I'm developing a hunting and fishing camp out by the lakes. I have the main house, which contains my quarters, office and a couple of single rooms that I can rent if required. I also have ten cabins. Most of the work on putting them up I did myself; I'm quite good with my hands.
I'm still running on a shoestring budget, but I'm getting by and actually starting to get ahead. What extra money I do have goes into the camp, building steady improvements. That's partly what caused the problem.
Leonie, my fiancΓ©e, wanted me to borrow, using the land as security, and make all the modernisation I want in one hit. I tried to explain to her that I'd be leaving myself way open to losing everything, but she just couldn't see it. She'd see a big motel group put up a motel nearby and lay on everything and assumed that I should be able to match it.
I explained to her that if there was a downturn, even a minor one, a big group could weather it, whereas I'd be wiped out by the same downturn if I was mortgaged to the hilt. I showed her my business plan and how things were progressing, but she still wanted me to go for broke.
Broke is where I would be, because she's got the economic sense of a goose. She sees buying two dresses for forty dollars instead of one for twenty five as saving money. I point out that she's actually spent fifteen dollars more than she'd budgeted for and she just says yes, but I saved ten dollars doing it this way. She is perpetually broke, by the way.
Anyway, to cut a long story short we had a blazing argument about finances, with me finally laying down the law and saying this is the way it was going to be.
Leonie said something rude and stormed off. I just let her go, giving her a chance to cool down.
The trouble was, she didn't come back. At first I wasn't particularly worried. Leonie was a city girl, not too familiar with the woods around us. She was learning the various paths and things but didn't like to go out into the woods by herself.
I figured that she was just sulking somewhere around and let her go for a bit longer. But she still didn't turn up. I finally went looking for her.
I checked all the more likely spots for her but she wasn't at them. I started checking with guests, asking if they'd seen her around as I had a message for her. No-one had seen her for the past couple of hours. As far as I could tell, she wasn't in the camp at all.
A quick check of the only other hunting camps in easy reach showed that she wasn't there, either. I was starting to get seriously worried. If she'd gone wandering into the bush by herself she could get hurt with no assistance around or, and much more likely, get seriously lost.
No vehicles were unaccounted for, so wherever she went she'd gone on foot, but checking all the trails close to the camp I could find no sign of her. It was a mugs game to just wander into the woods and hope I'd spot her. I wouldn't even know which direction to start looking.
I was making tracks back to the office to call the sheriff and arrange for a search party when I noticed a light flickering from a window in one of the supposedly vacant cabins. I had checked them earlier but they were all locked and there'd been no answer when I'd knocked. I hadn't suspected that Leonie would be silly enough to deliberately hide.
I grabbed the master key from the office and headed back to the suspect cabin, and I can tell you right now, I was pissing mad.
I let myself into the cabin and there was Leonie, lounging on the couch, watching TV. She had a bag of chips and a bottle of coke next to her. She wasn't going hungry during her isolation it seemed.
Leonie looked at me and laughed.
"Finally found me, uh?" she said. "I bet I had you plenty worried."
"Worried enough that I was about to raise an official search party," I said, my voice totally casual.
Apparently not casual enough, because Leonie sat up straight and looked at me, a nervous look flashing across her face. I was moving slowly towards her and she started to sidle along the couch away from me.
"Um, I didn't mean to cause any real problems," she told me.
"Problems? Like me having to waste the afternoon trying to find you? Like me being about to call the Sheriff and arrange for a full search party, including helicopter and dogs? Like me wondering if a bear had got you and before you ask, yes, we have bears out there."
At that point Leonie jumped from the couch and that suited me down to the ground. I promptly sat on it, catching her arm as I did so. A firm pull and she was face down across my lap.
"Wh-what are you doing?" stammered Leonie, suddenly totally unsure of herself and the situation.
I didn't bother to answer. Seeing I'd flipped her skirt up out the way and pulled down her panties, baring her pretty little bottom, actually saying anything seemed superfluous.