Oh great. I slumped against the wall. Sure, I could afford to buy another airline ticket, but that would mean crawling home with my tail between my legs to tell my parents I'd screwed up again.
"I'll take your bags up to your room," Oliver said. "And if you still don't feel comfortable eating in the dining hall, I can bring food to your room."
I managed a weak smile. "You're a good man, Oliver. How did you ever wind up working at a nudist retreat?"
His expression tightened a smidge, but only for a second.
"Never know," he said as he hefted my suitcases off the floor. "You might decide to give naturism a try."
I straightened and smoothed my dress. "I doubt that."
Then I lifted my chin and marched off down the hallway barefoot, having no fucking idea where I was going or how I would handle two weeks at a nudist resort.
Chapter Two
Ollie
I followed Mara down the hall, admiring her ass the whole time instead of watching where I was going. She had a great ass. I mean, epically great. Somebody should've sculpted a statue of her bottom, it was that fantastic. What wasn't great? Not paying attention to where I was walking.
Mara started up the stairs, but I didn't notice.
Holding on to two enormous and unbelievably heavy suitcases, I stumbled straight into the bottom step. My fingers popped open. The suitcases whumped down, and her shoes that I'd tucked under my arms clattered to the floor, but I tripped and tumbled forward right into Mara's fine behind.
She shrieked.
My face landed smack on her ass. I'd knocked her down, and now her legs were under me, but I wound up face-planting in her butt cheeks with only her dress and, I assumed, her underwear separating my nose and mouth from her body. Damn, she smelled good. Did she spray perfume on her dress or something? Nah, that wasn't a phony scent. It was all her.
"Get off me!" she hollered, trying to kick at me but not having any luck, what with all of me on top of half of her.
"Sorry," I mumbled into her ass.
I planted my hands on the step and pushed myself off Mara, then offered her my hand. "Let me help you up."
The girl with the awesome ass glowered at me for a second. But then her features relaxed, and she accepted my hand. "Thank you, Oliver. I'm sorry I freaked out and kicked you."
"No problem. Sorry about the face-in-your-ass thing." Believe it or not, that wasn't the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to me. I still remembered the day a porcupine had chased me out of the woods. Yeah, I'd screamed like a girl and run away from a pudgy creature that moved slightly faster than a snail. Not my finest moment.
"It's okay," Mara said, smiling shyly. "Probably my fault for making you carry those bags."
"Carrying whatever crap you bring is part of my job. Once, I had to haul a giant pet carrier with a Saint Bernard inside it."
Mara's eyes widened. "You allow pets here?"
"Sure. Only well-behaved ones, and they have to be on leashes."
"But Saint Bernards are..." She went pale, like she might faint again. "Their heads are huge. And their teeth..."
I grasped her elbow. "Whoa, take it easy. Don't pass out. There are no dogs here at the moment. Are you afraid of them?"
She squashed her lips between her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut, then sucked in a deep and noisy breath through her nostrils. Shaking off whatever it was, she squared her shoulders. "I am not afraid of dogs." She winced. "Most of the time."
Jeez, this girl was a tangled mess of phobias. Dogs. Naked people. What next? She was hot, and kind of sweet in a bat-shit crazy way, but completely neurotic.
I considered the stairs and the rooms they led to, rooms occupied by naturists. Lots of naturists. All of whom would be stampeding out of the dining hall anytime. How would Mara react to nude people playing miniten? She might freak when saw the thugs, the wedge-shaped boxes used to bat the tennis ball around in miniten. A thug kind of sort of resembled a Saint Bernard's head. If you squinted hard, and if you were an outrageously uptight city girl who was terrified of nudity.
"Tell you what," I said. "Why don't you stay in the little house, the one on the other side of the driveway? Val and Eve aren't here right now, so you can hang at their place until we sort out what to, uh, do with you."
Mara picked up her shoes. "Who are Val and Eve?"