“Afraid you’ll get drunk and dye your hair pink again?” Jayden asked.

“Nope.” Ashlyn shook her head. “I’m afraid I’ll get behind the wheel and hurt someone. I’m going to go inside and write about this in my journal. I really, really hate this place tonight, just as much as Tiffany. I want to see green grass and rosebushes. Not even those flowers right there”—she pointed at the petunias and the lantana growing in front of the cabin—“can come close to the gardens at our estate. I want to sleep in a bed that’s big enough I can sprawl out and not fall off onto the floor where spiders and bugs crawl around, and I want my clothes back. I will never take my bikini underpants for granted again.”

“That’s the whole idea of this place. To teach you teamwork and to build your self-esteem so you can be a leader instead of following the wrong influences.” Jayden sat down in one of the chairs.

“Well, it’s damn . . . I mean dang sure working. They should have named this place Nightmare Cabin instead of Daydream,” she said. “The only thing I daydream about is going home.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Jayden said.

Ashlyn didn’t flip her off, but her expression said that she sure wanted to. She whipped around and went into the cabin, but she didn’t slam the door. Evidently, she was serious about wanting to keep her nose clean so she could go home.

Jayden caught a movement out of her peripheral vision, and, thinking it might be Elijah, her heart did one of those crazy flip-flops that it did when he was around. She was more than a little disappointed when Novalene eased down into a chair.

“I thought the beauty shop went well until I got home.” She sighed. “I overheard my two girls talking in the bathroom at shower time about deliberately making a mess of your girls’ hair. They said it was payback for Tiffany threatening to roll Bailey in the hog wallow when Lauren was still here. I’m going back and forth between giving them each a demerit or giving them a good talking-to. What do you think?”

“That’s your call, but because this is their first offence since Lauren left, maybe a talking-to would do,” Jayden said. “They were all doing so well a couple of days ago. Is this normal behavior for the halfway mark?”

“Oh, yeah,” Novalene sighed. “It happens, but then they’re teenage girls, not angels. They have to have a little drama and hatefulness. Have you given any thought to what we talked about?”

“You mean staying here?” Jayden wished that she could go over to Moonbeam Cabin herself and give those two girls a piece of her mind, but that wasn’t her place. “The possibility has got a lot of pros, but I’m weighing the cons as well.”

“I think you’d be perfect for the job, but you’ve got to figure this out for yourself.” Novalene sucked in a lungful of air and let it out slowly. “I’ve got a confession. When we learned that Skyler wasn’t going to be with us this summer, I almost backed out. I didn’t like the idea of working with someone new, maybe even having to train you, but I like you, and I’m glad I came. You’ve got more spunk and sass than your sister, and you really do have good ideas. I’m just sorry that my two have been little turds today.”

“My mother would quote scripture and say the Lord says that vengeance is His, or something like that,” Jayden told her just as she saw a flash of what looked like platinum hair behind the screen door. “It’s a bit of an oxymoron to me. Looks like He could stop the problem rather than bringing down brimstone and fire on the ones who were evil or just downright mean.”

Novalene frowned. “How’s that an oxymoron?”

“Seems like if we’re going to have trouble, it will happen on Sunday, so that kind of loosely fits, doesn’t it?” Jayden answered. “Want a bottle of water or lemonade?”

“No, I’m good,” Novalene said. “I get what you’re saying. Church seems to bring out the worst in them rather than the best.”

“We’ve got a little more than a month to prove my theory.” She suddenly got that antsy feeling that only came about when Elijah was nearby.

“Hello, ladies,” Elijah greeted them with a smile. “Mind if I join you?”

“Not a bit,” Jayden said.

Novalene stood up with a groan. “I was just leaving. These old bones love to sit in those chairs, but they don’t like getting up out of them so well.”

“You don’t have to rush off,” Jayden said.

Novalene shot one of her sly winks toward Jayden. “I’d better get on back and make sure my Moonbeams haven’t figured out something eviler to get into. We’ll talk later.”

Elijah stood to the side and let her pass, then joined Jayden on the porch. He’d shaved and changed from his usual company T-shirt into a snap-front plaid western shirt. The soft evening breeze brought the woodsy, musky scent of his shaving lotion right to Jayden. She inhaled deeply, taking in as much as she could before the wind shifted.

“What evil is going on over in Moonbeam?” Elijah handed her a bottle of root beer and took a drink from the one he had in his other hand.

Jayden lowered her voice and told him about the haircuts that Keelan and Bailey had given her girls. Just as she finished, she could have sworn she saw another flash of platinum hair peeking around the corner of the screen door. Then the air-conditioning unit in the girls’ room started rattling and the lights went out, so she couldn’t be sure what she’d seen.

“They should’ve kept their mouths shut.” Elijah grinned. “After hearing them talk about it, now Novalene knows to watch them closer. Too bad they’ve destroyed the trust they had built up with her. Now they’ll have to start all over. Have you got that uniform order ready?”

“I’ve got the order all made out and tucked into the catalog, but it’s out in the dining hall. Do you need it tonight or will tomorrow morning do?” she asked.

“Tomorrow’s fine. Now about this cooking job? Have you thought about anything else we should list as requirements when I get in touch with the employment office?” He sat down on the top porch step and took a notepad and pen from his shirt pocket.

She couldn’t very well say that the last thing she was thinking about was interviewing cooks when he was this close to her. He caught her eye but quickly looked back down at his notepad. Did he get the same feelings when he was close to her as she did when he was nearby?

“I put down that they have to have some experience cooking for a group.” He flipped the notebook open. “And next is that they will be provided room and board.”

“Pets?” she asked.

“I don’t mind if they have outside pets as in dogs or cats, but nothing in the cabin.” He wrote that down and locked gazes with her again.

“How about children? Both living here permanently or visiting?” Her voice was an octave higher than normal.

He blinked a couple of times, cleared his throat, and focused on the notepad. “Good questions. No children here all the time, but visiting during the off-seasons would be fine.”

“You don’t like kids?” Jayden asked.

“Love them,” he answered. “Wouldn’t mind having a yard full of my own right here in this desert country, but I wouldn’t want the headache of other people’s children being here permanently. Can’t you just see a cook with two or three little school-age kids quitting on the spot because one of our girls cut their hair wrong or upset one of them somehow? Or what if you get a girl in here who has abused her younger siblings?”