“She’s a toddler, Darren. She has fun twirling in circles in the middle of the room, and the worst that can happen to her is that she gets dizzy and falls two feet to the floor,” Kristy snapped. “We’ve had this conversation, and we are not having it again. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some things to do.”
Aware that everyone was watching her, she took Arella’s hand and pulled her firmly from the room. She was so angry that she was shaking inside.
Darren knew how she felt about Arella being on the sled, and yet he still pushed. Arella could play with the dogs all day long, but when it came to being on a dog sled, it would be a cold day in hell before Kristy would let that happen.
11
The small diner up the street was the closest restaurant to the farm. It was also the center of the town’s gossip, so Kristy was hesitant to take Kashif there, but Arella was fussy by the end of the day, and she didn’t want to travel far.
“There’s my favorite girl!” Gloria cried as they walked in the door. Knowing that the large-busted woman wasn’t talking about her, she pushed Arella slightly forward as the older woman bent down and picked her up.
Arella, always fascinated by Gloria’s cleavage, immediately started pushing on it with her finger. Kristy long ago stopped trying to apologize. Gloria seemed to love it.
“Who’s the handsome fella with you?” she demanded. The diner wasn’t really the place for polite customer service. She, Stu, and Ellie said what they wanted, when they wanted.
“Gloria, this is a guest at the lodge. His name is Kashif Shadid.” Kristy was sure it wasn’t proper to announce the prince without his title, but she didn’t really want news to spread that royalty was staying at her lodge.
Apparently, it was too late. “The Sheikh?” Ellie yelled from across the diner. “Same sexy man who stayed here a few years ago?”
“Sexy man?” Kashif teased. “That definitely sounds like me.”
“Oh, sit down,” Kristy growled. “Gloria, could we get a high chair and a coloring mat for Arella?”
“Of course, sugar. Anything for this little sweetheart.” As Gloria carted Arella off, Kristy pushed through the tables and found an empty booth near the back. Although the roads were slick, most of the people in the diner lived close enough to walk, and as they watched Kashif closely, Kristy had a sinking feeling that they weren’t planning on leaving anytime soon.
She was too besotted last time to care about the gossip, but remembered it all too well when she was pregnant. The town speculated that Kashif was the father, but she’d hotly denied it. Now, she was glad that she did.
“I forgot how charming this place is,” Kashif said as he looked around. Kristy couldn’t even begin to imagine what he found charming. The yellow vinyl booths were faded and torn with fluff sticking out everywhere. It had been that way for as long as Kristy could remember. When she was a kid, she used to pick at the seams and pull out the strings.
The horrendous multi-colored lamps hanging from the ceilings were dusty, and the wooden tables were unpolished and cracked. The only thing Kristy never got tired of were the old black and white photos on the wall of the race winners from years past. Some of them featured her grandfather when he first started racing as he posed with his first round of sled dogs. Some of the dogs she had today were descendants of that first line.
“Arella, do you want chicken fingers, grilled cheese, or mac and cheese?”
The little girl was already scribbling all over the coloring mat that Gloria had given her. “Grilled cheese please,” the girl muttered without looking up. Kristy didn’t even know why she bothered to ask. Arella only ever got grilled cheese at the diner. She claimed that it was her favorite, and no matter how hard Kristy tried, she couldn’t seem to make it exactly right, and Gloria wasn’t giving up the secret.
After ordering, Kashif leaned over and picked up a crayon. “Can I color with you?” he asked Arella.
Kristy was about to remind him of their agreement, but Arella handed him the green crayon, her favorite color, and Kristy watched, astonished, as the two of them worked on her masterpiece.
Was there some kind of father-daughter bond that was instantaneous that she didn’t know about? Arella loved almost everybody, but she was fiercely protective over her green crayons. Kristy could use them, but that was it.
“Why don’t you want Arella to go dog sledding?” Kashif asked without looking up.
“It’s too dangerous. There are so many dog-sledding accidents, and there’s too much to focus on without the added burden of a toddler on the sled. Darren knows that, but he still insists on trying to take her out every time he comes to visit. He gets Arella all worked up, and then I have to be the bad guy for telling her no.”
“I’m sure he’d go slowly. I can’t believe he’d ever put Arella in danger.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said stubbornly as she thought back to her own dog sledding accident when she was a kid. She’d been much older than Arella, and she’d gone out on her own, but she and her dog had nearly died that day. If her father hadn’t heard her screams and pulled her out of the water in time, they would have frozen to death. “Things happen.”
“You know, I can’t help but see a pattern here,” he said as he lifted his head to watch her intently. “You don’t like to deviate from the norm.”
“If you’re talking about the hot springs tours, I told you that I’d give it a shot.”
“Yes, you did, but you weren’t happy about it.”
“You don’t understand because you view this place as a vacation. For me, it’s home. I used to play in that forest for hours as a child. It’s my sanctuary. It’s my peace. I start inviting strangers to come out and tour it, and I could destroy its natural beauty. I want Arella to have the same love of it as I do, but once she’s old enough to appreciate it; it might be teaming with tourists.”
Kashif seem