Chapter 8

Thinking about some of the things he could do with a camera and a nearly naked Nicole was sufficient to keep Randy's mind off of construction all the way over to the casino at Three Pines. He had several ideas, some that made the dull and all too familiar miles pass quickly. He gathered up the roll of prints and the briefcase full of stuff that he needed to drop off, and headed into Norm Eaglebeak's office, which was upstairs in the Casino.

He was walking down the hall toward the office when his cell phone went off. From habit he clicked it on and answered, "Randy Clark."

"Hey, Randy," he heard a familiar voice say on the phone. "Norm Eaglebeak. Is there any chance that you could get over this way sooner or later?"

Randy opened Norm's office door, stuck his head in, and said, "No can do!" then pulled his head back out into the hall and closed the door. Laughing, he reopened the door and went in.

"How about sooner?" Randy laughed. "God, that's what I like about you Clark Construction guys," Norm shook his head. "Ask for something and it gets done right now."

"We aim to please," Randy snickered. "Although I have to be the first to admit that we usually can't do things that quickly. I came over to drop off these prints and stuff. This is the first chance I had to get over and return them. So, what have you got on your mind?"

"Mostly those plans," Norm replied. "We've been kicking around ideas on the expansion plans. We haven't totally made up our minds yet, but we're thinking that instead of adding on, we might want to build a whole new separate lodge that could be more family oriented. You know, a place where the kids can have some fun while mom and dad play golf or something."

"I wondered about that," Randy said with a sinking feeling. There had been a lot of work put into the expansion plan and not just by him – billable work, to be sure – but it looked like it was going to go down the tube. "I mean, it sort of struck me that the lack of something like that might be a hole in your business plan."

"Yeah, what we keep thinking about is that if we build a new lodge, it could be a little more kid and play oriented, while the old one could be a little more, uh, adult oriented, so to speak."

"You're saying maybe skimpier bikinis in the pool, and maybe looking the other way at who shares a room with who and for how long, that sort of thing?"

"Well, yeah, but we don't want to be that blatant about it. Just sort of let it happen. Anyway, if we did it, we'd want the new lodge to be at least as large as the old one, if not larger, but we'd hope to see the same kind of time frame we saw with the proposed addition."

"Could be done," Randy nodded. "Something like that, we probably can't break ground till spring, and we might be most of a year finishing it off, just off the top of my head. The problem is we'd have to start from scratch again on the plans, and we might have to be more flexible as we go along. That's a hell of a lot bigger project than the addition, obviously, and I'm talking literally millions more, depending on what you want to do. We'll cut you as fair a deal as we can, but on quick build projects like that it's going to be one change order after another, and we have to charge additional time and materials on those. They can't be included in the original bid estimates. Too much of that could sink both of us, you on dollar budget and us on scheduling and completion dates."

"Randy, you guys have done a lot of building for us over the years, especially the last few years, and you've always managed to bring the projects in ahead of schedule and under budget, and treat us fair along the way. What's more, you don't buck too much when we change horses in midstream on you. Now, this isn't a done deal yet, there are some hoops to jump through, but let's just put work on the addition on hold for a while until we can get it ironed out."

"Fine, so long as we don't wait too long," Randy said. "It's November first, and we had planned on breaking ground around April first. If we're dealing with a bigger project, we're going to have to hit the ground running so we can make good use of construction weather."

"It's going to take a while," Norm told him. "Like I said, there are some hoops to jump through, especially with the BIA. We can get to work on the plans, but we can't make a final decision until like about the first of February."

"That's still a damn quick build, and we may not be able to start on April 1 with a decision that late," Randy said. "If we have to start later, we'll just have to do the best we can. You got any idea of what you want done?"

"Only in general, we've got our architects working on it. They didn't take news of this potential change as well as you did, but they're going to get plenty of billable time out of it."

"I didn't say I was taking it well, I'm just rolling with the punches," Randy shrugged. "Look, we just got the job on the new gym down in Blair. One big mother of a project at a time is about all we like to handle. The addition didn't quite qualify as a big mother, but a new lodge will, especially to have to do it on short notice. Besides, you're dealing with the Feds, after all. You may get a go-ahead by February first, but what year?"

"Yeah, I'm afraid you're right," Norm agreed. "I wish we didn't have to go to the BIA on this, they can be real obstructionists. They're a bunch of bureaucrats at best and bastards most of the time. Just for the sake of talking, what happens if we can't get clearance until, say, June?

"Hard to say," Randy said. "Obviously, effort that we'd have been putting in here would be going to the gym. But we might be able to get enough ahead of schedule there that we could get a lot done here in the late summer and fall. Maybe have the building closed in, I don't know without seeing some of the plans, and I don't want to guess. However it works out we'd try to do our best for you, but a lot depends on things like weather, too."

"I understand," Norm told him. "We'll try to do right by you. If we can't build this thing this summer, maybe we can find something else for you to build this year. But, like I said, we're going to put the addition on hold for a while, and probably permanently."

"I suppose that kills the construction conference we had to screw around with the date on," Randy commented. With this news, that meeting was a pimple on the backside of bigger issues.

"Deader than hell," Norm agreed. "In fact, I'm going to have to go to Washington to fight with the BIA in that time slot. We've already got appointments scheduled."

"All I can say is keep me in touch," Randy told him. "We'll just have to play it where it lays."

As Nicole opened the garage door, she was pleased to see that Randy's truck wasn't there. That meant she could tell him about the practical joke Karin had planned for Crystal's wedding – she could say Karin had called right after she got home. She was sure Randy would get a kick out of it, just like she was sure he would look forward to getting a kick out of the little practical joke they planned. Paybacks were hell, and the time had come.

As usual, there was no telling what time Randy would get home, although she hoped it would be before Danny and Debbie showed up with the hot tub. She wasn't sure exactly when that would be, but she doubted it would be before five when Spearfish Lake Appliance normally closed. It probably wouldn't be much after that, though. That still left her a couple hours to work with.

She was really looking forward to having the hot tub. The way things had worked out last night had only proved it had some potential, in fact, lots of potential, and she would get her share of enjoyment out of it, too. She was just a little surprised at how enthusiastically Randy had taken to the idea of her getting some slutty swimsuits for the hot tub – and for places well out of town. They wouldn't be the sort she'd wear out on the lakeshore in front of the house under any circumstances short of total darkness – although it might be a thrill to do it sometime.

There had been some times during the day that it had been difficult to keep her mind on her class, since she was mentally exploring some of the possibilities. Back when she'd been in high school and college she'd worn bikinis that verged on being a little too daring, but it wasn't the kind of thing she could do as a teacher. That was a little disappointing, since she had long known that Randy liked to look at her wearing them. But to do something really slutty had lots of potential. Getting on the Internet and searching for slutty swimsuits or micro-bikinis wasn't the sort of thing that she dared do at school, but now, with some time on her hands, she could spend some time getting some ideas.

In fact, she already had some ideas. A poster she'd seen on Buddha's office wall, Randy said it had hung there as long as he could remember, of a girl in the skimpiest one-piece swimsuit she'd ever seen. There wasn't much in front and virtually nothing in back. She had no idea where she could get one like it, but given what she planned to do with it she figured she could drag out the sewing machine and throw together something close enough. It was half string, and maybe a handkerchief or two worth of material. Or less. In fact, she had a pretty good mental picture of that particular suit, and she figured she could throw together a twin to it easily. That would blow Randy's mind!

She would never wear something like that on the beach here at home, but somewhere else – that was a possibility. The skimpy suit had to be the reason the picture had hung on Buddha's wall so long, and her showing up in the flesh in one like it would blow his mind. And, Buddha's was far enough away from Spearfish Lake that she might even be able to get away with it. If the trip after Myleigh's wedding actually came off, maybe she could spring it on Randy and the crew without warning. That would be fun – she knew Preach pretty well, and he was on the straight side; on the Canyon run last summer, Crystal had seemed straighter than she'd been when Nicole had spent weeks hiking with her. Maybe it would be a quiet way to underline to Randy that he'd made the right choice after all...

It didn't take her very much searching of some of the seamier spots around the Internet to come up with enough ideas to hold her for a while. It was clear that there wasn't much she could do to a bikini other than make it even smaller and more transparent, but there were a number of ways that one-piece suits could be made to look really wild and still not cover much more than the tiniest micro-bikini. It was all she could do to keep from heading for the sewing machine, but with Danny and Debbie on the way and Randy due home any time, now wasn't good timing. She could do an awful lot on the Tuesday evenings when Randy was at martial arts, and it would give her the chance to surprise him from time to time.