The Northern Lights Lodge - Julie Caplin Romantic Escapes

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a not a décor thing, it’s a mindset,’ she chided and proceeded to give Lucy a good ten-minute lecture all about contentment, well-being and cosiness, which Lucy sucked up without interruption because she thought it would go down well with guests and Hekla. It still sounded a load of old nonsense to her.

      ‘I’ll let you know how I get on,’ said Lucy, after Daisy insisted on her sending pictures.

      ‘Cool,’ Daisy laughed, ‘or hot if you’ve got a fireplace. Any nice men you could cosy up with on a sheepskin rug in front of the fire? Mmm. I might have to come over.’

      Lucy groaned. ‘Trust you. I’m steering clear of men for a while, you know that.’

      ‘Lucy, Chris was a dick. Don’t let him turn you into a dried-up old stick.’

      ‘I’m not. But I’ve got too much work to do.’ She thought of the mental list she was already compiling. Paintwork needed touching up, taking the staff in hand and the cleaning in many places was not up to Lucy’s standards.

      ‘Apparently there has been a succession of managers. I’m the eleventh in the last year. None of them stayed put for very long.’

      ‘Until you arrived,’ said Daisy staunchly.

      ‘Yup, I think I can make a difference here.’

      ‘Sounds like you might have landed on your feet.’

      ‘Hmm, I’m not quite sure of that,’ replied Lucy, thinking of her brief introduction to Eyrun, the housekeeper, a slightly scary but diminutive lady of indeterminate age, who’d chased them away when Hekla and she visited the laundry. Eyrun had met them with a stream of angry Icelandic that even Hekla was reluctant to translate. It seemed she ruled her hot, steamy kingdom like an angry troll managing the washing of all the sheets and towels and rarely venturing out of her lair, which wasn’t terribly helpful for someone who was supposed to be responsible for the upkeep of the rooms.

      ‘It is a bit chaotic. I can’t figure out how the staff rotas have been done, so I’m going to have to sort that out.’ It appeared no one person was responsible for the daily rotas and matching staffing levels with guests checking in or out. Hekla had revealed that often rooms weren’t ready for new arrivals and that she and Brynja had to double up as chambermaids and waiting staff.

      ‘And if anyone can do the job, it’s you Lucy,’ said Daisy, encouraging as ever.

      Lucy sighed. This beautiful, but rough around the edges, lodge was a far cry from what she was used to. At the hotel in Manchester she’d had a chain of command and everything ran like a well-oiled machine. Although The Northern Lights Lodge was lovely, everything seemed to be limping along like a rusty old lawnmower. There was so much she could do with the place but could she achieve enough in two months to persuade the owners to make her contract permanent?

       Chapter 6

      Alex lunged against a craggy outcrop, resting a hand on his thigh and eyeing the phone in his other hand with all the enthusiasm of a man about to phone an irate boss. Today the brisk cold air, carrying a definite hint of snow, bit at his cheeks. It was good to be outside after yesterday’s day of drizzle that had shrouded the lodge, although in the last two weeks he’d quickly learned that the weather in Iceland had the monopoly on changeable. One minute you could have driving rain and black clouds and then suddenly the wind whipped them away to bring in brilliant blue skies and sunshine. Seeing the break in the weather, he’d rushed to change to take advantage of the dry day and enjoy some down time. Although any enjoyment he found in being outdoors was about to be doused.

      With a heavy sigh he looked out over the choppy sea, enjoying the crash of the rolling waves dashing against the rocks that lined the shore, wishing he could enjoy the clean fresh air a while longer, without having to pollute it with business talk and a conversation that would make him feel crap inside. He’d been wrestling with his conscience all morning and really it should have been quite a short tussle, but that bloody nice gene kept intervening. He studied the horizon where the sky met the water’s edge and pressed the call button on the screen.

      Sod’s law the line to Paris was crackle free. ‘Hey Alex, about time. I called you two hours ago.’

      ‘Some of us are working, Quentin.’

      ‘Working! What the hell are you doing? You’re supposed to be working for me. You didn’t say anything about that the last time we spoke.’

      ‘That’s because the new manager wasn’t in place. What did you think I was going to do? Loll around a guest room for two months? Besides this way I have a better excuse for poking around a bit more and pulling together a proper report. I have access to all areas, which, if I was a guest, would be pretty difficult.’

      ‘Dear God, please tell me you’re not the bus boy.’

      ‘No … there isn’t one. I’m the head barman and waiter.’

      ‘Nun on a bicycle, Mclaughlin, what are you playing at? Couldn’t you have been a writer or at least a ruddy ornithologist?’

      ‘Given I have no skills or knowledge of either, I think that would have been a mite difficult to pull off,’ said Alex dryly. ‘Besides I had to do something. I’d go out of my mind with nothing to do and it’s not as if I mind getting my hands dirty. No one’s keeping an eye on me. I pretty much do as I please.’

      ‘You mean the new manager hasn’t rocked up yet. Where the hell is he? Pederson told me they’d recruited someone.’

      ‘He’s a she and she’s arrived. She’s definitely arrived.’ He thought of his first glimpse of Lucy Smart emerging like a bedraggled mermaid from the hot tub, her long hair slicked across her face and her stand-offishness when he’d tried to help. He still couldn’t figure out why the hell she’d insisted the front door was locked, even when they’d returned to reception and it was clearly open.

      ‘And?’

      Alex scowled thinking of her and her unicorn charm as he took a pace away from the rock, starting to walk along the shore.

      ‘She’s got an unorthodox approach to problem solving that’s for sure.’

      ‘I don’t do unorthodox,’ grumbled Quentin, which was a bit rich coming from one who cornered the market on eccentric sometimes. ‘Does she run a tight ship?’

      ‘She arrived yesterday,’ said Alex, hedging a little. If it had been him, he would have been a lot firmer with the staff. Surely she could see they were taking the piss with the whole elf thing. A decent manager would have shut that down immediately and made it clear that she wasn’t taking any nonsense. She was storing up trouble there, although her spur of the moment solution had been pretty neat.

      ‘I thought she wasn’t due for another week.’

      ‘Mix up with the dates.’ Alex winced. That had been very odd. He’d been there when Hekla took the call. Why would someone phone and change the date? Lucy must have had a change of heart, got someone to phone on her behalf and then changed her mind again? What other explanation was there?

      ‘Well that wouldn’t fill me with confidence. Do you think she’s any good? And I want an honest no bullshit answer.’ Alex pursed his lips and kicked at a small stone in his path. It knock, knock, knocked over the other grey stones on the shingle beach. Quentin waited on the other end of the line, the silence stretching out for Alex to fill. He knew his boss’s tactics well. Quentin hadn’t got to be the multi-millionaire owner of The Oliver Group, running a string of boutique hotels, without being extremely shrewd. He wanted an honest report on the hotel’s potential, what needed to be done to bring it up to Oliver Group standards and whether Lucy and the current staff were the right people to do that. At the moment, if he was entirely honest, he wasn’t convinced.

      There was something about her haunted appearance that worried him and last night

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