Loren pushed the glass double doors open and trundled wearily in, then realized that the big ballroom was empty, save for the brand new tables and chairs waiting to be moved to their eventual locations. Shoulders sagging, he tossed his bulging briefcase onto the nearest table, pulled a chair closer and plopped down on it with a grunt.
The door to the kitchen opened and Samiel looked around in askance. When he noticed Loren, his face brightened.
"Hey, you're back!" Then the chef frowned. "Is something wrong?"
"This city has far too many steps!" Loren declared. "I'm not climbing any more today, okay? No, nothing's wrong, in fact things hardly could be much better than they are right now."
"Yes?" Samiel prompted.
"I've got all the paperwork ready and dealt with, at last!" Loren wiped his face with a shirtsleeve. "The permits and licenses and approvals and I can't even remember the names of them all. All I know is that now I've been to every place and authority I need to visit and have our copies of every damn paper right here!"
He slammed a palm on the briefcase. Samiel grinned.
"Well done, boss! I might have here something that'll make you feel even better, unless you're still feeling too hot to want anything warm?"
"What is it?"
"Today's lunch is ready. Seafood soup. I was just about to go and ask the guys upstairs to come and try it out when I heard the door. So, how about a bowl of seafood soup?"
"I'm damn hungry, now that you mentioned food," Loren said eagerly and pushed himself on his feet. "Show the way, I sure want to taste it!"
He followed Samiel into the kitchen, observed in passing that several doors were still missing so apparently the carpenter still hadn't got the much awaited delivery of cherry tree timber, and inhaled the thick aroma wafting in the air. His stomach immediately reacted by grumbling loudly, and Samiel laughed aloud.
"Sounds like you really could use this," he said and filled a bowl from the large pot, then handed it to Loren. "Careful, it's very hot."
"Yeah, yeah…"
Loren took the bowl and picked up a spoon from the box on the desk. For a while he just stirred the multi-colored soup, then finally ventured to ladle a spoonful and sample it cautiously. It was still hot but not lip-charring hot, and he closed his eyes as he savored the mix of tastes.
Samiel waited anxiously until Loren opened his eyes once more. "Well?" he prompted.
"Divine," Loren said, somewhat indistinctly because he was too busy shoving another spoonful into his mouth. "I mean it, Samiel. This is just… no, there are no words for this. Too good for words."
"Hey, haven't I always told you honestly what I think?" he countered. "This is absolutely fantastic, and I mean every word."
The chef smiled broadly.
"Must give credit where it's due, though," he said graciously. "It's originally my great-grandmother's recipe, with a pinch of extra flair added by me."
"Your great-grandmother was one hell of a cook," Loren stated.
"She was. Lived with my family, and this is what she'd cook for us on Saturdays." Samiel looked nostalgic. "I guess it was she who first got me interested in cooking, when she made me help her around the kitchen back then. I used to watch pretty closely what she was doing, and picked up quite a few useful things."
"Such as this!" Loren wiped his mouth with the back of a hand and sighed. "This will definitely go on the regular menu, Samiel. It has to."
"Glad you agree with me," Samiel said with a smile. "Hey, will you go get the guys here for lunch – oh, sorry, I forgot that you've already walked quite enough today…"
"No, no, let me. It'll probably just do me good to keep moving."
At the foot of the staircase Loren peered hopefully upwards and tried calling a couple of times, then shrugged in resignation and grabbed the handrail. The men were probably far too absorbed in whatever they were doing to hear him, and surely a few more stairs wouldn't kill him?
He reached the landing and listened. From here he could see the doors of all six upstairs rooms, even the ones across the empty space in the middle. There the height of the ballroom soared to full two floors, and anyone standing on the landing could look over an ornate balustrade at the room and the people below. The landing and everything visible to the top of the stairs had been finished already, the only major work that still remained was inside the rooms.
The other doors were ajar but the one leading to Number Two was wide open, and when Loren got closer, he could hear happy whistling inside. It was really no wonder that the guys hadn't been able to hear him. The stone walls did a good job keeping any noise on whichever side it originated, and that definitely was a good thing in a hotel-to-be.
He smiled to himself and looked into what was to be their 'ochre room': not the biggest but definitely the poshest, with a spacious balcony of its own and a stunning view over the garden and the sea below. The entire room had already been painted once all over, and one painter was about to finish giving a second coat of paint to one of the walls. Loren could see the other hired workman out on the balcony, but he raised his eyebrows when he spotted Arjan, ponytail in the last stages of unraveling completely, hard at work on the wall next to the balcony door.
"Hello, guys," he said and stepped in. "What's the situation here?"
"Loren!" Dhar, the younger of the painters, greeted him with a smile and saluted with his broad brush. "Thank goodness you're here, boss. Talk sense to this guy over here, will you? We've been trying to tell him that he's using all the wrong tools, that you don't paint walls with those artist brushes, but he won't listen to us!"
"I'm just decorating, okay?" Arjan protested good-humoredly, three slim artist's brushes in hand. "Don't you think this looks good?"
Loren glanced at the meandering, stylized wreath pattern that was emerging on the wall next to the door, and nodded.
"It's lovely," he said.
"But it would be so much simpler to do that kind of thing with a stencil!" Dhar argued. "That way it would be all symmetrical, too."
"I'm an artist!" Arjan snorted. "I'm not going to use stencils!"
"Maybe you could design the stencils yourself?" Loren mused. Arjan gave him a suspicious glare. "Just a thought, really, of course you can do whatever you like! But actually I came here to ask if anybody would like to have lunch? Samiel's come up with something that'll take your breath away, and I thought maybe you'd want to have some of it too, before I go back downstairs and gobble down the lot."
"Sounds good!" Dhar wiped his hands on his overalls and began to prepare his tools and paints for the break. "Hey, Mel, did you hear? There's lunch downstairs."
"I've been smelling it for a while and drooling all over this windowsill," the other man said without raising his gaze from his work. "I'll come as soon as I get this ready, I'm almost done anyway. Give me fifteen minutes."
"That's all right," Loren said, "I'll make sure there'll be soup for you as well. There seemed to be quite a lot of it… hey, where's Reonn gone?"
"To the B & S's," Arjan replied. "He had a few words to them."
"Huh? But I saw myself that those tiles were delivered this morning!"
"They were – kind of. The cream-colored ones were all right, but the rest were dark purple."
"I wish I were," Arjan said with a long-suffering sigh. "That's how it is, though. It was exactly the color that you did not want, and also, this batch was to be one half cream, one quarter pale purple and one quarter pale lime. What we got was one half cream, one half dark purple. I can tell you that Reonn wasn't happy when he saw them. And by the way, now that I saw them myself, I'm ready to admit that the dark purple really was too dark to be used over large areas, it'd make the bathrooms look really tiny and stuffed."
"Well that's how I felt, glad you agree with me." Loren raked fingers through his blond curls and made a face.
"But, damn, now the bathrooms will be delayed still some more... which means that now we really will do our damnedest to get the restaurant opened. Arjan, there'll be a change of plans!"
"What change?" Arjan asked suspiciously. "I am going to decorate every room individually. I want each one of them to have their own atmosphere, own feeling."
"You can go on doing that, later," Loren said. "First we need to get the downstairs arranged and the menus designed – weren't you going to take care of them as well? Besides, that'll give the guys time to get the rooms otherwise ready so you can paint in peace."
He was glad to notice that the promise seemed to placate Arjan, and continued: "But now, guys, lunch! And if you knew what a treat is waiting for you downstairs, you wouldn't be dawdling here any more!"
"Stop teasing," Mel called from the balcony. "I'll be ready in no time at all, okay?"
"Yeah," Dhar said over his shoulder. "I'm going already."
Loren and Arjan followed him, but halfway down the stairs Arjan stopped and turned around so that Loren, who was walking a few steps behind him, had to stop.
"About the restaurant – you said that I could go on decorating the rooms when we get the downstairs ready, but are you now quite sure about that?"
"What do you mean?" Loren asked.
"I mean," Arjan elaborated, "that when the restaurant is open, do you really think you can handle it all by yourself if I'm working upstairs? Taking orders, serving at tables, the lot?"
Loren smiled. "Arjan, do you assume that it's going to be packed full from day one?"
"I think it might be," Arjan insisted. "For one thing, there's all the people who have their own little share in the place. Don't you think they'd be eager to see how it's all turning out, especially since Reonn and dad have made it clear to everybody that this is a construction site and not a tourist attraction? You know they've been curious about what's going on – didn't you tell me yourself that every time you go to town, at least two guys grab your sleeve and ask when they'd get to see Rose?"
"That's true," Loren granted. "Talking about which, you haven't even asked how my trip to town today was."
"I sort of thought that you'd have already mentioned if something had caused trouble?" Arjan looked hopeful.
"I guess I would," Loren said. "The thing is, that was the last one. All the papers are now in perfect order."
Arjan's face lit up. "Seriously? That's great!"
He gave Loren a quick kiss. "No more running around for you, now we just get everything here ready to roll and then let them know when they can come and inspect the place, right?"
"Exactly," Loren said with a gleeful smirk. "It's their turn to run around! But now let's go to the kitchen so you get to taste Samiel's seafood soup."
"Oh yes, food! Right!"
Arjan nearly ran down the rest of the steps and towards the kitchen door, but couldn't help making a little detour on the way to take a brief glimpse at the finished mural that was bathed in the soft light pouring in from the tall windows.
Loren, who'd known that this slight disruption in the route was inevitable, chuckled behind him. "Yes, it's beautiful and it gives this whole place a very unique feel."
"You're laughing at me," Arjan sighed. "I'm just so damn proud of it."
"Nothing wrong with that," Loren said. "I'm damn proud of you, too. You're making this place so special."
"It's you who's making this special. I'm just trying to add what little I can."
"Stop that, will you? Our place, Arjan. We both do the things we can to make it special."
Arjan snaked an arm around Loren's waist in response. The blond let out a content sigh, and Arjan smiled into his hair.
"We shouldn't be doing this here," Loren objected dutifully. "Still illegal to be gay, remember?"
"The place isn't open yet, Loren, there are no outsiders around," Arjan reminded him. "Relax."
Loren rubbed their heads together. "Mmm... Actually you just gave me an idea."
"What then?"
"About the guys who have shares in Rose. We might arrange them a preview before the place opens for real. You know, invite them here, show them the house – even if some of the last decorations aren't quite finished yet – and offer them a meal. They might appreciate that."
"I'm sure they would! Loren, you're a genius."
"Hardly... and I even know what will be on the menu when they come."
"Oh? What then?"
Loren raised his head and pulled away, listening to the echo of booted feet descending the stairs.
"Seafood soup. The very recipe that you might not get to taste at all today if we don't get into the kitchen right now, before Mel does!"
