Loe raamatut: «Stranded At Cupid's Hideaway»

Chapter One

Laurel Burton thought she knew everything there was to know about Cupid’s Hideaway. Though the bed-and-breakfast inn on Lake Erie’s South Bass Island was her grandmother’s brainchild and retirement project, Laurel spent enough time in the rambling old house to know every inch of the place and of the business.

She knew how many bottles of champagne it took to fill the ornate tabletop fountains in each of the inn’s four distinctive—and distinctively named—guest rooms and how many cases of bubble bath were used in the heart-shaped bathtubs and which of the regular guests preferred what kind of scented candles. She knew that the plants in the Almost Paradise room needed to be turned and watered on Mondays and Thursdays, that the martini bar in Smooth Operator had to be restocked at least once a month, that the red velvet drapes in Close to the Heart were a bitch to clean and that there had to be a pair of blue suede shoes under the bed in Love Me Tender. Always.

And even though she didn’t know it for sure, because when it came to profit and loss there was some information Maisie liked to keep to herself, Laurel could guess the kind of killing her grandmother made in the gift shop just off the lobby. There was a big markup on scanty lingerie. Almost as much as there was on massage oil, discreet sex toys and teas that were—or so Maisie swore—guaranteed aphrodisiacs.

Laurel knew Cupid’s Hideaway, all right. Basement to attic. Wraparound front porch to backyard garden. Front to back and side to side.

But she never knew the place was haunted.

At the bottom of the winding stairway that led to the guest rooms, Laurel’s legs froze at the same time her stomach caught fire. Noah Cunningham couldn’t be standing at the main desk chatting with her grandmother. It wasn’t possible. It had to be a ghost.

“Deep breaths, Laurel,” she whispered to herself. “Deep breaths, just like you tell your patients in labor and delivery. In and out. Slowly. Slowly.” She steadied herself and closed her eyes, sure that when she opened them again, the hallucination would be gone.

She was wrong.

Eyes closed. Eyes opened. He was still there.

Live and in living color.

Not the ghost of anything but her own past.

Laurel was carrying an armful of newly laundered, flowery smelling towels and she pressed them close in hopes of keeping her heart from banging its way right out of her ribs. Good thing neither Noah nor Maisie had seen her yet. Noah was leaning against the front desk, and his attention was on Maisie. She was too busy flittering around and giggling at everything Noah said to pay any attention to anything but him.

Laurel had the advantage. At least for the moment. She could see without being seen and she used the opportunity to regroup and collect her thoughts and her wits. It didn’t hurt that she also had a chance to size up the man she had tried not to think about for the last four years.

Noah was still as handsome as hell and twice as tempting as sin. Just like in the old days. Still the same chestnut brown hair, cut closer at the sides and shorter on top than he used to wear it back in the days when it always looked as tousled as it did when he just got out of bed. The cut wouldn’t have worked on most guys, at least not most guys of Noah’s age and professional reputation. It was a little too young, a little too cocky, a little too nonconformist. But then, she supposed that made it a classic case of truth in advertising. The haircut suited Noah’s personality, and if what she’d heard from colleagues was true—things they insisted on telling her even though she insisted she didn’t want to hear them—Noah’s way of wearing his hair had spawned a trend of sorts with the medical students he regularly lectured. Wasn’t that just like Noah? An innovator when it came to everything, even hair.

Laurel ignored the tiny thread of resentment that threatened what was left of her composure. Instead of regretting the past, she concentrated on the present. And on the man standing not twenty feet away. The one she’d walked out on four years before and swore she’d never see again.

His profile was the same, of course. Firm chin. Nose that was a little crooked from his days playing college rugby. He was a shade under six feet tall, and one look was all it took to tell Laurel he was still running a few miles every day. His exquisitely tailored navy cashmere suit made the most of a body that was long and lean. It did great things for his nice, tight behind, too.

Caught off guard both by the thought and by the memories it conjured, Laurel sucked in a sharp breath and warned herself to get a grip. Noah’s rear was none of her business, not anymore, and just so she wouldn’t forget, she forced her gaze up and away from it. His jaw was long enough and square enough that it should have warned people he could be stubborn beyond reason. No one ever guessed. Not until it was too late. Or in Laurel’s case, not until it was way too late.

She knew why, of course. She’d known it all along. It was because of his smile. The one that lit up a room and invited confidences and made everyone he honored with it feel as if Noah was singling them out for special treatment.

For a couple of incredible months, that smile was the first thing she saw in the morning and the last thing she saw at night. It was still the thing she remembered most about him. That, and how much it hurt when she found out his smile wasn’t any more sincere than he was.

Funny how old, healed wounds could slice open so quickly. Laurel blinked back tears and thought about the irony of it all. Judging from the blush in Maisie’s cheeks, she wasn’t troubled by any of the old stories. But then, Noah and Maisie had always gotten along famously. Looked like his smile was still working its magic, and Laurel supposed she should be grateful it was. While Noah and her grandmother were busy acting like old buddies, she could compose herself. She could collect herself. This might be her only chance. Unless…

She glanced to her right, gauging the distance between herself and the ornate front door that led out to the porch and the lawn that sloped down to the lake.

She could make a break for it, and if she was quick and quiet, no one would ever know she’d been there. The coward’s way out? There was no denying that. But then again, maybe it was better to be a coward than it was to be a stammering idiot. And if Noah turned around, if he saw her, if he talked to her, something told her that acting like a stammering idiot would be the least of her problems.

Her mind made up, Laurel had already made a move toward the front of the house when she heard Maisie call out. “There she is! It’s Laurel. Laurel, come here, sweetie, and see who stopped to visit!”

Laurel gritted her teeth. Her breath tight in her throat, her palms damp against the stack of towels, she pasted a half surprised, half I-really-don’t-have-time-to-stop-and-chat smile on her face and crossed the lobby toward the man who four years earlier had broken her heart into a million tiny pieces that still hadn’t found their way back together.

The closer she got, the more Laurel saw that she wasn’t the only one who was surprised by this unexpected encounter. As if it was happening in slow motion, she saw Noah’s mouth drop open and his disbelieving glance go from Maisie to Laurel and back again to Maisie.

“But…” He spluttered. “But you said—”

“I said Laurel was cruising. Yes, I know.” Maisie smiled and nodded, and her perfectly styled, perfectly white curls bobbed along with her. Reaching across the desk, she patted Noah’s hand. “She was cruising. She was—”

“I was out on the lake on my sailboat,” Laurel intervened. There was no use letting Maisie try to explain. Something told her there was no easy explanation. Not for this. “Out on the lake,” she said with a glance over her shoulder toward one of the windows that looked at the water. “For three full hours. You calling that cruising, Grandma?”

Not one to let something as simple as the truth get in her way, Maisie twinkled. “Well,” her grandmother said, “technically…”

“Technically, nothing.” Laurel plunked the pile of towels on the desk. Though she wasn’t sure what was going to fall out of her mouth, she turned to greet Noah. She couldn’t quite force herself to offer her hand just like she couldn’t quite look him in the eye. She started out by staring at his lips, but that didn’t work, either. Too many old memories there. Instead, she concentrated on the splashes of red and yellow on his two-hundred-dollar Italian silk tie.

“Hello, Noah,” she said. “What brings you to Cupid’s Hideaway?”

As soon as the question was out of her mouth, Laurel had the feeling she might not like the answer. She darted a look around the lobby. There was no sign that Noah was there with a significant other, and she let go a long, shaky breath. It was bad enough seeing him so unexpectedly. She wasn’t sure how she would have handled it if she knew Noah and some woman were checking in for a little hanky-panky in the land of heart-shaped tubs and massage oils with names like Love Nibbles.

“He’s here to visit, of course.” It was Maisie who answered, Maisie who hurried around to the front of the desk and grabbed Noah’s arm and tugged him toward the parlor where, this time of the evening even when there were no guests, she kept a fire blazing in the fireplace, and tea and cookies on the old rosewood buffet in the corner. “And isn’t it a nice surprise?”

It wasn’t, and Laurel congratulated herself. At least she had the presence of mind not to point that out.

“We’ll get some tea,” Maisie said, “and I’ll call Meg. I know she’s home tonight. She probably wouldn’t mind at all if I asked her to stop by and cook you up a nice dinner.”

“Maisie!”

The name came in unison from both Noah and Laurel, and they looked each other square in the eye for the first time, as if deciding who should go first. Noah won. Of course. Noah always won.

“I’m afraid I don’t have time for dinner,” he said and the familiar voice caused a tingle to sparkle up Laurel’s spine.

She warned herself that tingling was not in her own best interests and, turning, gave her grandmother the kind of look that was known to quell noisy preschool patients and whiny senior citizens who more often than not gave her a hard time about getting their flu shots. “He doesn’t have time for dinner,” she said, and before she could convince herself this was a perfectly ordinary conversation in perfectly normal circumstances, she turned to Noah. “Why don’t you have time for dinner? What are you doing here, anyway?”

“I just need to get the—” Realizing he was explaining to the wrong person, Noah swung his gaze from Laurel to Maisie. “If you could just get it for me,” he said. “I’ll get out of here. I have a meeting in Chicago tomorrow and a flight out of Cleveland tonight.”

“Tonight? Oh.” Maisie’s smile wilted around the edges. “Oh, dear,” she whispered. “Oh, dear.” Her eyes wide, she looked to Laurel for help.

With a sigh, Laurel surrendered. “What Maisie means,” she told Noah, “is that it’s seven forty-five. The last ferry for the mainland left forty-five minutes ago.”

Noah pinned Maisie with a look. “Are you telling me—”

Maisie turned to Laurel.

Feeling like an interpreter caught in the middle of two people who weren’t going to speak the same language, even if one of them knew what the other was saying, Laurel rolled her eyes. “What that means is you can’t leave. Not tonight.” Another thought occurred to her and she brightened. “Unless you charter a plane over at the airport and—”

“Oh, I don’t think so, dear.” Maisie’s grin was as sheepish as her smile was mischievous. “Frank at the airfield has a granddaughter, you know. And today’s her birthday. He left for Toledo this morning, so he could celebrate with the family. I hear he’s not coming back until tomorrow.”

“So…” There was only one conclusion, but apparently Noah didn’t quite have the nerve to put it into words. Whatever he was doing there, it was obvious he was getting more than he bargained for.

“So you’ll stay the night!” Maisie’s mind was made up, and she brushed her hands together as if she could get rid of the problem that easily.

But, though Maisie knew Noah, she didn’t know him nearly as well as Laurel did. And Laurel knew he wasn’t about to get railroaded. Getting railroaded wasn’t his style. Especially when getting railroaded meant staying on the island.

It was the second time in as many minutes that Laurel’s memories threatened to overwhelm her. She didn’t give a damn if Maisie noticed. She intended on reading her grandmother the riot act later for cavorting with the enemy. But come hell or high water, there was no way she was going to let Noah know how much seeing him again had thrown her for a loop.

Desperate for some time alone to process everything that was happening, Laurel grabbed the stack of towels and went to the linen room on the far side of the lobby. She pushed the door open and set the towels on an empty shelf, and when she saw that they weren’t stacked just right, she pulled them out and piled them up again. She wasn’t stalling. At least that’s what she told herself. Right after she told herself that the one and only reason her hands were shaking, and her knees were weak, and her heart was flopping around like a Lake Erie walleye was that there was a touch of flu going around the island and she’d probably picked up the bug at the clinic.

The strategy worked. For exactly fifteen seconds. Fifteen seconds of peace and quiet. Fifteen seconds of deluding herself. Fifteen seconds, and she knew there was only so long she could hide.

Smoothing a hand over her green-and-blue sweater, Laurel forced herself to the front desk. She was just in time to see Maisie shaking her head.

“No room at the hotel over near the marina,” she was telling Noah. “Booked solid. Fishermen. I know that for a fact because I saw them check in this morning when I stopped in to say hello.”

“Then there’s got to be another bed-and-breakfast,” Noah ventured. He must have realized how tacky he sounded because he amended the statement instantly. “Not that this doesn’t look like a terrific place. It does. Maisie, you’ve done wonders with it. But it doesn’t look like there’s anyone else staying here tonight, and I wouldn’t want you to go to any trouble just because of me, and—”

“No trouble at all!” Maisie grinned like the Cheshire cat. “And you’re right. There are no other guests. You’ll have your pick of the rooms. Won’t that be nice? Now let’s see. What do you need?” Her snowy eyebrows raised, Maisie looked around as if she expected to find Noah’s luggage. Of course, he didn’t have any. When he walked into Cupid’s Hideaway, he had no intention of staying.

“Toothbrush? Toothpaste? Comb? Mouthwash?” Maisie ticked off the list on her fingers. “We have it all in the gift shop, but of course we wouldn’t expect an old friend to pay.”

“He’s not an old friend,” Laurel said.

“I’m not an old friend,” Noah concluded at the same time.

Maisie laughed, the sound of it brushing softly against the lacy curtains and the pink lightbulbs and the gold cherubs painted on the ceiling, which featured a perfect blue sky studded with fluffy white clouds. “Of course you are,” she said, firmly ignoring Laurel. She turned a smile on Noah that was every bit as persuasive as his own and blushed as pink as the angora sweater she was wearing. “You’re my old friend. I hope you haven’t forgotten that. And I would never ask an old friend to be anything but a guest in my establishment. No more arguments,” she said when Noah opened his mouth to speak. “It’s my fault you missed the ferry. I should have warned you the schedule has changed now that it’s fall and the tourist season is over. The least I can do is offer you a place to stay for the night and a nice, hot breakfast in the morning. Be a sweetie, will you, Laurel? Help Noah pick out what he needs from the gift shop and then get him settled in a room.”

Gift shop? Room?

For a couple minutes, Laurel had been lulled into thinking she had some semblance of control. She’d spoken to Noah, she’d stood within three feet of him and she hadn’t lost her cool or the self-respect it had taken her four long years to rebuild. But now Maisie was asking the impossible. The gift shop? Laurel looked that way. Because it was late and there were no guests, the lights in the shop were off but she knew what was waiting in the darkness beyond the closed door. Edible underwear. Furry handcuffs. See-through nighties. Just thinking about it all made Laurel’s face get hot and her insides turns to mush. The gift shop with anyone else, she could handle. The gift shop with Noah? She curled her fingers into her palms and wrapped her thumbs around them, fighting to regain control.

Walking into Maisie’s gift shop with Noah would be like walking through Yellowstone Park with a Hi Bears! I’ve Got Food sign around her neck.

“Grandma, I—”

Before Laurel could say another word, the front door popped open and a familiar voice echoed through the inn. “Where’s my little honey bunch?”

At the sight of Dr. Sam Ross, Maisie’s cheeks got a little rosier and her twinkle intensified. Doc Ross was a mainstay on the island, a general practitioner who had been treating everything from broken bones to tourists who had partied a little too hardy, for as long as Laurel could remember. He’d retired four years earlier and much to Laurel’s delight, he had accepted her offer to buy his practice. Doc Ross was a big, blunt man with a ruddy complexion and iron-gray hair. In the over-seventy crowd, he was the pick of the litter, the bachelor most sought after by the island’s blue-haired matrons. Much to their dismay, Doc only had eyes for Maisie. There was no doubt that Maisie returned his affections, but no chance, or so she said, that she was looking for anything permanent. Not at this stage of the game. That didn’t stop Doc from trying. Even though it must have been the third or fourth time that week he’d seen her, he carried a dozen red roses and a bottle of champagne, and when he got to the front desk, he presented them to Maisie with a flourish.

“Oh!” Maisie twittered like a schoolgirl. She introduced Noah quickly, right before she took Doc’s arm and headed toward the back of the house and her private rooms.

She called to Noah over her shoulder, “Laurel will take care of you!”

“Oh, no, you’re not getting away that easily.” Laurel went after her grandmother. She untangled her from Doc’s grip and pulled her into a corner. “What’s going on here?” she asked.

“I don’t know what you mean, dear.” Maisie had the nerve to look straight into Laurel’s eyes and smile. She giggled, and the color rose brighter than ever in her cheeks. “If you’re talking about me and Doc, you know the answer. A woman has needs.” She gave Laurel a broad wink and when all Laurel did was stare at her in wonder, her grandmother tapped her on the arm and leaned close. “All women do, sweetie. Maybe it’s time you remembered that.”

“You know that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about him.” Laurel shot a look over to her shoulder at Noah.

“Yes, I know,” Maisie said. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about, too. Good night, dear.”

Too stunned to move, Laurel watched Maisie and Doc disappear into the long hall past the kitchen. A second later, the door to Maisie’s private rooms closed and the muffled strains of La Bohème started up from Maisie’s CD player and seeped through Cupid’s Hideaway.

Needs?

Laurel was perfectly willing to accept that she had needs. Nobody had to point that out. She’d even indulged them a time or two in the years since she’d returned to the island and opened her practice. It was never anything serious. How could it be? Except for the small population that stayed on the island year round, most of the men she met were tourists. And there was one thing about tourists. They never stayed around.

Kind of like Noah.

The thought vibrated through her, deep, undeniable and bitter. But before she had a chance to remind herself this was not the time and place to think about it, the air warmed around her. She didn’t need to turn around to know Noah had come nearer.

A second later, she felt the brush of his hand against her shoulder.

“You still wear the same perfume,” he said.