the kind of logs one might expect to see in a Hobbit home, but bigger, and had been blasted with corncob grit to polish them, making them shimmer softly.
Besides the five family bedrooms and five guest suites, there were twelve one- and two-bedroom cottages, with entrances on both the inn and the gorge/creek sides. Three of the cottages were finished and set up as vamp lairs; nine of the more outlying units were unfinished, barely dried in. The previous owners had big aspirations.
The inn’s central main rooms had been designed with weddings, tours, and other public events in mind and had originally consisted of a public tasting room, wine shop, gift shop, bakery, two half-finished kitchens, and summer café. In the last months, all that had been converted, giving us a chef’s kitchen with commercial fridges and freezer, and a baker’s kitchen with three commercial ovens, a real brick pizza oven, and commercial mixers. We had three dining spaces, multiple sitting areas, and a game room with space for a future pool table, all currently unfurnished.
The TV lounge and office space was located against the outer wall and walled off from the rest of the living areas. In it, Eli had installed an egress access in the floor, leading to a ladder and a wide tunnel that the previous owners had hoped one day would be a personal wine cellar and a doomsday bunker with its own outside entrance.
We entered the central part of the inn. The two-story, vaulted, tongue and groove, natural wood ceilings and marble floors meant the air was always just a little chilly in winter and the audio ambience was bright, sharp, and echoing. Even with the four polished golden timbers and the warm cream color of the two-story wallboard walls, even with the fans pushing warmer air down into the living space, even with the heated floors in some rooms, it wasn’t homey. Not yet. Not even with fires burning in the three fireplaces. It still looked like a public space for weddings. Bruiser had ordered furniture and rugs to turn it into a home, but they hadn’t arrived, nor had most of the furnishings beyond the bedroom furniture for the suites. The main area was open and empty, so we lived in the kitchens and the TV lounge/office, where we ended up now.
I placed the empty insulated shake cup in Bruiser’s hand and sat gingerly on the comfy recliner. Bruiser had purchased the chair just for me, and it had a push-button mechanism that laid me back and raised my feet. Bruiser covered me with a soft, fuzzy blanket and turned the chair’s warmer up. I sighed in relief. I was always cold these days. A game was on the big screen, as usual, muted, the score and team names on the bottom banner. I ignored it and gave my attention to Alex. Bruiser disappeared with my empty tumbler and returned to position a cup of ginger-honey green tea on the small table at my elbow.
“What do we have?” Bruiser asked. He took an oversized pillow off the sofa, dropped it beside my chair, and sat on it, resting one arm across my raised foot stand.
Eli told the house system—which Alex had named Merlin—to turn on the lights, and the hidden fixtures in the ceiling and along the walls came on. They threw dark gold highlights across Bruiser’s dark hair and caught lighter tones in his beard. In jeans and flannel shirts, he looked nothing like the primo to the Master of the City of New Orleans he had been when we first met. Eli, wearing jeans and layered T-shirts, took his position at the stone-faced fireplace, facing the room and all the entrances. It was the location that allowed him to see the foyer, out a front window and a back window, and into the kitchens and mudroom. He was armed, a double thigh rig and a shoulder holster, nine-mils in each. He was always armed, but the in-your-face abundance was a new addition. He was worried and I wasn’t sure why.
Alex spun in his office chair, facing us, and glanced at his brother. Eli nodded. They had been talking. Or hiding something. From the sick and dying me, too weak to deal with troubles. I glowered at them. Hurting, feeling the winter chill, I pulled the fuzzy blanket over my shoulders and watched the guys settle in. Inside me, Beast thought, Littermates. Mate. Strong den, safe against predators. Beast is . .