Hester gave her a tired smile. “We’ll shut down at New Year’s for a couple of months. This is our first year running at full capacity all year round, and it’s been a lot. I’m looking forward to having it just be me and Mauro for a while, like it was when I first got here.”
This made Maggie’s thoughts turn immediately to Sam. Firmly, she pushed that thought away, and decided to try a little honesty for a change.
“I admire everything you do,” Maggie said, and Hester looked a little surprised. “I’m completely exhausted from doing this all day. In fact, I’d better go soak my feet, and get my things out of Sam and Charlie’s room.”
“Wait, before you go,” Hester said as she got up. “Do you like saunas?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been in one.”
“Really? Well, you’re welcome to try ours. It’s brand new, and we’re limiting it to just a handful of people right now until we work out the bugs. But Mauro had it fired up earlier this evening,and it should still be hot. You’d be welcome to have a nice steam bath before bed.”
“I don’t have anything to put on,” Maggie demurred. “I didn’t bring a bathing suit.”
“Good news, then. It’s 18-plus, and you’re welcome to steam bathe in the nude if you like. Just cover up on the way there, bring a towel, and knock before you go in.”
Ordinarily a naked steam bath would have held little interest for Maggie; she’d rather have a spa day and a mud mask. But right now, with her feet hurting and her whole body sore from the unaccustomed exercise of snowmobiling, she couldn’t think of anything nicer.
“Oh, and be careful with the door,” Hester added. “I heard that it’s been sticking. Mauro thinks the wood’s warping a bit. So close it carefully.”
“I will. Thank you.”
She spotted Charlie in the lobby, hanging out on the couches in front of the fireplace with some other teenagers. So their shared room ought to be empty, unless Sam was there—which, as it turned out, slightly to her disappointment, he wasn’t. Quickly Maggie collected her things for the move down to the employee dorm. Then she grabbed a towel from the bathroom. It was all the same towels, after all.
Some part of her hoped that Sam might come in while she was packing, but he didn’t. She hesitated, and then left a quick note on hotel stationery:All moved out! Thanks for being great roommates.
Okay, that sounded ridiculous. Maggie crumpled it up. She would certainly see them around the hotel anyway.
The employees lived in a small dorm-type structure attached to the main hotel. The rooms were shared, and it looked like she would be doubling up with the cook, a pleasant older woman with whom she had gotten along well. Maggie left her bag there,let her new roommate know that she might be back a bit late, and slipped off to find the sauna.
She had seen it earlier; she just hadn’t realized what it was, but it was very evident now by the steam surrounding it in the cold night air. It was a freestanding wooden structure on a little path behind the lodge. Wearing only her towel, boots, and a coat over the top to keep from freezing entirely, Maggie picked her way along the slushy, half-frozen path toward it. Just as she got there, the door opened and two of the other hotel employees came out on a cloud of steam, wearing towels and laughing.
“Hi there!” one of them said, recognizing Maggie. She was the night manager and bookkeeper, a pleasant woman about Maggie’s age named Orla. “Nice and hot, and you’ve got it all to yourself. Be careful with the door, though. It jams at the top.”
“Hester warned me,” Maggie said. “Is that safe?”
“We didn’t have too much trouble. There’s a trick to it.” She demonstrated. “You pull on the handle and push with your foot on the bottom—like this—when you close it. Then it’s fine. If you have any trouble, just do that in reverse, basically, and it’ll pop open. And if anything does go wrong, Mauro is going to come around before midnight to shut everything down.”
She showed Maggie how to use the sauna. It was more primitive than Maggie had expected. There was a small area for coats and boots, divided from the rest by a wall that also blocked view of the inside when the door was open. The rest consisted of a single small room with wooden benches and a bricked-in heater that had a layer of hot rocks on top. A large basin of water and a ladle were provided for pouring water on the rocks, which burst up in an explosion of steam as Orla demonstrated.
“Finnish style!” Orla said. “See, still nice and hot. Have fun. There are vents above the benches if you get too hot.”
They left, and Maggie was all alone in the sauna.
It really was nice. She poured on some more water, and clouds of steam rose to fill the place with hot, moist air. Maggie left her towel on for her own comfort, even though there was no real reason not to take it off and bathe naked.
After a little while, she started to feel fidgety about the door. Maybe it would be reassuring to try opening it, just to make sure she could. Also, with the steamy heat, she wouldn’t mind a draft of cold air.
She tiptoed barefoot over to the door and tested it.
It opened easily. Very easily, enough so that she nearly took a step out, naked, into the frigid air.
And if she had done that, she would have bumped directly into Sam’s bare chest.
He was right on the other side of the door, reaching out to open it, and he was only wearing a towel and boots, with a coat slung loosely over his shoulders. His chest was bare, lightly thatched in the same salt and pepper she had glimpsed earlier. He had a smooth stomach and muscular thighs.
She could couldn’t take her eyes off any of it.
SAM
