Page 298 of The Parkers' Handsome Holiday
Despite the breakthrough that we’d had after he gave Ethan the PowerBox, he didn’t respond with any sort of emotion. Instead, he just shook his head. “Well, let me know if you need me,” he said, heading for the door.
I thought about stopping him, but only for a second. Instead, the words out of my mouth were, “I’ve got it handled.”
When the door shut behind Dad, there was a certain finality to it that made me feel immediately guilty. But what was I supposed to do, chase after him and tell him that I was sorry? I didn’t want to leave Ethan alone, even for the short amount of time that it took me to do that. Instead, I just shook my head at the closed door and headed back into the kitchen to make sure that everything was straightened up in there.
CHAPTER 20
BAILEY
I was shocked to find that Wednesday was the busiest day we had had so far. I would have thought that the weekends, or at least Fridays, would be the worst days for the lift lines. But this was nuts.
When I arrived at work that morning, there had been a lineup already, just to make first chair. A line, in fact, that stretched all around the base area and halfway back to the parking lot. I headed into the lodge and found Kayla at the front desk. She grinned ruefully at me. “This is what happens when you get nearly a foot of snow right before Christmas,” she said, gesturing at the lodge.
Which was packed, people sitting at nearly every seat, pulling on boots or wolfing down quick breakfasts. I shook my head, still barely able to comprehend it. “I’ve never seen the place like this before,” I said.
“I think today’s definitely going to pass the record for visits,” Kayla confirmed, nodding her head.
“Is there anything that I need to do to keep things going?” I asked, even though I couldn’t begin to imagine what that would be.
Kayla shook her head. “It’s mainly up to the lifties; we just need to start getting people on the lifts and out on the mountain, and then they’ll spread out a little. I mean, there are still going to be some long lift lines today, so I hope you weren’t planning on skiing at all.” She paused. “Although another thing you could do would be to greet guests. We’ve got a bunch of resort ambassadors coming in as greeters today, but they could always use one more. Plus, we could use a liaison for guests who are having any sort of issue. It’s Gretchen’s day off and usually Adam would keep track of everything but he’s not here today.”
“He’s not?” I asked in surprise.
“Nope, he called in,” Kayla said.
“Is he sick?” I asked.
Kayla shrugged. “He didn’t say,” she told me. “Just that he’d be in tomorrow instead.” She snorted. “For all I know, he knows just how busy it’s going to be today and doesn’t want anything to do with it.”
“He wouldn’t shirk his responsibilities like that,” I said automatically, even though, hell, I barely knew the man. But I could tell that Adam had a huge sense of commitment to the resort and a great work ethic.
Kayla held up both hands. “Yeah, no, I was just joking,” she said. “I know that’s not it.”
I couldn’t help feeling a little worried. There was part of me that almost wanted to call Adam up right now and demand an explanation. But there was another part of me that knew I didn’t have any right to do that. If he wanted us to know what was going on, he would have told us. And besides, there was plenty of other work that I could do at the resort that day. I couldn’t waste time calling up Adam and trying to suss out what the problem was. If he didn’t come in the next day either, then maybe I would.
I headed out and got to work greeting the customers waiting in line. There seemed to be a never-ending stream of them. A little before noon, one of the cooks came out and told me that there were fresh chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen if I wanted to start handing those out to guests, so I started carrying out trays.
I smiled when I saw a dad with his young daughter ski towards me for cookies. I couldn’t help thinking back to when my own father used to bring Ian and I here over the holidays. Of course, it had never been quite this busy back then, and Ian and I frequently went skiing with dad. But it was still nice to know that the spirit of the resort was still the same in so many ways at it had been when I was a kid.
Who knew, maybe that little girl would one day grow up and buy a condo here as well. With that thought in mind, I continued to smile as I moved around greeting our guests.
The day passed pretty quickly like that. It was early afternoon when Kayla approached me with a ‘bad news’ look on her face. I immediately excused myself from the guests I’d been chatting with. “What’s up?” I asked her.
“We’ve got a problem,” Kayla said grimly.
“What kind of problem?” I asked her.
“Apparently one of the lifts, Dasher Express, the one over on the west side of the hill, went out about five minutes ago and the lifties can’t get it to start back up again. They’re not even sure what happened in the first place; no one hit the emergency stop or anything,” Kayla explained.
I swore under my breath. “Are there guests on it?” I shook my head. “What am I saying? Of course there are guests on it right now.”
“It’s been the busiest lift all day,” Kayla confirmed. “Everyone’s over skiing the bowls and stuff.” She paused. “The other problem for everyone standing down there at the bottom waiting for the lift is that there’s literally no way for them to get back here except by getting up to the top of the mountain and skiing out. We’ve got ski patrol already blocking off the way down there and directing people to alternate spots on the mountain, but unless we want to evacuate everyone already on that side with snowmobiles or whatever.”
“That could take a long time,” I surmised. With the way the lifts looked down here at the base area, I could only imagine how many people were waiting for the Dasher lift when it broke down.
I tried to think of what to do. But I knew there was really only one thing we could do; we needed to call Adam. He was the only person, as far as I knew, who was qualified to work on the lifts. If he couldn’t come in that day, maybe he at least would know someone else that we could call. We couldn’t very well leave our guests stranded. Whatever was up with him, I knew that he would understand that.
I sighed. “I’ll call Adam,” I told Kayla.
