“It is going to be a challenge to find the right fit.” The tension between them was thick enough that Elijah had to feel it as much as she did. “Male or female?”

“Can’t make a preference there or they’ll call us out for it, so we’ll leave that alone and just refuse to hire someone if, like you say, the fit isn’t right.” His hand trembled a little when he tucked the pen back into his pocket. “This is way more trouble than I thought it would be. What I’d really like to have is a semiretired couple, kind of like Henry and Mary, only ten or fifteen years younger.”

“Write it down and tell whoever you talk to that’s your dream couple,” Jayden told him.

“Do you think the fact that I’m sitting on Daydream Cabin porch will have some good juju?” He chuckled.

“Never hurts to hope,” Jayden answered. “What about a young couple, say about twenty-five, who’ve just gotten married, and he has ranchin’ in his background, and she’s been studying to be a chef?”

“Find me that couple, and I’ll let them raise as many kids as they want here on this place,” he answered. “Do you know someone like that, or are you just teasing me?”

“I’m just throwing out ideas so that you’ll be prepared for whoever applies,” she said.

“Well, honey, if someone like that sends me a résumé, I’ll believe that you have superpowers.” He tipped up his root beer and finished it off.

“Just call me a superhero,” she teased.

He stood up and said, “I’d call you Daydream Angel if you’d stay. We work well together.”

“Let’s do some interviews,” she said. “Maybe you’ll find someone who works even better with you.” She didn’t want him to go. She wished they could talk about personal things instead of hiring a cook. Evidently, he was only interested in the hiring of someone to work for him—not a woman whose heart had begun to get all warm and soft every time he was near her.

“There ain’t a snowball’s chance in hell of that happenin’,” he said as he disappeared out into the dark.

What’s that supposed to mean? Jayden wondered. Could he possibly feel the same vibes she did every time they were together? If so, why didn’t he make a move?

Questions upon questions, but not a one had an answer.

Chapter Fifteen

Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November,” Jayden recited that morning instead of crossing the kitchen to look at the calendar. That meant the next day was the first day of July, and half of her time at Piney Wood Academy was gone.

Is the glass half-empty or half-full? Her mother’s voice was so clear in her head that it startled her.

“I’m not sure,” she muttered an answer. “Some days I feel like it’s half-empty, Mama.”

Then you need to change your attitude.

“What does that mean?” Jayden popped a pan of biscuits in the oven.

Novalene came inside and headed toward the coffeepot. “What does what mean?”

“I was talking to myself,” Jayden answered. “What are you doing up and about so early?”

“Moonbeam Cabin had a spider episode this morning, and Bailey is terrified of them,” Novalene said. “If this had happened a couple of weeks ago when they had the hair-cutting thing, I would have thought your girls were retaliating.”

“I was afraid they might, so I never mentioned it to them.” The minute the words were out of her mouth, Jayden remembered platinum hair that had flitted past the screen door the evening that she told Elijah about the incident.

Novalene took her coffee to the table, sat down, and let out a long breath in a whoosh. “It was about three o’clock. I’m surprised it didn’t wake everyone up in all of the cabins. Bailey was screaming at the top of her lungs for someone to get the big brown tarantula off her forehead. Keelan was standing four feet back with the broom in her hand like she was going to swat the thing away. I should have gotten my phone and filmed it.”

“What happened?” Jayden bit back a giggle. After what those two girls had done, this had to be payback.

“Bailey was flat on her back like she was about to go into rigor. She was afraid to move. She kept whimpering like a dying coyote and rolling her eyes up to catch sight of the thing that seemed to be considering making a nest in her hair,” Novalene answered. “I grabbed the broom from Keelan. The way she was swinging it around, she could have put out one of Bailey’s eyes, and then I coaxed it into crawling off the girl’s head and onto the broom. I started out toward the bathhouse to flush it down the toilet, all the time praying the damn thing didn’t clog up the plumbing. When I was about halfway there, it jumped off the broom. I didn’t know those things could move so fast. One minute, it had hunkered down and was enjoying the ride across the yard, and the next, it was gone.”

“Thank goodness the one we found was hiding under the bed and not on Carmella.” Jayden used a wooden spoon to point to the wall where Tiffany’s drawing of the tarantula hung. “I bet Bailey appreciates the art in that picture a lot better today than she did when Tiffany put it up there.”

“No doubt about that,” Novalene agreed.

“God, what a morning,” Diana said as she came through the door, likely for coffee if Jayden knew anything. “In all the years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen a tarantula. I swear that Tiffany jinxed us by hanging that picture up in here. One showed up on the Sunshine Cabin porch this morning. Remember me tellin’ y’all that Rita was my alpha girl when we first got here? Well, when that spider hopped up on her leg, she did some kind of fancy footwork. The other two girls took off in a dead run toward the exercise yard with Rita right behind them, trying to shake the thing off her pants before it made its way up toward her shirt. If I hadn’t seen the spider on her, I would have thought she was trying to learn some new steps.” Diana poured herself a mugful of coffee.

Had the one pinned to the board in the corner of the living area in Daydream Cabin come back to life? Jayden began to wonder if there was such a thing as zombie spiders. She made a mental note to check that evening to see if Carmella’s tarantula was still there.

Diana took a sip of her coffee and went on. “Lord, I hate two things in this old world, and spiders are both of them. The damn thing jumped from Rita’s pants right over onto Violet’s bare arm once they got to the morning exercise spot. She fainted dead away. Just dropped like a rock with every one of the other girls standing at attention for fear they’d get a demerit if they broke ranks. The spider took off for the bushes while I got her revived. I told her that she didn’t have to go on the hike this morning since she had fainted, but she insisted that she was fine. You got a new story about the spiders, Jayden?”

“Nope.” Jayden pointed to the picture on the wall. “Our bad boy is still pinned to a board, and the picture up there on the wall is the only thing left to attack us.”

“Well, one thing’s for sure, I bet every one of these girls remembers that there are tarantulas in these parts, and they think twice about their behavior once they go home,” Novalene said.