. “I’m intrigued by the idea of snow. I’m not intrigued by the thought of driving in it.”

“Understandable. Especially in that rental they gave you. Too bad the airport isn’t big enough for any of the real agencies to bother having a booth. You’re stuck with whatever Smitty pulls off his used car lot.”

“Fantastic.” Emma sighed. She really should have rented a car in Bozeman and driven the remaining hours north, rather than taking the last-leg cloud-hopper that had touched down at a one-room airport that was only open from ten till four. But she hadn’t made the reservation, so she’d been at the mercy of Galway’s travel agency.

“You’ll be fine. Snow isn’t that tough to drive in, once you get used to it.”

“Does it really, seriously snow up here this early in the fall?”

“Almost always.” He shrugged like it was no big deal. “But you never know. Might hold off till October, if you’re lucky.”

She mentally counted out twelve weeks, realizing she was going to be here till almost Thanksgiving. There would definitely be snow-driving in her future.

“You have a Triple-A provider out here, right? Just asking?”

“Smitty, yep.” He laughed. “So you may want to invest in some cross-country skis to get up this…mountain if the car doesn’t make it.”

“In my defense, most of Florida is below sea level. I stand by my assertion that this is a mountain.”

“Absolutely. But if you’re ever bored some weekend and want to take a drive to the real ones, let me know. I’d be happy to take you out to the foothills.” He stopped like he feared he’d said too much. “Or—you know—give you directions.”

“Um, thank you.” She looked around self-consciously. “I think, since I can’t yet find my way around even this building, I’d probably better not attempt a drive to the foothills.”

“Gotcha.” He looked behind her and waved. “Hey, Archie. How are those ribs holding up?”

Emma looked behind her to see a crumbly-looking elderly man sitting in a wheelchair, dark blue baseball cap on his head.

“I’ll live, they said.” Archie smiled.

“Never gonna let me get at that life insurance, are you?”

“Damn right.”

“You need a push?”

Archie shook his head. “Hell, no. You’d probably push me into traffic.”

Jasper laughed. “Can’t say I haven’t considered it.”

Emma felt her eyes widen at his words. What the—?

Archie looked up at her. “You taking Bette’s place while she gets her parts rearranged?”

“Um, yes?” Emma looked at Jasper for guidance, but he just smiled, not offering any. She put out her hand. “I’m Emma Winthrop.”

Archie shook her hand, and his grip surprised her. Maybe it shouldn’t have, given the military insignia on his hat.

“Archibald Tennyson. Pleased to meet you.”

“Thank you for your service, sir.”

“You’re welcome.” He nodded as he pushed forward and looked up at Jasper. “She’ll do. Volleyball tomorrow?”

“You bet.” Jasper clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m coming for your kidneys this time.”

“Eh, I only need one of ’em.”

After Archie had joined a table of three other men, Jasper turned back toward Emma. “He’s a good guy. You’ll like him.”

“Already do. So why are you trying to kill him? Just curious?”

Jasper smiled. “Running joke. He’s filthy rich, but his kids are miserable leeches. He rewrote his will a year ago and erased them from it.”

“Ouch. And he’s leaving his riches—to you?”

“Sort of.” He shrugged like it was no big deal. “So I joke about bumping him off so I can get at his millions, and he counters that he’s going to live till he’s a hundred and twenty. It works.”

Emma nodded. “And do you threaten to bump off a lot of my residents? Or are you choosy?”

“Only the rich ones. Obviously.”

“Charming.”

“Hey, they’ve only been your residents for three hours. Even you might want to bump off a few of them by the time you’re done.”

Em felt her eyes widen again, but this time she shook her head, not rising to his bait. “We’ll see, I guess. So far, the only person who seems to cause trouble around here is the alternative-activities director—for lack of a better term.”

“True.”

“So, volleyball tomorrow? How’s that going to work?”

Jasper sighed, but he was still smiling. “If it were up to Tess, she’d line them up and give them balloons to bounce back and forth like they’re two years old. They hate it.”

“And yet it’s an accepted, safe, appropriate activity for this population.”

“This population is still people. Adult people.” His voice took on a serious tone that warned her silently to back off. “And they don’t like being treated like brain-impaired children, for the most part.”

She cleared her throat, stung, feeling like she’d been put in her place.

She didn’t like it all that much.

She was the expert here. He was just the son of a resident.

But he was obviously a fixture, and she’d probably better be careful not to piss him off, especially before lunchtime on the first day of her three-month tenure.

“So what do you do to make volleyball more palatable?”

“Arm them.” He shrugged carelessly.

“Arm them? With what?”

“Toothpicks. And whipped cream.”

“I—I don’t follow.” Emma shook her head.

“You ever pop a balloon full of whipped cream?”

“No-o. Um, no. Can’t say as I have.”

“It’s a hell of a lot of fun. And they get a lot more exercise trying to douse each other with whipped cream than they do trying to bounce a damn balloon over a line ten times.”

Emma bit her lip, trying not to smile as she pictured the scene. “And who cleans up the mess afterward?”

“You hear them laughing all the way down the hallway afterward, fifteen minutes with a mop is a small price to pay.”

“So you clean up.”

“Hell, yes. Katrina would have my head if I left whipped cream on the floor. Vonnie, too. And Tess, if she ever found out.”

“How exactly do you keep this information from her?”

“Well…she’s kind of an office-y sort of activities director. Lots of planning, not a lot of, well, activities. Plus, she’s on maternity leave.”

“But I saw the calendar. It looked great!”

It had. Community time every day, physical activities morning and afternoon, social events in the evenings…it was exactly the sort of calendar that was up to Galway’s standards—active, varied, and inclusive.

“You’ll see. A lot of those things end up mysteriously canceled.” Jasper shrugged, then pointed toward his father’s table as he turned to go. “I should go join Dad before he forgets who I am, but good luck, okay? You’ll do just fine here at Shady Acres.”

“Thank you.”

“But seriously?” He turned back around. “If you have any pull with the powers that be, could we work on the name? Sounds like a frigging graveyard.”