She heard the door open and looked up to see Eamonn leaving. That’s odd. She wondered where he was going, since there was a bathroom in the staff area at the back. But she told herself he couldn’t be going far, and she didn’t have time to think about what he was up to. She thought of calling Three Rivers but hadn’t a clue what department to ask for, and a large hospital might not give out information without a lot of circling around. She called the ambulance service.
“Hello, this is Nell Whelan calling from Champagne Cascades. We’re trying to track down a missing employee and I was told there might have been an ambulance out this way yesterday?”
“Champagne Cascades,” said the female voice on the other end of the phone. “That’s the resort at the falls up past Winthrop?”
“That’s right,” Nell said. “Can you tell me if you had a call here?”
“Yes. We took a young woman to Three Rivers Hospital. Is she your missing employee?”
“Jessalyn Roberts,” said Nell. “I know there might be privacy issues, but would you be able to tell me what department of the hospital I should be calling to check on her?”
There was a brief pause on the phone, as though the woman was surprised. “Labor and Delivery, of course,” she said.
“She’s… pregnant?” Nell asked, her voice rather weak and showing her astonishment.
“Visibly so, according to our team,” the woman said. “I don’t think she could have kept it a secret. I wouldn’t have said anything…”
“Understood. I’m from the company’s head office and just took over the property from a different supervisor, so I’ve never met Jessalyn in person. They sent me up to find out what happened to her. I’m just glad she’s alive.”
“I need to take another call now,” the woman said. “You have a great day.”
Just as Nell hung up the phone, the door opened and Eamonn returned, carrying two steaming mugs. He put one down in front of her. “Paris tea,” he said. “Thought you could use it, baby.” The pet name was added deliberately, ironically, with an arched eyebrow. Not going to rise to it, she told herself.
“Baby is apparently the operative word,” she said. “I’ve found Jessalyn, and she’s in the labor and delivery section of the nearest hospital.”
“Huh.” He looked as stunned as she felt. Being a site manager for a vacation property was a job you lived in the summer season, not just one you went to for your allotted hours each day. Quieter in the fall and winter, sure, but still no place to have a baby. Jessalyn hadn’t given any indication that she was pregnant, nor had she told them she’d be quitting or taking maternity leave or anything. “Well. What do we do?”
“I’m thinking I won’t get anywhere on the phone with them. Big hospital, privacy concerns, and all that. Maybe the best thing to do is go visit her. Brewster is a little over an hour away, according to Google Maps. But you’re the one with the vehicle, so it’s your call.”
He grinned. “I’d be happy to go for a drive with you. Bet I can get us there in under an hour.”
“Don’t be a fool. We’re in no hurry; keep to the speed limit.”
He just laughed. “Do we need to do anything else first, or are we going now?”
Oh, the attitude of him. She gave him a quelling look, the one that warned students on the training floor they’d better settle down because Miss Whelan was done with their goofing around. “Since you were so kind as to bring me this nice mug of tea, I’m going to drink it. Without rushing. I also need to see if we have any check-ins coming this afternoon that we’d have to be back for. Then we can go.” She turned to the computer and called up the booking program again.
“Right.” He dropped onto one of the sofas, leaning back and hooking one ankle over the other in a nonchalant fashion as he sipped his coffee. “Anything I can do?” He didn’t look like he was aiming to do much of anything, sitting there like that. He got his phone out of a pocket and began playing with it.
“Just drink your coffee.”
The rain was coming down hard enough that even Eamonn couldn’t rocket along the freeway as he pleased. It took them an hour and a half to get to the hospital in Brewster, and gusts of hard wind rocked the sturdy truck. He drove with both hands on the wheel.
“We were supposed to have one check-in this afternoon and two tomorrow, and all three of them have canceled because of the weather,” Nell told him. “Looking on the bright side, we don’t have to hurry back for anything, but that’s about it. June’s part of our peak season and Wildforest expects all properties to be full or nearly full, especially coming into the weekend.”
He blew a raspberry at that. “And they think you can control the weather?”
“They don’t look at that. They look at the sales figures for the month and how they compare to other properties and previous years.” Once again, all the reasons she hated her job pressed in on her. She particularly hated the pressure to magically produce ever-better sales figures and glowing reviews from happy guests.
“We’re a team now. Uncle Tommy won’t give us any
