With This Kiss (15 page)

Unfortunately, this time she was very much afraid that she was holding the gun up to her marriage.

How many years had he tried to stay away from this conversation? Bill had loved Elizabeth so much that he couldn’t let himself imagine a life without her.

More and more often he had to wonder if he’d been wrong.

If only they hadn’t started this renovation. If only he’d
continued to put off fixing up their own home, especially their bedroom.

For years she’d been on him to redo the floors, but he’d always told her the same thing: that he didn’t feel comfortable turning away business, especially as they got closer to retirement age and his body showed more signs of wearing out beneath the stress of hammers and electric saws and squatting in awkward positions.

But those had been only superficial reasons. In truth—and it was a truth he wasn’t particularly comfortable admitting to himself—he’d been worried about spending so many hours in the house with Elizabeth. They seemed to manage best with evenings and weekends.

He should have been less surprised to see all of his fears had become reality, but he’d been practicing denial for so long that actually facing reality was a bigger job than hauling a hundred yards of dirt out of a muddy hole in the ground.

He could smell smoke and it was pure relief to leave the bedroom and rush down into the kitchen, even when he saw black smoke pouring out of the oven.

“Oh no, my pie!” Elizabeth tried to push past him to get to it.

He caught her arm before she could open the oven and burn herself with the steam that was itching to escape.

“Let me go!”

She was talking about the oven and her burned pie, but he had to wonder if “Let me go” was what she’d really been saying to him all these years. Only he hadn’t wanted to listen.

“I can’t let you burn yourself.”

It didn’t matter that he was angry with her, that she’d
hurt him deeper than she ever had before with what she’d just said up in their bedroom.

He simply couldn’t stand the thought of Elizabeth ever being hurt.

Her eyes cleared and she stepped back. “You’re right.”

When she’d backed up out of the way of the smoke, Bill slowly, carefully, stood to the side of the oven and opened it. Just as he’d expected, sizzling hot smoke flew out of it.

The pie was a black lump of coal on the middle rack.

Elizabeth was opening windows to let out the smoke, but Bill knew the smell would linger long after this afternoon. Just as the words that had been laid between them would remain.

“If I start right now, I can probably get another pie made before Sean comes for dinner.”

“I don’t think dinner with Sean tonight is such a good idea.”

“He’s our son. We can’t let our problems get in the way of finally getting a chance to sit down with him for a few hours tonight.”

Damn it. She was right. He’d missed his son a great deal these past years that Sean had been out traveling the world making deals.

“Then you’d better make the pie. I’ll go clean up upstairs and see if anything can be salvaged.”

She winced at his words, even though he would have sworn he’d been talking about the floors and nothing else.

But he’d never been comfortable telling lies. Which would account for the unease that had been building up inside of him for so many years.

Because hadn’t he been lying to himself about his marriage for nearly twenty years?

He wasn’t a man who spoke without thinking. He needed some time to process what Elizabeth had said, to turn it around in his head and look at it from all angles. Most of all, he needed time to force himself to consider the reality of thirty-six years of marriage coming to an end.

“I’ll put a bottle of paint thinner in the shower for you just in case the finish doesn’t wash right off.” Despite his efforts to the contrary, his voice was strained, rough around the edges where emotion was tearing away at him.

“Bill…”

He wasn’t used to hearing a plea in her voice and that was what made him stop halfway out of the kitchen and turn around.

Elizabeth was the strongest person he knew. Even stronger than his mother. But now, for the first time in a very long time, she looked like she was about to break. Any other time, he would have been there holding her, caring for her.

“I didn’t—” She paused to wipe away a tear falling down her cheek. “What I said upstairs, I didn’t mean it.”

But they both knew she had. That she still did. They’d been limping along half-broken for too long.

Knowing he was going to regret it, but unable to stop himself, he said, “Do you know why I finally decided to refinish the floors?”

His wife—still lovely after thirty-six years, so beautiful that she was still turning other men’s heads at fifty—blinked at him from her post by the window. “Why?”

“Because I was hoping fixing the floors might fix us.”

“Oh, Bill, I—”

He held up both hands to stop her. “But you’re exactly right. Shiny new floorboards aren’t going to heal what’s
broken between us. Not when one little mistake means having to rip them up and throw them away.”

“What are you saying?” Her mouth was trembling and although there were no more tears rolling down her cheeks, her eyes were bright with them.

“I don’t know yet, Elizabeth. I don’t know. Let’s have dinner with Sean tonight and take it from there.”

“Okay.”

But it wasn’t.

A
fter a flurry of check-ins where she’d mentally been only half there while dealing with the inn’s guests, Rebecca was finally alone at the front desk again.

She was surprised that Sean hadn’t shown his face yet. Was he avoiding her after the weird day they’d had? Between Mark showing up and the strange sounds in her bedroom and then their almost-fight about her past… well, she supposed she wouldn’t blame him for keeping his distance. Heck, wasn’t that exactly what she’d told herself she was going to do?

In any case, she had plenty of other things to worry about besides Sean. She picked up Mr. Radin’s petition and thumbed through it again, but she shouldn’t have bothered. She already knew what it said by heart.

She was going to have to cancel the festival.

The Adirondack Preservation Council hadn’t made a judgment against the festival. But the petition, at this point, was enough to put a halt to the proceedings until the council reviewed all of the arguments for both sides along with the current park policies.

And the next formal review session wasn’t for three weeks… one full week after the Tapping of the Maples Festival should have already taken place.

She’d been trying to push away her broken heart over losing something that had meant so much to her personally all morning and afternoon. But given how absentminded she’d been as she’d checked in guests, making mistakes she’d never made before, like mixing up keys and forgetting names, she clearly hadn’t been doing a good job of it.

All these weeks she’d thought she was doing such a good job of holding it together. Heck, hadn’t she just been so proud of how strong she was becoming?

Right now she felt anything but strong.

Barely twelve hours ago Sean had pointed out—yet again—that she was being pulled in more directions than she could handle. She’d argued with him then, knowing how close she was to pulling off the festival, that there were only a few last-minute details to attend to.

But trying to convince the Adirondack Preservation Council to push her festival forward was way more than a last-minute detail.

It figured that Sean would finally make his appearance when she was feeling lower than low.

Frustration with Mr. Radin and his stupid petition, with Stu for leaving her to deal with everything alone, and with Sean for making her feel things she had no business feeling had her opening her mouth and throwing out a sarcastic “Guess what?”

Sean raised an eyebrow at her sharp tone as he put a tray down on the counter. She hadn’t noticed that he was carrying a tray with cookies and two cups of coffee.
While she didn’t need him to make sure she stayed fed and hydrated, she couldn’t deny that there was something sweet about the way he always did it anyway.

“You’ll be pleased to hear that the festival is off.”

He frowned. “What are you talking about?”

She slid the petition across the counter. “This.”

He looked at it with an incredulous expression. “There’s a petition? Against your festival?”

“Growing up here, I’m sure you remember Mr. Radin.”

He thought about it for a moment. “Wait a minute, is he the bored old man who likes to try to stir up trouble?”

She touched the tip of her nose with her index finger. “Bingo! He’s filed a petition against my festival with the Adirondack Preservation Council.” She pointed to the bound papers. “It’s all right there in black and white.”

He began to flip through the bound pages. “I can’t believe he’d do this.” He shifted his gaze from the papers back to her. “What are you going to do about it?”

She shrugged, all the fight from the previous night knocked out of her. It was time to be practical, rather than to try to hold onto the festival out of emotion, simply because she’d been so proud of what she’d done all by herself.

“In order to fight the petition I need to present my case at the next council meeting in three weeks. Even if the meeting had been early enough to attend before the festival date, it would probably be a full-time job to comb through all of the rules and regulations in the hopes of convincing the council.” She couldn’t read his expression as she continued with, “You were right last night. I can do only so much.”

She reached out for a cookie as if their conversation
was no big deal, but the tremble in her hands gave her away, and she snatched her hand back before she touched the chocolate chip cookie. She couldn’t have choked it down in any case.

She hoped he hadn’t noticed the way she was falling apart, one little piece at a time. But Sean hadn’t taken his eyes off her.

And she already knew that he noticed everything.

Finally, he said, “You didn’t seem to think I was right last night.”

Why was he pushing her? Why couldn’t he just take his victory?

Instead of replying, she took a deep breath and said, “A contractor will be out soon to look at the pipes and roof.”

It was clear that he knew she was changing the subject on purpose. She barely managed to hold his gaze when all she wanted to do was run up the stairs and feel sorry for herself. But she had a job to do running the inn.

She wasn’t going to lose that too just because everything else had fallen apart.

After several long beats, he responded, “Good.”

Still not wanting to talk about Mr. Radin or the petition or her now-lost festival, she said, “I’ve heard that they used to tell ghost stories about the inn. Do you remember any from when you were a kid?”

He almost smiled at that, and she longed—foolishly—to see him smile again. Just one more time.

“A few. When we were kids we used to scare each other around the campfire by sneaking up on each other and pretending to be the ghost.”

She shouldn’t have been able to picture Sean as a young boy playing pranks on his friends, but strangely she could.

“I just can’t stop thinking about where those noises could have come from,” she said, “and why my bedroom is always so cold.” Except for last night, of course, when Sean had been there with her.

“You don’t think there’s a ghost in your bedroom, do you?”

Great, all she needed was for her boss to think she was losing her mind. She should have known better than to bring up the old ghost stories with him. Here’s what she should do: she should open up her mouth and say, “
No, I don’t think there’s a ghost in my bedroom. How ridiculous.
”

Of course, her horrible propensity of not being able to tell a lie had her shutting her mouth on the word
no
and saying, in its place, “What else do you think could be making my bedroom so cold? What else could be making those noises?

“Ghosts don’t exist, Rebecca. But maybe you should move into another room until we resolve the issue.”

“The inn is booked solid for the next week.”

“In that case, I’ll find another place to stay and you can use my suite.”

But even though it might have made some sense for her to sleep in a quiet, warm bedroom, everything in Rebecca protested the thought of willingly leaving her rooms. She had the sense that it was a slippery slope. First, she’d be out of her suite. Next, she’d be out of the inn altogether, finding another innkeeper job in another small town.

And she’d never see Sean again.

The thought shocked her enough that she backed away from him and tripped over a box of fliers UPS had delivered an hour ago for her festival.

She didn’t know how Sean got around the counter so fast, but his arms were holding her before she could knock her head onto something sharp and hard.