Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 68716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Well, he’s come to the right place for two and a half out of three. It’s quiet. The bed is comfortable-ish. The water is hot.
The host sleeps in her car and will take a shower with a day pass to a local gym. Not that any of that is his business.
I check the time. It’s a little after two. I worked through lunch to leave the office early so I could get up the mountain with enough daylight to clean. That gives me, what, six hours?
Six hours to flip my entire life from single woman barely hanging on to cozy mountain retreat with rustic charm.
“Okay,” I say again, louder this time, like I can talk myself into a different mood. “Time to move, Holley.”
I shove the bills back into their envelopes and jam them under my arm, then jog up the three steps on the porch. The boards creak under my boots. I unlock the front door, and the familiar smell hits me—pine cleaner, coffee, and the faintest lingering trace of the outside air floating in with me. Dropping the offending documents on the side table, I walk inside my home.
I always scrub the place top to bottom, but some scents never completely go away. It’s like my cabin remembers every single struggle even when I want to forget them. It knows my every tear and every fear as I have had to rebuild my life after divorce.
“Home sweet home,” I murmur, stepping inside.
The living area is small but bright, with knotty pine walls and a worn leather couch that’s more comfortable than it looks. The coffee table is something I rescued from the side of the road and sanded myself. A cheap TV sits on a thrifted console, the remotes neatly lined up for the DVD player, the TV, and the internet Wi-Fi box.
The woodstove in the corner is my pride and joy. It saves me a fortune on heating when I’m here alone, though I always warn guests not to mess with it unless they know what they’re doing. Too many potential lawsuits and the risk to burning my whole house down. It is nice to have as a backup if a guest is here and the heat pump goes out. But I would be lying if I wasn’t worried that the wrong person uses it and I lose everything. Shaking off the thoughts, I get back to business.
First things first.
I drop my mail and purse on the counter and head straight to the tiny linen closet. I keep two sets of everything—guest and personal—and I can switch the cabin over in under an hour if I don’t get interrupted.
I grab the stack of my own mismatched towels and the faded sheets off the middle shelf, shove them into an empty laundry basket, then pull down the good stuff. The fluffy white towels I found on sale last year. The quilt set I splurged on with my quarterly bonus, all blue and gray and perfectly rustic cabin chic.
As I strip my bed, my phone buzzes again. Some part of me tenses, thinking it’s a collector or more bad news, but it’s just the weather app.
Weather Update: Mild temps through the week, lows in the upper 30s, no snow expected.
For once, something is on my side. I haven’t figured out what to do when I have the cabin booked and the temperature drops below freezing. Sleeping in my car won’t be a real option then.
I tap the expanded forecast. A little blue line dances across the screen, showing nighttime lows that are cold but survivable. Especially if I layer and bring a blanket.
I picture the park down the road, the gravel lot tucked behind the picnic area. It’s not exactly legal to sleep there, but if I park the car in the very back and keep my head down, no one bothers me. The sheriff has better things to do than chase off one sad woman trying to keep the lights on.
Upper thirties, no snow. I can handle that.
I make the bed quickly, tucking corners military tight. I watched so many videos on giving the best guest experience and having the bed done right was at the top of the list. Once that’s done, I haul the laundry basket into the little bedroom closet that houses my clothes and is now “owner’s storage” with a cheap lock on it so I don’t have to constantly remove all of my personal belongings every rental. I stuff my comforter and personal pillows into a giant trash bag and wedge it in on top of everything else.
Out of sight, out of mind.
I move through the cabin on autopilot, following the routine I’ve built since I started renting the place out.
Strip my family pictures off the wall—wedding photos burned before I moved, but a few from childhood do grace the space, my mom and me at the beach, my dad and I fishing in a little paddle boat. They go into a plastic bin that slides under the couch to be returned to their hooks after my guest leaves. In the meantime some dollar store pics are hanging in their places.