“Get down,” he said. “I have to show you how to do everything. How you even managed to knock up your wife without help is beyond me.”
Dill snorted as he climbed down the ladder. Ryan waited until he was out of the way, then climbed most of the way up the ladder. Reaching across the bunk, he curled the mattress toward him and held it with one hand while he used the other to hook the top, back corner of the sheet over it. Then he switched hands and did the bottom back corner. He yanked on the center of the edge to tuck it all down the side, then slowly rolled the mattress down. Getting the front two corners on and tucking it down the side was a piece of cake.
“No shit,” Dill said.
“Give me the flat sheet.”
He made quick work of that, too, then moved on to the other three bunk mattresses in the room while the guys handled the less taxing job of smoothing quilts over the sheets. He’d hated this job as a kid, much preferring to work with his dad doing outside stuff, but Rose had kept a chart and the kids had rotated jobs to be fair. She’d paired them off, younger with older. She’d claimed it was so they could watch over and teach the little ones, but he suspected it was because the younger kids would tattle if the older kids slacked off or took shortcuts. Mitch got Josh and Ryan got Sean, who had really sucked at making beds. Liz and Katie were supposed to do chores together, but Liz preferred the baking and cleaning and fussing over throw pillows, while Katie wanted to change the oil in the lawn mower and tag along after Ryan’s dad.
“You guys got it now?” He wasn’t spending his day making beds. Unless Rose told him to, of course, but he was really hoping it wouldn’t come to that.
“Yeah,” they both said in unison.
“Where’s Andy?”
“He escaped,” Matt said. “Saw her looking for us with a big old list and he ran for his truck. She called after him but he pretended not to hear her and got away.”
“He’ll come back. Everybody does eventually.”
Ryan left them to their housekeeping and went in search of Rose. He found her in the backyard, stringing twine between stakes she’d driven into the ground.
She straightened when she saw him, pushing her hair back away from her face. “You’re home. I didn’t hear you pull in.”
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to figure out where I want the tent.”
He shook his head. “Why don’t you have Dill and Matt doing this, since you decided to shanghai my crew?”
“Well, for one thing, no matter how many stakes they drive in and how much string they run, they still won’t know where I want the tent.” She blew out a breath and stretched her back. “And for another, I really, really hate making up those bunk beds.”
He laughed, but seeing her press her hands to her back and arch it like that gave him a pang of worry. Whether they kept the place or Rose stayed on with new owners, it wasn’t going to be long before she needed help, even if it was just a part-time high school girl to help with making beds and laundry and vacuuming. Rose would fight it, though, because she was stubborn and taking care of the lodge was her business and nobody else’s.
“Where’s Josh?”
“He went to pick up the canopy I rented. He’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
“You could have waited for Nick to help you with this,” he pointed out.
“I can handle setting a few stakes and running some string, young man.”
And that was the end of that line of conversation. “Nick show up yesterday and the day before?”
“Of course he did. Did everything asked of him, just like always.”
“And Lauren picked him up?”
“No. She abandoned him here so we can raise him as one of our own while she runs off with the circus.”
“You are a crazy woman.” He turned and walked away. “I’m going to find actual work to do.”
“You’re going to drag the throw rugs out so I can beat them,” she called after him. “And next time you want to know how Lauren Carpenter’s doing, just ask.”
He slammed the kitchen door so hard it was a good thing he’d replaced it with steel, because the old one probably would have cracked.
*
Rose watched through the kitchen window as Ryan, Josh, Dill and Matt put up the canopy she’d rented. It was a big one and she was sure if she stepped out the back door, she’d get quite an off-color vocabulary lesson.
She didn’t want to deal with it after the family arrived tomorrow, even though there would be plenty of guys, so she’d talked Ryan into having the guys help him and Josh before they headed back to Massachusetts for the long weekend.
Andy walked into the kitchen, not looking much happier than the guys outside did. “I’m done.”
Because he was tall, she’d asked him to go through the lodge and dust the ceiling-fan blades before she vacuumed a final time. There were a lot of ceiling fans. “Thank you. I have to haul around a step stool and climb up and down for every one of them.”