Arne Hedstrom shoved aside the family size pizza box and belched. He’d bet soup was on at the Landing. It wasn’t that he expected Kelda to have dinner ready when he walked in the door, not every night, four out of five seemed reasonable. A working man needs a hearty, homecooked meal at the end of the day his mother always said, and Kelda could cook. She’d learned as a kid, cooking for her overfed, chowder head Norwegian uncles.

So, there’d been no real dinner tonight because ornery old Ragnar Hansen didn’t have the decency to die and let the next generation take over the Landing, do something creative with all that acreage. None last night because Kelda had to teach a group of whining women who’d provoked their husbands long enough to get themselves battered and ordered by the courts to get help or lose their welfare. She didn’t need to listen to that crap. Could have gone into the construction business as his partner, gotten him contracts going to women and minorities a few years back. That would have helped with the mess when his dad died and his mother transferred her mania for control onto him. They’d all be a lot less stressed now. But no, not Kelda, stubborn as all the other Norwegians he’d ever known. Kelda had to have her own career, saving the less fortunate from themselves. Well, he’d seen to it she kept the Hedstrom name out of the sob-story business.

And he’d found a partner. Maria Sanchez, minority and female, one hundred percent Mexican though she’d never stepped foot outside the state of Washington. With her name and ethnicity on the bid forms he’d gotten enough of the good contracts.  She’d helped him make some bucks, they just did upscale developments now.

Gated communities. They could do that at the Landing. Or build a resort. THE INN AT HANSEN’S LANDING – ARNE HEDSTROM

CONSTRUCTION. He liked the concept. Maybe he’d look for an investor, someone with some resort building experience. He needed to get it going, get some investors’ dollars rolling in.

Maria had looked up at him, smug little grin, black eyes snapping. “That scowl on your face says trouble. Let me guess; no dinner again tonight.” She patted his stomach and laughed.

“Yeah, I like good food.” Arne sucked in his gut tight as he could. “But that’s solid muscle. An extension of my chest.” He’d put on a few pounds, but not the thirty or forty Kelda harped about and used as a reason to change how she cooked.

“I just don’t want you having a heart attack on me and leaving me to run this business by myself. Want me to call Gran to make an extra tortilla?”

“No, better not. I imposed last night.” They both knew it was the grandmother, not the imposing, that worried Arne.

Maria shrugged and walked away. He saw the silver threads in her blue-black hair, the graying that worried the old grandmother. “My little one needs a husban’, you still marrie’?” she’d ask. He’d nod. “Then you hire  ‘nother partner, you train him good, he can marry my Maria.”

Maria would say, “I have Carlos, Gran.”

Then the old grandmother would rock her head shoulder to shoulder and rub her hands down the front of her long skirt. “That one.”

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