Tempting the New Boss(32)
He shone the light in that direction to see a one story, tin-plated building, flat roofed and square but more than good enough for some temporary shelter. Off the trail a hundred feet or so, the dilapidated condition of the building exterior, rusted and gaping out in places, suggested it was not in frequent use, whatever it was.
He rattled the padlock on the front door, a faded black lettered sign announcing it was Luxton Lake, Station S-5, whatever that meant.
Although the building was locked, it sported a row of evenly spaced ground floor windows in the front, none of which were barred or boarded up. Mason broke one easily with the handle of his umbrella and reached in to open the metal latch. Once open, he hoisted her up and in.
“I hope it’s a garage with a jeep full of gas.” She landed with a slight jump, and he climbed in after her.
They looked around. It wasn’t. Just a big utilitarian-looking room with a wooden table and chairs, one rusted sink, a battered locker, and an unlit fireplace.
And a bed.
“Even better,” he said. “We need to rest.”
The bed was stripped of sheets or blankets with a thin used-to-be-white mattress gracing a metal frame. She opened the locker, but its shelves were empty. When he turned on the faucet, only a cloud of dust emerged from the spout.
“Nothing here.” Her voice was quiet in the room, no echoes from the cement walls and floor.
“I wouldn’t say that.” He sat on the edge of the bed, patting next to him. “You look tired.”
“Shouldn’t we get going?”
“First let’s rest.”
She shook her head, but smiled slightly. “Condoms burning a hole in your pocket? What happened to my clueless boss?”
He hadn’t been thinking of the condoms.
Not exactly.
But now that she mentioned them. “He’s catching on?”
She paused. “Or he was there all along.”
He leaned back on his palms. “You’re not still talking about that movie with the limp-dicked guy tricking Madonna or somebody, are you?”
“Marilyn Monroe. And I’m surprised you know who Madonna is.”
“Me, too, but it’s kind of unavoidable.”
He shrugged out of his jacket and spread it to cover part of the mattress. Unfortunately, she looked around, everywhere but at the bed, her lips thinned, arms crossed. “Sometimes you sound so stiff and unapproachable, and then other times you sound just like a regular guy.”
“I’m nuanced,” he said.
She laughed. “And to answer your question, no I’m not still thinking of Some Like it Hot.”
“Okay, because I wasn’t about to whip out the condoms, either. I just meant rest. You look beat.”
She eyed him.
“Although it’s nice to know they’re there, isn’t it? In case you want to jump me again.”
She laughed. “No comment. For now, I guess that ship has sailed anyway.”
“What ship?”
“Stop that.” But she smiled.
“I’m not presuming anything, Camilla. Just, ah, you do need to rest. Or maybe I do. You’re making a wimp out of me with your pace.” He tugged at her hand. “Now your feet are soaking wet, and we’ve been walking straight for three hours. This might be the only dry place we can stop. Come on, we can share a bag of Cheez-Its.”
“Actually, I am starving.” She went over to the table and blew at the dust, then crouched before the fireplace, bereft of wood. “Do you think whoever’s in charge of this place would mind if we sacrificed one of those chairs in the interests of trying to warm up? All the wood outside will be too wet to help us.”
He stood. “I can handle the chair destruction if you can find some matches.”
“Matches? You wound me. I was almost a Camp Fire Girl.”
“Almost? I’m impressed.” One of the rickety old chairs transformed into kindling with a few firm whacks of it against the iron sink, and he handed her the remnants of the legs. “They had Camp Fire Girls in Detroit?”
She set to rubbing the sticks and making sparks she could blow on. “Well, not technically, but in the summers we stayed at our cottage in a little town outside of the city called Bunny Run, and my older sisters and I would camp at this part of the lake that was filled with weeds and foliage that hadn’t been cut down, and we’d pretend we were Camp Fire Girls. We called it the natural beach because it was a sandy cove, despite all the other guck around it.”
The flames started out shimmery and as faint as the flicker of a lighter, but seconds later they managed to spread enough to qualify as a real fire. Mason and Camilla both rubbed their hands together over the warmth, and he dragged the bed over, metal legs scraping against the cement, to right in front of the fireplace.