Finally.
John Priest reached to his wallet, pulled out some bills, and handed me three hundreds, saying, “Two nights.”
“Just two this time?” I asked.
His gaze sharpened on me but he said nothing. I had no idea how to read this except to think he wasn’t a big fan of me keeping tabs on how long he stayed.
Which was weird.
And scary.
And thus totally John Priest. A man I’d seen repeatedly. A man I did not see at all when he was in one of my cabins, except seeing his SUV drive up and down my lane when he came and went. And once, I watched him carry groceries into cabin eleven.
That was it.
Therefore, he was a man I did not know. Not even a little bit. Except for the fact I was pretty certain his name was not John Priest, and since he gave a false name and paid in cash, it was likely he was not an upstanding citizen.
“Okay, just two,” I muttered.
“Key,” he prompted and my body gave a slight jerk in response, seeing as I totally forgot about the key. Mostly because he wasn’t there often, months passed in between, but he was the only one who came back time and again and it felt strangely like he should have his own key.
I moved to the cabinet, got him his key, and walked it back, hand out toward him.
He took it as I offered, “Would you like to take some cookies with you? I have plenty.”
He gave me that sharp look again and surprised me by saying firmly and extremely rudely, “Absolutely fucking not.”
“I…uh, o-okay,” I stammered. “You don’t like cookies.”
He didn’t confirm this fact.
He dipped his chin, turned to the door, opened it, and disappeared through it, shutting it behind him.
I stared at it a moment before I moved to it and locked my three locks again.
When I looked out my filmy curtains, I saw nothing but porch lit by my outside light, the gray mounds of snow beyond, and the darkness of night.
No SUV.
John Priest was heading to eleven to do whatever it was he did in my cabin that was none of business.
So I was heading to my kitchen to finish baking.
Which was what I did.
* * * * *
Five months later, I threw open the front door, looked up at John Priest’s scary, beautiful face, and declared, “In case you’re cataloguing the goodness, my man, we have Wi-Fi!”
He said nothing but he moved to take a step in so I had no choice but to take a step back. I did this heading toward the key cabinet.
He headed to the registration book.
He also moved not speaking.
I didn’t return the favor.
“The password to get in is ‘snookums321.’ But seeing as your badass fingers might implode if you tried to type out the word ‘snookums,’ you can give it a miss tonight because tomorrow is my normal change day. I’m thinking ‘Iloverocknroll999.’ That would be ‘and’ as an ‘n’ with no hyphens or apostrophes,” I shared, nabbing the key and turning to see him bent over the book.