Shaking her head, Ash’s lip quirked up. Taking a seat on a nearby lawn chair, intended for that exact purpose of sitting and staring at his soon-to-be masterpiece, Ash picked up a wood chip and lobbed it at his back.
“You can’t take anything seriously.”
“I seriously wish I’d gotten a couple more hours of sleep.” Letting the chainsaw idle, he turned to her. “Hey, do you know anything about the woman who came with Lana?”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“You are so annoying.” Another wood chip bounced off his shoulder blade. “Why do you want to know?”
Graham didn’t have a great answer for that. Instead, he hummed. “I think it should be a fish.”
“Keep practicing, kid.” Ash rose to her feet and met him. Just under six feet tall, she had no trouble patting Graham on the head. “I’ll see you later. Some of us actually have to get to work on time. I’m taking Jake with me. I want some company today.”
If Jake tolerated a life of hanging out behind a grill, he’d made it clear he preferred a life spent flying around with Ash. Graham had long since accepted that sharing custody of his puppy with the Lockett twins was for the best, even though he’d have preferred to keep Jake with him at all times. Sometimes—rarely but sometimes—life wasn’t just about him.
“Remember Jake’s headset. The rotors are too loud. They give him headaches. And I’m not replacing any more of your things if he buries them. You know that’s his stress relief, and I refuse to embarrass him for his needs.”
Snorting, Ash waved a hand in acknowledgment before stealing his dog, putting Jake and his knit cap in the back of her shiny black Jeep. At least he was riding in style. Gravel crunched as they disappeared up the drive. Left alone in the silence of his manly domain of awesomeness, Graham considered his mighty log.
A snake. It should definitely be a snake.
* * *
A shower helped Zoey shed the worst of her muddled thoughts, as did a second cup of coffee. Stuffing her feet into her tennis shoes, she powered through the desire to crawl back onto the couch and sleep off the rest of her hangover. Texting Lana her plans to go hiking, Zoey grabbed her brand-new, airport-acquired Alaska messenger bag and tucked her glittery frog coin purse inside.
There was absolutely no way Zoey was spending her first full day in Alaska inside a hotel room.
When Zoey first realized she had saved enough to make this trip a reality, she hadn’t intended to spend her housing money on a couch in the swankiest resort in the state. An off-season visit had been far more in Zoey’s budget, but Lana kept pushing for her to come these two weeks, when Lana had already planned on being in Alaska. The Fourth of July was the height of the summer tourism season, and any alternate options within comfortable driving distance to Moose Springs had been booked months prior.
Since Moose Springs was the hub of all amazing adventure excursions a person could hope for when visiting Alaska, Zoey had been unable to resist her friend’s offer.
Staying in Anchorage was cheaper, but the lengthy drive and subsequent cost to travel to Moose Springs didn’t make the cheaper rooms worth it. Here in Moose Springs, Zoey wasn’t near the mountains. She was standing on one. Zoey wasn’t going to see the wildlife. Wildlife crisscrossed this town like an opening credit for the Discovery Channel, moose wandering across the roads, along the streets, poking their noses out from the tree lines everywhere.
A couch in a luxury suite might be where Zoey was staying, but she would have slept in a bear-proof dumpster to be here.
Zoey already knew her carefully planned budget would only go so far, but as she stepped out of the elevator and saw the closed entrance to one of the resort’s internationally touted five-diamond restaurants, curiosity got the best of her. A glass case built into the river rock wall displayed the menu. Pushing her glasses higher up the bridge of her nose, she stared at a piece of paper containing only a handful of dishes she even knew.
“Looks like I could afford the side salad.” Shaking her head in bemusement, she glanced lower down the page to the chef’s choice seven-course meal. The price listed pulled a loud and unplanned choking noise from her throat.
“Ma’am? May I help you find something?”
A maid with the wildest mass of curly honey-blond hair beamed at her from behind an enormous stack of towels in her arms, both woman and towels dangerously close to tumbling over.
The badge on her chest read “Hi, I’m Quinn, your Hospitality Specialist.”
“Oh…umm. I’m just…”
“If you’re hungry, there’s a great breakfast served in the—ooooh!” With a squeal, Quinn ducked and swerved, rebalancing the towels as they leaned even farther.
“Do you need help with those? I can carry some if you want.”
Quinn stared at her, eyes widening. Zoey found herself staring back, unaccustomed to seeing so much of another human being’s eyeballs.
“You?” She squeaked. “Help me?”
“Maybe?”
The leaning tower of towels was about to topple, so Zoey grabbed the ones at the top of the stack while Quinn the hospitality specialist still considered her options.
“Thank you.” Decision made, Quinn breathed a sigh of relief. “We’re dangerously close to being out of towels. I would have gotten in so much trouble for dropping these. They’re the special towels.”
“You have special towels?”
“Special guests require special towels. Erm, not that all our guests aren’t special. But you know…”
“What’s a hospitality specialist?” Zoey asked curiously.
“It’s their fancy way of saying I’m the maid for the high-profile guests.” Quinn made a playful face. “It’s still cleaning up people’s crap no matter how you spell it.” Already widened eyes widened even further, a deer in the headlights look if Zoey had ever seen one. “Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. I mean, hahahaha.”
Some laughs made everyone else want to join in too. This was not one of those laughs. This was a glance around the immediate vicinity, just a little too loud, awkward kind of laugh. Zoey was tempted to save Quinn from herself by clamping a hand over her mouth.
“I heard nothing,” Zoey promised, mimicking zipping her lip. “Where are we taking these?”
“Up to the top. Here, this way.”
Following Quinn down a series of hallways to a staff elevator, Zoey balanced her own towels as Quinn used a staff keycard for access. She hit the button for the penthouse suite.
“I didn’t bring you up here,” Quinn said, dropping her voice conspiratorially. “Hannah would kill me.”