With This Kiss (4 page)

His father’s face lit up. “Son, welcome home.” Bill’s arms were warm around his shoulders.

His grandmother, Celeste, was there a moment later, giving him a kiss on the cheek, then holding him still for a long moment so that her wise eyes could take in far more than he’d planned to give away. Just like she always did.

“You’ve met Rebecca?” He nodded and she smiled. “Lovely girl, isn’t she?”

Something about his grandmother’s smile shook him. Fortunately, his father asking, “You’ve heard about Stu and the wedding, I take it?” saved him from having to reply.

Sean nodded. “I’m heading upstairs right now to make some calls to his friends and see what I can find out.”

“You can’t stay at the reception a little longer?” his mother suggested, a hint of desperation at wanting to spend more time with him pulling at her words. “I know Andi and Nate would love to have you here.”

As if the calls to Stu’s friends weren’t enough of a reason for him to need to leave right away, he told her, “I’ve got to contact my secretary to see if there was a note from Stu.”

He was about to walk away when he felt his mother’s cold hand on his arm. When he was a child, her arms had
been warm, and he’d loved to sit with her while she read him books and told him fairy tales before bed. They’d once been so close.

But he hadn’t been a child for a very long time.

And he knew better than to believe in fairy tales.

“It really is good to have you home, honey. We’ve all missed you.”

He’d missed being home, missed the lake, the mountains, the clear air. But he hadn’t missed the way the knot in his gut tightened, grew, whenever he was here.

He needed to find out where his brother had gone and bring him home so that things could go back to the way they were, as quickly as possible… and Sean could leave Emerald Lake again.

W
as it kind of tense down there or was it just me?”

Carefully sewing the hole shut on Andi’s dress, Rebecca pulled a pin out from between her lips and slid it into the strawberry-shaped cushion.

“Sean didn’t know that Stu and I split up,” she explained to her clearly confused friend. “He came here expecting there to be a wedding tomorrow.”

Andi whistled softly. “And of course Elizabeth had to get right in the middle of it.”

Rebecca bit her tongue. She might not be about to marry into the Murphy family anymore, but she still didn’t feel right saying anything about how uncomfortable Elizabeth made her feel, even though Stu’s mother had never been particularly warm and embracing.

“She’s just concerned about her son.”

“I know she is. We all are.”

Rebecca was hoping Andi would drop it. But she’d come to know her friend well enough in the last six months to know better. Andi’s laser focus had made everything she’d ever touched a huge success. Only love
had eluded her for a decade. Thankfully, though, her friend had found true love in the end.

“I just don’t get it,” Andi finally said. “You’re every mother’s dream daughter-in-law, you know?”

The thing was, Rebecca had noticed Elizabeth acting strange around Sean, too. Completely different from how she behaved around Stu. His mother had always taken care of Stu, almost to the point of being overly nurturing. With Sean, she’d seemed tense. Worried.

Not knowing how to fake either a smile or an easy response, Rebecca pretended to be busy tying off the thread on Andi’s silk gown instead.

“I haven’t seen Sean in years,” Andi mused as Rebecca finished up. “He and Stu were always close. I’m surprised he didn’t know about the wedding being off.”

“Me too,” Rebecca admitted.

That was all she was going to admit. Not that her reaction to looking up and seeing Sean staring at her had been more powerful than any reaction she’d had to another man.

Ever.

Even realizing he was Stu’s older brother hadn’t been enough to stop feeling like fireworks were constantly shooting off in the middle of her stomach when he looked at her.

“He hasn’t gotten any worse looking, that’s for sure. Back in high school, pretty much everyone had a crush on him.” Andi smoothed her hand over the fix-it job Rebecca had done with needle and thread as she said, “I swear the scar he got on his face after the car accident only made the girls want him more. Must have been all that danger and mystery swirling around him, I guess.”

Rebecca had almost dropped the box of pins at the thought of Sean being in a car accident, even though she didn’t know him at all.

“He had a scar?”

Andi shot her a strange look. “He still does.”

“I didn’t see it.”

“It’s on his left cheek. Lower down. It’s hard to miss.”

Rebecca tried to think back to those moments when he’d been holding her close, questioning her about Stu. But all she could see in her mind were his eyes staring into hers, all she could feel were those butterflies scooting around in her belly.

Not wanting to give away too much to Andi—who she’d learned noticed everything around her—Rebecca turned to put her needle away in her sewing box, making sure to let her hair swing over her face as she said in as light a voice as she could manage, “So was he a total heartbreaker in high school?”

“As far as I know he didn’t date anybody at our school.”

Rebecca couldn’t think fast enough to keep herself from turning back to look at Andi in surprise.

Andi shrugged. “Sean’s always been hard to read. You know how those mysterious good-looking types are. Women are always wanting to uncover their hearts. There’s always some poor, delusional girl out there who thinks she’s going to be the one to make him fall.”

“Definitely delusional,” Rebecca agreed. She knew firsthand all about girls like that.

Because she’d been one of them her entire life.

She’d wanted things to work out so badly with Stu that she’d actually accepted his proposal of marriage. And before Stu… well, she’d been even more delusional with
her previous boyfriends. She’d seen only what she wanted to see.

And ignored all of the warning signs.

Never again. She’d never ignore those warning signs again.

Especially given that they’d started flashing bigger and brighter than ever before in the last thirty minutes when she’d been talking with Sean.

Her reaction to him had been beyond anything she’d ever felt before. One look at him standing there against the doorway watching her and she’d almost dropped the entire handful of flower petals.

Yes, just as Andi had said, he was incredibly good looking. Just Rebecca’s type, in fact.

The very type that usually ripped her heart out from her chest and stomped all over it.

“Even though I’ll be in the Bahamas for the next week,” Andi said, “you can always reach me on my cell, day or night if you need me.”

Rebecca gave her friend a warm hug. There was no way she was going to disturb Andi and Nate’s honeymoon. She’d managed to survive the past three weeks of questioning looks—and outright questions from the people of Emerald Lake, especially Elizabeth.

Somehow, she’d find a way to deal with Sean’s questions, too, without giving Stu’s secret away.

Six hours later, Rebecca was rethinking her silent vow to survive whatever came her way alone.

“Such a lovely wedding, Rebecca. We’re just all so sorry you won’t be up there tomorrow with Stu.”

Ugh.

“We’re just so sorry for you, honey. It must be so hard at your age to have to start all over.”

Double ugh.

“I know how overwhelmed you must be running the inn without Stu. I heard Sean was back home to help.”

And no, Sean hadn’t come back home to help her with the inn. God forbid. Ten minutes in the same room was enough to send her head spinning and her heart racing.

Working together would surely do her in completely.

In any case, she couldn’t tell any of Andi and Nate’s guests that Sean had no idea they’d called off the wedding until this morning when he’d arrived for the festivities. Given that it was impossible for her to disappear until everyone went home when there were so many details to take care of, she’d simply tried to look busier—which wasn’t hard during a wedding reception—in the hopes that people would stop asking her questions.

Finally, after the guests had gone and she’d seen the bride and groom off on their way to sunny, sandy beaches, she was back in her room. All she wanted to do was take a long, hot bath and read a good book. But first, she was going to relish the moment this dress came off.

It had looked so pretty in the store. Green satin that picked up the color of her eyes, with light ruching along the side, the knee-length cocktail dress played up the best parts of her figure and hid the worst. She hadn’t told anyone that it was supposed to have been her rehearsal dinner dress.

Figuring it was better to get some use out of the dress after the amount of money she’d spent on it, she’d decided to wear it today. Strangely, it had almost felt like she was reclaiming something by putting it on this morning, the
part of her that didn’t want to look into her closet and always see a dress that meant a canceled wedding. Now the dress would always be associated with Nate and Andi’s wedding instead.

Still, after ten-plus hours running around in it, she couldn’t wait to get into a pair of leggings and a T-shirt instead.

But when she tried to pull the zipper down it wouldn’t go. She tugged and pulled at it until her index finger was scraped sore by the small metal tab.

She desperately wanted to get out of the darn dress. Maybe, she thought, the dress was cursed. There had to be some alternative to cutting it off herself with a pair of scissors, didn’t there?

Just then, the large window in her bedroom that looked out onto Main Street began shaking. She hadn’t noticed the wind earlier in the afternoon—in fact, it had been strangely, ominously still out on the water—but she’d come to learn that the weather changed so fast in the Adirondacks that the sky could go from blinding blue to pelting hail in seconds.

Strangely, with some help from the moonlight she could see that the treetops weren’t blowing. And the flag on city hall was limp. But the window was still shaking.

Stu had fixed up this suite of rooms high in the inn’s attic especially for the two of them to move into after their wedding. Sixty years ago, this bedroom had been the honeymoon suite. A few years later, for some reason that no one seemed to know, it had been converted to storage.

Stu had insisted she move in a month ago and she’d agreed, glad to have the chance to make the rooms feel like home before the wedding, rather than returning from
their honeymoon to an impersonal home. But as she stood in the middle of the bedroom, she felt cold, despite having turned on the heat earlier.

The small hairs on the back of her neck prickled and a rush of air moved over her, almost as if someone had walked by.

Spinning around, she saw that she was still completely alone.

Or was she?

The truth was, she’d always had a vague sense that something wasn’t right about the bedroom. She’d even heard rumors during the months she’d worked at the inn that it had been haunted in the past. And even though she’d laughed it off, the truth was that over the past few weeks—since she and Stu had called off their wedding—she wasn’t sure it was completely ridiculous anymore.

As goose bumps ran up her exposed arms, she suddenly wondered what on earth she was doing standing there thinking about ghosts and spirits. And as her stomach growled, she decided her bath could wait. First, she’d go back downstairs and have a snack. She knew there was leftover cake. Plenty of it. Considering she hadn’t eaten much all day—and how rough the day had ended up being—she figured she deserved a big slice of cake.

Maybe two.

Besides, even though she’d sent her employees home, maybe if she was lucky a guest would be awake and reading in the common rooms downstairs and could help her unstick the zipper on her dress.

She just couldn’t stand the thought of cutting it up. Not when that would feel like giving in. Like losing.

So the dress was staying on for the time being. Shoes,
however, weren’t going to happen again tonight. The thought of putting her heels back on had her wincing.

Her feet bare, she left her living room and walked out into the private hallway. Well, not so private anymore, since Stu always kept a small suite here for Sean’s visits into town—which had never happened until today. Not wanting to run into him again, she hurried past his door and down the stairs.

Picking up stray things as she made her way through the inn and moving them to their proper places, keeping an eye out for stray guests to help with her zipper but seeing none, unfortunately, it took her longer than it should have to get to the inn’s kitchen. Her stomach felt like it was eating itself by the time she pushed open the door.

At which point she lost her appetite altogether.

Because Sean was sitting on one of the stools, tucking into his own piece of wedding cake.