Delia slipped in the back door quietly, shy about going back in where the others might question her recent whereabouts. Not that she had anything to be ashamed about, but she didn’t want the others to think that Ivan had singled her out to go riding, showing her preferential treatment.
She poured herself a glass of punch that was left over from dinner and picked at the relish tray that had been left sitting out on the kitchen counter. Not that she was hungry. She’d eaten enough dinner to last her a week, or so it felt like. No, it was more something to do, to create a diversion from what had just happened up on the hill.
What had just happened? Ivan Peters, not only her employer, but also an extremely wealthy man and a most eligible bachelor, had kissed her—Delia Kincaid, daughter of a jailbird and a drunk. What was he thinking? Was he a user? She didn’t think he acted like one. Was he just buttering her up to take advantage of her later on, taking it one step at a time so that her resistance would be gone by the time he moved in for the kill?
Well, she just wouldn’t allow it. She would be on high alert. No man would use her and then cast her aside like an old rag. But … he did act like he sincerely liked her. And she knew good and well that she liked him. Probably too much already. Oh, fudgsicles. What’s a girl supposed to do when a handsome, sexy man kisses her? Analyze him to death? No, just take it at face value and see what tomorrow brings.
About twenty minutes later, Ivan came in from the barn. Delia had gone into the family room where the others were watching football. They barely gave her a glance when she walked in, being too focused on the game. She went over to the bookshelf and selected a book to look at that was about the prettiest backroads in America. She was definitely not interested in football.
When Ivan entered the family room, he too, was largely ignored. He sat down in an easy chair at the far end of the room from the TV, near to where Delia was sitting, looking at the book. She looked up, acknowledging his presence with a slight smile, and then turned back to the book. He returned her smile, but then spoke:
“What book are you looking at?” he asked by way of conversation.
He knew that by ignoring each other, it would look more awkward than if they just chatted naturally. Delia held the book up so he could see the cover.
“The one about nice places to go off the beaten path,” she replied. “I’m mostly looking at the pictures. There are sure some pretty places to see in this country.”
“There sure are,” he agreed. “I’ve been to some of those places. I have sort of a goal to see them all eventually.”
“That would be awesome,” she said. “I haven’t been very many places. Just around the part of Oklahoma where I lived, and then what I saw driving from there to here several years ago. I’ve always wanted to see the ocean.”
“You’ve never seen the ocean? Either one?” Ivan asked, surprised.
Having grown up a mere sixty miles from the Pacific, Ivan took it for granted that everyone had seen the ocean at least once in their lives.
“No, but I will someday,” she vowed.
“Indeed you will,” he said, making it sound like a promise that he would see to it.
At that moment the room erupted in yells and hollers as a favored player made a touchdown. Ivan and Delia just looked at each other with condescending grins, rolling their eyes. To a non-fan of football, it was just a silly game, nothing to get all worked up over. But to the six fans in the room, each play was of vital importance, either for their team or against it.
“Bring your book and let’s go into the dining room where it’s quieter,” Ivan told her.
Delia dutifully followed Ivan out of the family room and into the dining room where they sat at the now-empty table. She spread the book out on the table between them.
“I’ll show you some of the places I’ve been,” he said, flipping pages.
The two spent an hour looking through the book, while Ivan showed her photos of the places he had been and told stories of each place. Some of the places he had been to with his parents and sister; some of them he’d been to on his own travels. Delia was fascinated not only with his stories, but also with the many beautiful places there were to be experienced. Not merely seen or passed through, but to be there, to feel each place, to immerse oneself in each new place. Silently she vowed to herself that she would work hard to please Ivan, save all the money she possibly could, and someday, someday, she would go to all these lovely places, too.
After a nice long afternoon nap, Ivan’s grandparents came out to the dining room where Ivan and Delia sat. They came over and sat down, too, and joined in the conversation about places they had all been. Delia sometimes got the niggling feeling that Alex and Irena Peters were inspecting her. She didn’t know if it was because she was young, or because she was a woman of color, or if it was because Ivan seemed to enjoy her company. But she had the sneaking feeling that she wasn’t quite measuring up to some unknown standard. She felt somewhat relieved when they took their leave, saying they wanted to get home before it got any darker.
After while there came such a hooping and hollering from the family room that Ivan and Delia figured the game must be over and the favored team must have won. They just grinned knowingly at one another and rose to meet the others as they spilled out of the family room, laughing and slapping each other on the back.
“Good game?” Ivan asked.
“I hope to shout,” Ned said enthusiastically. “They won by ten points.”
“Great,” Ivan said, grinning at his employees.
He liked to see them having a good time. They spilled over into the kitchen in search of snacks and something to drink.
“So what were you two up to while we were engrossed in the game?” Sue asked Delia. “I hope we didn’t make you feel left out.”
“Oh, no. I’m not really into TV sports. Ivan took me for a horseback ride for a while, and then he was showing me in this book all the places that he’s been,” she said. “He’s really been around.”
“Yeah, he has,” Sue agreed. “Me, I haven’t been any farther west than where we’re at right now. Well except around Arizona. I come from New Mexico, and that’s as far east as I’ve been, too. Never had the urge to roam like some folks do.”
“I haven’t been many places, either,” Delia told her. “I came from Oklahoma, and between here and there is about all the traveling I’ve done. But that’s gonna change one of these days. I want to go and do and see everything there is to see.”
“Everybody has a different dream, don’t they?” Sue commented before drifting into the kitchen to see what she could find that appealed to her.
The festivities eventually died away and one by one, the couples went home. Tomorrow was another work day. Delia started to take her leave, also, along with the others. She would have loved to have stayed for the evening and just talked with Ivan, getting to know him better. But she didn’t want people to talk. Not just yet anyway.
“It’s dark out there now,” Ivan said. “Do you want me to take you home?”
“I’m all right,” Delia said, sounding braver than she felt.
“Are you sure?” Ivan pressed. “There are coyotes and javelinas and things that go bump in the night out there.”
His voice became low and gravelly as he tried to sound scary. Delia just giggled.
“Oh, all right,” she conceded with a silly grin. “You can be my protector.”
“That’s more like it,” Ivan said, squaring his shoulders and trying to look tough. “Come on. We’ll ride the golf cart.”
When they got to Delia’s cottage, Ivan laid a hand on her arm.
“May I come in for a while?” he asked.
“Would you like some hot chocolate?” Delia asked.
“I’d love some hot chocolate,” he replied.
They went into the house and Delia busied herself in the kitchen mixing up two large mugs of cocoa. She garnished both with a generous swirl of whipped cream and then handed one to Ivan before leading the way into the living room. Delia sat on the sofa with one leg curled up under her while Ivan sat in an easy chair opposite her.
“Delia,” Ivan began, “you are the only person I’ve ever had working for me who is close to me in age. As you can see, all the others are fifteen to twenty years older. Even Jeanne Lindahl was a good ten years my senior. So I’ve never been in this situation before. I want you to know that I’m very attracted to you. Have been since that first day I saw you in the store. But it’s also really great to have someone on the ranch that is close to my age. I’m only about two or three years older than you.”
“I suppose I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but I’ve just always heard that workplace romances are a bad thing, and employer/employee relationships are even worse. So I guess I just don’t know how I’m supposed to handle this thing. So I’m going to ask you—what’s your take on this?”
Delia sipped her cocoa while she thought about her answer.
“I guess I don’t really know,” she said slowly. “I know that in some places workplace relationships are frowned upon. But who says we have to conform to other people’s thinking all the time? Is it really a sin to like someone you work with, or work for? I don’t think so. Admittedly, it can backfire. I know that. But there are risks in every relationship. And …” Delia paused for a moment and looked into Ivan’s eyes, “I am also very attracted to you. I don’t know what your other employees would think of us, but if they are as good a friends of yours as you think they are, they will be happy for whatever makes you happy.”
Ivan relaxed somewhat and leaned forward in his chair.
Smiling, he said, “I like the way you think. I knew you were a smart woman the first time I met you. That’s why I wanted you to come to work for me. At first, before Jeanne died, I figured I’d have to invent some new position around here for you to fill. But then she was killed. Not that I ever wished for a single second that anything would happen to Jeanne. Never! But since that left me high and dry without a secretary, I knew you were the one for the job.”
“How did you know?” Delia asked curiously. “You surely can’t tell just from a couple of chance encounters in a store whether or not I was suited for this job. I could have been a total flake for all you knew.”
“Au contraire,” Ivan protested. “I dug into your personnel file on the company website and learned all about you. Don’t worry; it’s securely protected. But I own the company, so I know how to access company files.”
“Oh, my,” Delia said frowning. “You know all about me and you still wanted to hire me?”
“Especially because I know all about you,” he said emphatically.
“So you knew about my parents even before I told you?” she asked suspiciously.
“I did.”
“Then why did you ask me about them?”
“I wanted to hear it from you, not just off of a computer report. And I wanted you to be able to tell me and not feel like you have to hide your past just because it is different from mine.”
“Different! Different?” Delia exclaimed, jumping up from her sitting position. She paced the room for a moment.
“You don’t have a clue what it’s like to grow up so poor that you literally wonder if you’re going to eat the next day. Or if your parents are going to spend the grocery money on booze. Or what it’s like to be picked on and made fun of because your dad’s in prison, and nobody wants to hang out with you because their parents don’t want your father’s sins to rub off on their little darlings. I had one friend. One. And she stuck by me through everything, because her dad was in prison, too, and she knew what it was like and so did her mother.”
“Hey, calm down,” Ivan said, rising to his feet and catching her by her arms. “I know I don’t know what it’s like to be you. But on the other hand, you don’t know what it’s like to be me, either. Sure, I grew up rich, but that didn’t keep my family from dying, too. And kids didn’t always like me, either. And the ones who did, I always had to wonder if they liked me for me, or for my money. It’s no fun to be used, either, you know. You are fortunate to have one good friend. I was never sure if I had any. I had a lot of hangers on, kids who wanted to be seen with the rich kid, or who wanted to mooch off of me, but no true friends. Had I woke up poor one morning, I doubt that any of those kids would have spoken to me again.”
They both stopped their rants and stared at each other. Delia hadn’t thought of the fact that being rich could have its down side.
“I’m sorry, Ivan,” she said contritely. “It never occurred to me that being rich has its drawbacks, too. I just always believed that rich people were immune to trouble.”
“Not even,” he said with a wry grin. “They may be different troubles, but there are troubles just the same.”
“I’m sorry, I really am,” Delia said again. “I don’t know why I went off on you like that. I haven’t done that in years. I really thought I had gotten past my past. I left Oklahoma in order to put my miserable childhood behind me. I’ve worked hard here in Arizona, first going to college, and then in the workplace. I have worked hard at being everything that my parents weren’t—educated, hard working, sober, clean, and decent. A good, morally upright person. I have never even had a parking ticket.”
“And you’ve done a bang-up job of it. I can’t say that I’ve tried to be totally different from my parents, because they were good people,” Ivan said. “I was very fortunate in that respect. But I am my own man, and I don’t do everything like they did. There are things that I do my own way. One of them, I think, is going to be not shying away from you as a friend and a woman. I will not deny my attraction to you just because you are my employee. Like you said, all relationships carry some risk. If you feel the same way, let’s explore this thing and see where it takes us.”
“I’m pretty sure that I feel the same way,” Delia said, smiling up into Ivan’s blue eyes.
At that, Ivan took Delia into his arms and kissed her thoroughly.
Holding her back a bit, he said, “I’d better get out of here now. I’ll see you in the morning.”
With that, he walked out the door, leaving her standing there feeling warmer than even the hot summer sun could ever do. She hugged herself and just reveled in the moment.
Is this what it feels like to be in love? Really in love? she wondered. She’d never experienced the feelings that she was having at this moment. It felt good. Really good.
When Ivan came in for breakfast the next morning, Lynne looked at him a little curiously.
“Looks like you and the new girl are hitting it off real well,” she commented.
“Yeah, we are,” he affirmed. “I still feel terrible about Mrs. Lindahl’s death, but since I have had to hire someone new, I think I hit the jackpot.”
“Yes, we all miss her a lot,” Lynne said, tears forming in her eyes. “But Delia is a nice girl, and we’ll get used to her, too, I’m sure.”
That morning, Delia was in the office a few minutes before eight o’clock. She wondered how the day would go. If Ivan’s feelings had changed overnight, or how he would react to her that morning. She needn’t have worried.
“Hey, good morning.”
Ivan’s cheerful voice broke into Delia’s thoughts as he walked into her office. His smile told her that nothing had changed.
“Mornin’,” she replied, smiling in return. “So what’s on the schedule for today?”
“I need to go do an inspection on an RV park down in Mesa and I would like for you to go with me,” he said. “If you see some of the properties, and see how I do things, I think your job will become more clear to you. I had your predecessor do the same thing. I took her with me a lot of times to check out the properties. Having a woman’s eye on things helps me, too.”
“When do we leave?” Delia asked.
“In about fifteen minutes,” he told her. “There is a folder in your computer that has inspection forms in it. Print out the one titled ‘RV Parks’. In fact, print two copies. There are clipboards in that cupboard. Bring one for each of us.”
“Anything else?”
“Oh, set the phone to forward calls to my cell.”
Ivan left her to do those tasks while he went into his bedroom and changed out of his riding clothes into something a little nicer. He put on a long-sleeved Henley and a pair of black jeans. The weather had cooled and was cloudy. Compared to most of the country, the temperature was still mild. But fifty-five degrees is fifty-five degrees, no matter where you live, and after a summer of temps that hovered around 110, fifty-five felt cool. It would warm up to the high sixties or low seventies later in the day, but the morning air was cool.
Delia was ready when Ivan came back through her office. He had already told Mrs. Potter and Mrs. Madden that he and Delia would be gone on an inspection. Although they were well aware that he had taken Jeanne Lindahl on many of these inspections, they still looked at each other with raised eyebrows as soon as Ivan’s back was turned.
“I saw that,” he said with a chuckle, walking away from them.
He knew good and well what they were thinking, but he really didn’t care. They’d get over it.
“You behave yourself, Mister Peters,” Sue Madden said, in her motherly tone that he had come to enjoy with mild amusement.
“I always do,” he called over his shoulder.
The two of them walked out to the garage. Ivan opened the passenger’s side door of the Thunderbird for Delia to get in. Then he walked around to the driver’s side and got in, too.
“Nice ride,” Delia commented. “I like that Roadmaster, too.”
“You like cars?” he questioned.
“Indeed I do,” she answered.
They engaged in small talk during the forty-five minute drive to the RV park that was Ivan’s destination for the morning. It was a large one that filled up in the fall and winter with snowbirds from as far away as Saskatchewan, Ontario, and Maine or as nearby as Flagstaff in northern Arizona. Ivan described to her the things that he looked for during an inspection, while Delia familiarized herself with the inspection form.
“Have you ever gone to one of your parks in your motorhome and posed as an ordinary RVer?” Delia asked.
“I have done that to a few of them. Mostly ones that are out of state,” he told her. “I would like to do it more. I also read the customer comments on the websites. I know that you can’t please everyone all of the time, but I can see trends, too. What I have planned for the near future is to take the motorhome on a tour of my RV parks, posing as a customer. In the parks that have the worst reviews, I’ll see if the complaints are valid or not. If so, I’ll deal with them.”
“That’s a good plan,” Delia said. “What about doing the same in your hotels?”
“Yeah, I’ve done a few of them, but I need to do more. See, I’ve only been really on my own for about six years. After my folks died, Granddad took me under his wing and taught me how to run the business. My dad had started, but I was only eighteen, so I hadn’t learned a lot yet. Granddad also insisted that I go to college, so that took up four years. Of course, I was learning the business on the side, which made both the college work and learning the business easier. To take what I was learning in school and apply it in real life was very helpful. Anyway, my point is that I am still learning and still working out details of things I want to do, just like what we’ve been talking about.”
“I didn’t mean to sound critical, or anything,” Delia said.
“Oh, no, you’re not,” Ivan hastened to say. “I appreciate your ideas. That’s one reason I hired you. I saw how good you were in the store, and I figured you would be just as smart on this side of the business as you were on that side.”
They finally arrived at their destination. The large sign at the entrance read “Tranquility Park—Mesa South”
“The RV parks are collectively known as Tranquility Parks, Inc.,” Ivan explained. “Then each individual park has its location as part of its name. Because we have two parks in Mesa, this one is Mesa South and the other is Mesa East, based on their locations.”
“Makes sense to me,” Delia said.
“And our chain of hotels are collectively called Tranquility Inns, Inc., with a similar location designation as the RV parks have.”
“I like the name,” she said. “Calling both the RV parks and the hotels the same name ties them together so that folks know that they are related. That’s good.”
“Are you ready?” he asked as he parked the Bird and shut off the engine.
“Aye, aye, sir,” she said, giving a funny little salute.
Ivan and Delia spent nearly two hours going over the park. They went through the office area, the clubhouse, the rec room, the pool and patio area, the workout room, library, all the smaller rooms that were used for all the various classes and clubs that met throughout the season, the chapel, and then looked over the grounds. They talked to several RVers who happened to be out and about, asking their opinion of the park, the staff, the accommodations, and then were given the opportunity to express any complaints or concerns they had.
“That went well, didn’t you think?” Delia asked Ivan when they got back into the car.
“Yes, it did,” he replied. “May I see your evaluation sheet and see how it compares to mine?”
“Sure.”
Ivan had asked Delia to fill out her form without consulting him because he wanted to see what her perception of the park was and how it compared to his. As he scanned over the sheet, he was very impressed with her thoroughness, her attention to detail, and her fairness. In all the important points, her assessment was identical to his. She had noticed a few details that he hadn’t and vice versa. He knew just from this one outing that they were going to make a great team.