Page 48 of Save Me (The Wolf Hotel Mermaid Beach #2)

I look nothing like her, or any of the other recruiters here.

They’re all put together, with smooth, richly colored hair and perfectly painted faces.

I don’t wear much makeup; just a little lip gloss and, on occasion, shimmery pink nail polish.

I don’t use hairspray and not a drop of dye has ever touched my hair for fear that it’ll make the color worse than it already is.

“Yes.” That has always been the plan. But now I feel like I need to defend myself.

I’m not just another farm girl, getting ready to bake pies and pop out little farm babies.

“I started a side business making soaps, moisturizers, and essential oils a few years back. It’s called Sage Oils.

I’m going to focus on expanding that.” Sage, after my favorite herb, though my products involve everything from mint to lavender to lemon.

Up until this point, the bulk of my sales have been thanks to the annual Christmas bazaar and summer fair.

I can’t complain though; that money will pay for my flight to Homer, should Wolf hire me.

“My, you’re quite the enterprising young woman. And so busy. Landscaping and soapmaking businesses, college, farming...” I can’t read the woman’s tone to tell if she’s genuinely impressed. “And what do you do for enjoyment, Abbi?”

I bite my bottom lip to stop myself from saying “Umm” while I think.

Wolf Hotels is one of the most posh lines of hotels in the world.

I need to sound smart if I have a hope in hell of getting this job.

“As you have noted, I’m quite busy with work and school.

When I have free time, I spend it with my family, and with my church, solidifying my faith.

” Which is in some dicey water as of late.

“I also volunteer at the local animal shelter, both here in Chicago as well as at home.”

“So you like animals?”

“Yes!” I nod emphatically. “I’m excited to see Alaska’s wilderness.”

She offers me a tight smile. “Right. Last question. Why should we hire you to work at Wolf Cove in Alaska?”

I look down at the pamphlet in my hand—pictures of white-capped mountains and vast wilderness, glacier valleys and volcanoes.

Thousands of miles of serenity, of nothingness.

Thousands of miles from my current life.

They don’t want to listen to my sob story, and it’s sure as hell not going to get me hired.

I struggle to smile as I stare into the camera, silently pleading with my eyes to whoever is making the hiring decisions.

“Because I’m smart, hardworking, diligent, and ethical.

I respect people and I love a challenge.

Plus, I’ve always wanted to visit Alaska, and this looks like an incredible once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

” I clear my throat. “I have nothing to distract my focus. I will give Wolf Cove everything I have to offer this summer.”

She presses a button and steps around. “Great. Thank you. We’ll be in touch.”

“When will you be making your decisions?” It’s the beginning of April; I’d be flying out in four weeks if I get hired.

“Shortly. We’ve already filled many of the positions from our pool of current Wolf employees who are interested in the Alaska location. We’re just plugging some last-minute holes with outside recruitment.” She sticks my application into a red file folder. Is that the reject file?

“Do I have a chance? Honestly.” I can’t believe I asked that, but I have nothing left to lose.

“We tend to hire people who already have luxury hotel chain experience. But we’ll be in touch.” She stands there with her arm leading the way to the exit.

My shoulders sag. I force myself to leave before I beg her to put in a good word for me.

There’s no way I’m getting this job.

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.