Tempt Me (The Wolf Hotel Book 1)

May

I inhale deeply, reveling in the crisp ocean air as land approaches ahead. Chicago was in the seventies when I left this morning. Two layovers, a flight delay, and fifteen hours later, the fifty-five degree day’s high has dipped to low forties and I had to dig my winter jacket out of my suitcase.

“Have you ever been to Alaska before?” the captain, a soft-spoken white-haired man named John asks, his hands resting easily on the ferry’s wheel.

I shake my head, my gaze drifting over the sea of evergreen and rock as far as the eye can see. We left the dock in Homer thirty minutes ago. It didn’t seem like it would take that long to cross, but Kachemak Bay is vast and wide and unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

And on the other side of it is my home for the next four months.

I’m so glad I remembered to pop an Antivert an hour before boarding. I’d be puking over the rails by now had I not. Boats and I have never coexisted well.

“So, what made you come?” I can tell John likes to talk, as much for conversation as to assess the foreigners coming to his homeland.

“A brochure,” I answer simply, honestly.

He chuckles. “Yeah, it’ll do that, all right. Lures plenty of folk our way.”

I smile, though his words resonate deep inside. It “lured” me. Yes, that’s exactly what it did.

Frankly, the brochure didn’t need to work too hard.

When things take an ugly turn, people are always saying they’re going to pick up and move far away. Australia, France, anywhere that puts an ocean between them and their problems. Most don’t ever act on that. I certainly had no intention of doing so.

And then I went to that job fair in the city library, more than a little panicked about what I was going to do this summer. Recruiters were peddling administrative and counselor positions, trade internships, day care. Nothing I was interested in. Plus, they were all local Chicago-based positions. The last thing I wanted to do was stay in Chicago for the summer. I needed to separate myself from it and its bitter memories, if for only a few months until school started again in the fall.

But the idea of going back to Pennsylvania, where everyone including the cows had heard the nitty-gritty details about my breakup with Jed, was even more unappealing.

That’s what happens when you grow up in a small town and then go away to college with your high school sweetheart, who’s also the reverend’s son, who you were supposed to marry the summer after you both graduate college.

Who you’ve been saving yourself for.

Who you caught with his pants down and thrusting into some raven-haired jezebel.

And, while in the depths of despair, though you know better, you tell your upstanding, churchgoing mama, who is known around town as much for her raspberry pie as for her big mouth.

That scandal sure gave the folks of Greenbank something to talk about during Pennsylvania’s long, cold winter. It’s been months since D-Day, or what I like to call Dick Day, when I caught him. February 2, to be exact.

I’m sure tongues were wagging across pews during church service. When I visited over Easter weekend though, I got nothing but sympathetic nods and pats. Jed, sitting in the pew directly across from us, earned more than a few glowers. Not everyone shared those feelings, though. His father, Reverend Enderbey, decided that giving a sermon on man’s weakness for carnal flesh and the need for forgiveness and understanding would be more appropriate than discussing the resurrection of Christ that day.

Much like Jed promised me, Reverend Enderbey has promised my parents that this is just a momentary blip in Jed’s faith; that he’s feeling confused and needs to sort out his priorities. He’ll come back to me, after he’s done sowing his wild oats.

Why do they all think I’ll want to take him back?

He broke my heart that day, and has continued breaking it daily, every time I see him walking hand in hand around campus with her.

He’s not just sowing wild oats. They’re dating now.

So when I passed by the Wolf Hotels booth at the job fair a month ago and spotted the pamphlet with a beautiful vista of snow-capped mountains and forest, I immediately stopped and started asking questions, and within ten minutes I knew that Wolf Cove was my ticket away from sadness, temporarily at least. I just needed to get myself to Homer, Alaska. They’d provide transportation to the hotel, subsidized accommodations and meals onsite, and weekly transport to Homer, if needed, and in turn I’d work like a dog and keep my mind occupied.

The best part? It was almost 3,800 miles from everything I know.

It sounded perfect. And unattainable. I walked out of that interview feeling hopeless, assuming that there was no way I’d get the job.

And yet I’m standing here today. I call that divine intervention. God knew I needed this miracle.

It came in the form of a phone call a week after the interview, with an official offer for a position in the Landscaping and Maintenance crew. I screamed. I even shed a few happy tears, which was a nice change from all the sad tears I’ve spilled since February. Knowing that I could avoid Greenbank, Jed, and my family, that I would be leaving my dorm room the day after my last exam and hopping onto a plane… that’s the only reason I’ve held it together this long.

The ferry turns left to run along the coastline, farther into the bay.

“What are those places, over there? Do people live out here?” I point toward the little huts speckling the shore, camouflaged within the trees.

“Nah. They’re mostly lodges and cabin rentals.”

I study the structures, like yurts on stilts overlooking the water. “They’re nice. Rustic.”

“They are, indeed.”

“Not like Wolf Cove, though.”

John chuckles softly, shaking his head. “Not quite.”

If the pictures in the pamphlet are at all accurate. My mama’s convinced that it’s all computer generated, that nothing that luxurious would exist up in Alaska. That I’ll end up contracting West Nile from the thick fog of mosquitoes, or I’ll wake up in the rickety shack that I’m sleeping in to find a bear gnawing on my leg.

To say Bernadette Mitchell is unhappy about this Alaska job is an understatement. At first she flat-out told me that I wasn’t allowed to go. I hung up the phone on her that night, the first time I’d ever done that. Probably the first time anyone’s ever had the nerve to hang up on a woman like her. I half expected her to drive the nine hours and slap me upside the head.

Two days later, after she’d cooled off, she called and tried to persuade me. I was making a grave mistake, leaving Greenbank and Jed. We’d be away from the chaos of Chicago and the temptations that made Jed stray. We’d have each other, day in and day out, and I could remind him of why we’re so perfect together.

I know it’s not going to be that simple.

So I dug my heels in. I’ve been “good girl Abbi” all my life, sitting next to my parents at church service every Sunday, keeping company with like-minded people, staying away from the “bad kids” who drank and smoked pot and had sex. Always listening to Mama.

Maybe if I’d just spread my legs for Jed, my heart wouldn’t have been smashed into a thousand pieces.

While she’s my mama and I know she wants what’s best for me, she, too, thinks that Jed and I belong together, and that our reunion is inevitable, once he gets “the devil” out of his system. I had to bite my tongue before I pointed out to her that the girl currently sucking Jed’s dick is a significant obstacle in this imminent reconciliation of ours.

I scan the approaching buildings, my excitement triumphing over my exhaustion. “Where is it?”

“Wolf Cove is just around the bend.”

Wolf Cove Hotel in Wolf Cove, Alaska. “How do you go about renaming a cove, anyway?”

John chuckles softly again. He’s such a pleasant man. “The cove has been Wolf Cove for hundreds of years now. The Wolf family has a lot of history up here, with the gold mines. That’s where they made their first fortune. Though I’m sure they could afford to have it renamed, if it came to that. They’re a successful lot. Generous, too.”

Man, to be a part of that family. They must have a lot of money, to risk opening a location like this all the way up here, and set their employees up the way they’re doing for us, and all the benefits. “Hey, thanks for coming back for me. I didn’t want to stay in a motel.” It’s just John and me on the ferry, and a deck full of crates and supplies. He was kind enough to make another trip across the bay and pick me up after my flight delay. Apparently he carted a full load of college-aged employees over hours ago.

“We didn’t want to leave you stranded. ’Specially on the first day. I woulda had to come back for the supplies first thing in the morning, anyway.”

I glance at my watch with dismay. “I’ve missed the orientation session.” It started at seven, almost an hour ago. The skies are deceptively light for this time of evening. “I can’t believe how bright it still is.”

“Wait ’til June.”

“Less than five hours of darkness on the equinox, right?”

He grins. “Someone’s been doin’ her homework.”

“I like to be prepared.” The day I applied for the job, I ran home and researched Alaska late into the night instead of studying for my exams. The further I dug, the more excited I became, and the harder I prayed that I’d get the job.

“Well, I’m sure one of the ladies will be kind enough to fill you in on what you missed. They seemed like a nice group. Polite youngsters like yourself, for the most part anyway.”

At twenty-one, it feels strange to be referred to as a “youngster,” but I guess next to John, who’s got to be pushing seventy, that’s exactly what I am.

The ferry rounds the crop of small islands and turns toward the cove. John points to the massive building ahead. “And there’s Wolf Cove Hotel.”

My eyes widen. “Whoa. The brochure pictures weren’t fake.” And they don’t do this place justice.

John chuckles again. “No, they certainly weren’t.”

I stare at it quietly, mesmerized. The main lodge towers over the water. Even from this distance, I can see that the lodge is grandiose in its design and massive in size. I can’t make out the details to appreciate it yet, but there’s no doubt it’s something to be admired.

“They just made the finishing touches two weeks ago. Been working on it for almost three years, now.”

“Is it still opening on Sunday?” Belinda, the woman who called to formally hire me, said that these first few days would be focused on training and last-minute preparations.

“I’ll be ferrying in the first guests at noon. I’ve been bringin’ employees in by the boatload over the last two days. There are a lot of you. A high staff-to-guest ratio, I heard someone say.”

“How is the Wolf family going to make any money?”

“I’m guessing the twelve-hundred-dollar-a-night price tag will help.”

My mouth drops open. “Who can afford that?” I barely scraped together the eleven hundred I needed for my plane ticket here.

“What’s that famous line from that movie? Oh, shucks. You may be too young to remember. The one with the baseball and all those cornfields. ‘If you build it…’”

I smile. It’s only my dad’s favorite movie.

He winks.

We fall into a comfortable silence as we approach, and I realize that I’ve been rolling my promise ring around my finger unconsciously this entire time. It’s been three months since Jed and I broke up and I haven’t been able to bring myself to remove it. Now, I slip it off, letting the cheap metal rest in the palm of my hand. A part of me—the hurt, angry part—wants to toss it into the water and be done with it. A symbol of my faith in Jed.

But I can’t bring myself to do it just yet. So, I slip the ring into my pocket and try to focus on the months to come.