She made her way to the women’s outerwear section, hoping she could find something marginally tolerable. At least in terms of cheaper rain shells, the color selection was painfully pastel and not at all her style. It just has to keep the rain off. She shuddered at the thought of voluntarily walking around in a lilac or rose jacket, even for the bargain price of $19.95. But some of the nicer jackets came in sensible colors. She stroked her fingers over the sleeve of a hip-length hooded jacket in olive green. Waterproof, lightweight but warm enough for a summer storm. Fleece-lined and machine washable. It cost a bit more than she’d wanted to spend, but if she put up with the pink sleep set she had and didn’t buy new pajamas, she could make it work. She ought to skip getting a book as well, but she wanted to have something new to read in bed at night, as long as they were stuck at Champagne.
“Hey.” Eamonn appeared behind her. “Found something you like?”
She shrugged. “I was just trying to decide…”
“Nice color for you. What makes you hesitate?” When her involuntary glance toward the price tag betrayed her, he nodded and flipped it over to see the price. “I’ll buy it for you, no problem. You’ll look cute in it.”
Nell grabbed the jacket and stuffed it in her basket. “No. You can’t buy me something like this. I’ve got it.” She stomped away, turning back to add, “I just need to look at books, then I’m good to go. And I’m not damn well cute.”
The amused look on his face told her he’d been deliberately winding her up. He’s impossible! As she strode away, she indulged in a little fantasy of meeting up with him at an MMA sparring session and taking him down. But she wasn’t imagining him bruised and bleeding, she realized — she didn’t actually want to see him damaged. She was thinking about having him pinned down under her, tapping out, admitting that she’d won.
They heard the first roll of thunder just as they got back to Champagne Cascades. “Looks like we’ve upgraded ourselves from heavy rain to all-out storm,” Eamonn said.
“I like thunderstorms,” Nell said, “all that power.”
He laughed. “You might regret saying that. Let’s go get some lunch.”
They got their umbrellas and splashed over to the dining room. It made a pleasant change to step inside with feet still dry inside her rain boots, and peel off her wet jacket to hang on the coat rack by the door.
The Princes and the newlyweds were sitting together, consuming soup and sandwiches. Mary seemed glad to see Nell and Eamonn, and waved them over to where she stood at the pass-through to the kitchen. “Come in with me, if you don’t mind,” she said. “François and I want to talk to you. Not in front of the guests.”
“Sure,” said Nell. They followed Mary into the kitchen. “What’s up?”
François looked up from the broad worktable in the middle of the room, where he was doing something with pastry. “Allo! How are you liking the food?”
“It’s great,” Eamonn said.
“Delicious,” Nell chimed in. “We’re lucky to have you here. Mary said you two wanted to talk to us?”
The cook nodded. “We’ve been hearing the weather reports on the radio. Storm warnings and now a flood watch.”
Flood watch. For a resort on a river, floods were naturally a concern, though not usually in the summer. “That’s not good.” Nell pulled out her phone to check the weather app. “Do we get flooded out often?”
“Eh, no, it’s not a worry for our safety here,” François assured them. “We’re on high ground; the cascades take the water downhill and well away from the resort. But if the river floods further down, it can wash out the freeway. Sometimes the State Patrol closes the roads if there’s a high risk of flash flooding.”
Nell thought for a minute. It wouldn’t fall under site safety if the site was on high ground. Travel safety risk, then? “Okay. We need to inform the guests.”
The Wildforest emergency procedure for impending or threatened travel safety risks was to let guests know that traveling to and from the resort may become unsafe or impossible, so they’d have the option to leave while it was still possible, with no early departure charges, plus a voucher for a free night’s future stay at any Wildforest vacation property. The manual didn’t say what to do if any guests decided to stay on — but who would? Being trapped at a resort with no road access wouldn’t be anyone’s idea of a fun adventure.
François and Mary nodded their agreement, having been at their jobs long enough that they’d experienced the situation before. They seemed relieved that she was taking the textbook course of action. “We’ve never had a supervisor on-site during a flood warning before,” Mary said. “Harry, the site manager before Jessalyn, he used to like to tell the guests himself when we had a weather or safety issue.”
“Right. Well, no sense in wasting time, and they’re all here in the dining room. I’ll go talk to them.” All four of them. At least it wasn’t a full house. That made it less of a disaster, somehow.
“Want me to do it for you?” Eamonn offered.
“That’s a good idea,” said François. “A man’s confidence is reassuring to the guests in these situations.”
Nell gave him, and all of them for good measure, a deadly look. “I’m good. My confidence is quite up to the task, even though I don’t have a penis. But you can come along to back me up, if you like.”
She heard a snort of suppressed laughter from Eamonn as she turned on her heel and moved off. “Did you just say ‘even though I don’t have a penis’ to François?” he asked under his breath.
“A penis isn’t required for confidence, or competence.”
She thought she heard
