Chapter Two

I knew it was gonna be a crappy day when I stubbed my toe, spilled my coffee in my lap, and burned my toast all within a half an hour of waking up. What I didn't realize was how literally crappy it was going to be. Go bad plumbing, go.

I just got back from cabin twelve, having fixed their plumbing once again. I still didn't know what they were doing over there, and I wasn't going to ask. Either they would lie about what it was to prevent being financially responsible for the damages, or they would tell me, and I was 1000 percent sure if it was something, I wouldn't be able to unhear it. It was best just to fix it and move along.

My boss claimed the bears made the biggest messes in their cabins. If he were here more than once every few months, he'd see how wrong he was. Ninety-nine percent of the time it was the humans who came, destroyed, and then went on their merry way, usually leaving a shitty review online to make their departure that much more memorable. l didn't think these particular humans were going to leave a bad review. They seemed quite pleased with my work, but gods, it was going to be great getting rid of them at checkout this afternoon.

I went back to my cabin and jumped in the shower. Usually, I could handle the grossness of the day, but today, I needed to scrub and scrub some more before I headed back out to do some maintenance. That last job was simply too gross not to. My human nose might not be as sensitive as some of our guests, but even I could smell me. Yuck.

With the water as hot as I could stand it, I washed from head to toe, twice, and got on new clothes. I'd deal with the laundry later. I needed the washers and dryers for cabin turnovers first. The guests always came first. It even said so on the poster at checkout.

I went to the front desk and looked at how many people we were expecting. The weather was looking pretty horrible according to the predictions, and my hope was everybody would get here on the earlier side. I'd love to have them all settled in before the rain.

My boss, no matter how much I explained to him that he was wrong, thought it was a bad idea to have set check-in and checkout times. Instead, he decided I could be on duty the entire day. And if new people came before the old ones left…well, I could figure that out. And I did, but it always meant doing things last minute.

Based on the books, the one open cabin left was now going to be filled with a family of wolves. The only reason I knew their beasts was because they were yearly guests who'd added a week to their stay, which was great. Annual guests were my favorite. When I took this job, I kind of thought most of the people would be like that—they would come, spend their vacation every year, and, when they left, we'd all be sorry it was time for them to go home. That's what happened when the only knowledge you had of these kinds of places came from movies.

I should've known when he gave me free room plus a salary that this was going to be a lot more work than they presented in the ad. And because it was salary, he didn't care how much work I had to do. He was on some tropical island, sipping margaritas with his mate. This was just a moneymaker. Although, at the rate he was keeping it up, I wasn't sure how long it was going to continue to profit. Most of the roofs were on borrowed time and, once they went, it was downhill from there.

Two more checkouts were on the roster, which meant laundry and changing over to do, but they could at least be on the back burner since there were a couple of days before they were going to be used. Even so, it was going to be a long day.

I checked the weather again to see how the storm was coming. My phone had alerted me three times in the past day that we were going to get a bad storm, but half the time, those alerts were wrong. And, really, "bad" was relative. It wasn't like we were near the coast or a dam or even low elevations where I had to worry about major flooding.

Still, it was going to be a pain, but we'd get by. The updated radar looked like it was going to hold off long enough for today's activity. Thank goodness. I grabbed my sign that said S'mores Tonight, placed it in the window, and then went about my day.

It was busy. Between turning over rooms and doing the normal maintenance, I was going nonstop. It was probably for the best because it meant I didn't have time to think about how much I needed to get done for my math class. How I thought getting my college degree one class at a time was a good idea was beyond me.

In theory, it should be easier than going full-time. It wasn't. And my new class was extra fun like that. I liked math, but a lot of work went with it. And unlike my last class, there was no waiting until the last minute to finish a paper or reading the chapter. If I didn't do some of it every day, I wasn't going to pass at all. I needed to pass. I gave up too much to make school happen not to succeed.

When I was pushing my cleaning cart over the bumpy ground, a guest from cabin three stepped out in front of me. Before I could ask if they needed anything, they said, "I hate to do this to you, but..." Which was always followed by something awful.

"Oh, that's what I'm here for. What can I do for you?"

"Well, this." He held out the doorknob to his cabin. Three pieces of it anyway.

"Oh, no worries. I'll get right on that." I took the trash, for that was all it was good for at this point, and tossed it on my cleaning cart.

"Thanks. You're the best."

I wasn't so sure about that, but I smiled and thanked them before going to the shed. I grabbed my tools and headed to their cabin.

The wind was picking up, and the trees had starting to sway a bit. Normally, I'd cancel the evening activities based on the weather report, but tonight, I was going to hedge my bets. Canceling s'mores, a crowd favorite, would only lead to grumpy guests.

There was no fixing the doorknob, not that I thought there was, but I tried. It needed to be completely replaced, which was fine by my boss as long as I gave it a good try first. We had a whole box of them in the storeroom. It wasn't first, nor would it be the last time I had to change one out. And because my boss was cheap, he didn't get the electronic ones most rental places used. And of course he didn't have extra keys made. Nope. So, if somebody lost a key, new doorknob it was. In the long run, he was spending so much more. I didn't care. It wasn't my money, and truth be told, replacing these was probably a thousand times better than messing with programming fails on the electronic ones.

That fixed, it was time to get things set up for yummy goodness—s'mores. I started the fire pit, and for the first time in a long while, I wished that maybe I was a shifter, in this case, a dragon. If I were, I could just start the flames and be done. But, no. I was just a boring old human. And that was fine, really. I liked who I was.

But also, there were some days when being able to fly somewhere, run somewhere really fast, or, in this case, start a little fire, sounded like a pretty fabulous idea.

People started coming fairly quickly. Everyone grabbed a stick and marshmallows to toast them. I was always amused watching the very calculated ways people did their toasting. Some of them went slow and gentle until it was a nice toasty brown. Some just set the sucker on fire. All of them tasted good, I'm sure, but still, it was fun to watch them create and eat their goodies until they were all gone.

I'd have had more supplies for them if it were up to me, but my boss was pretty big into this is how many you use for each activity. If I were running this place, it would go very differently. And there were days when I thought about possibly trying to buy it. Then I looked at my bank statement and my partially finished degree, and I realized that was just a pipe dream.

Instead, I was going to work here until my degree was finished and then find a job somewhere doing something boring. Maybe settle down, have a family, or get a dog. Possibly both. But, until then, I could dream of having something of my own. Right?