by Jo McNally
He shrugged. “While you were working on all that new business you’ve been raking in, I was up here with a hammer and a saw.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You told me you were working in the barn.”
He gestured around the room. “Welcome to the barn.”
She turned a full three-sixty, taking it all in one more time. “It’s...perfect. But you didn’t have to...”
Luke tugged her into his arms—forever her favorite place to be. “Yeah, I did. Every time I think about how I almost let you walk away...” He rested his forehead on hers, eyes tightly closed. “If you hadn’t...”
She put her hands on his face and waited for him to look into her eyes and hear her. “Don’t go there, Luke.” The corner of her mouth lifted. “Besides, you’re pretty stubborn, and I can totally see you hiding my car keys or locking me up here so that I couldn’t leave.”
His soft laughter blew warm across her skin. “Not a bad idea. I wouldn’t have let you walk away. You’d be taking my heart with you.” His shoulder lifted. “And you know I’m kind of a last-minute sort of guy.”
“Exactly.” She grinned and pressed her hand on his chest. “That heart of yours was trying to do the right thing. You were standing back, even though you loved me, because you thought leaving was best for me.” She kissed his lips, then smiled against his mouth. “I think the last-minute guy would have come to his senses eventually, even if it was after I’d already packed my car full.”
He laughed out loud at that, then kissed her, hard and deep, squeezing her tight. “I think you’re right. And I know I love you. More every day.”
Her heart fluttered in her chest. Their love was as much a miracle to her as it was to him.
“I love you, too, but...what does that have to do with building me an office?”
“Come here.” He led her back to the wall by the front door, and tugged on the linen tablecloth that covered the sign. It was made to look like the bottom of an oak barrel, but the round center was a smoked mirror. There was one line of script lettering in gold leaf.
Whitney Rutledge, CPA
She couldn’t breathe for a moment. Rutledge? Was he...? She turned, and Luke answered her question by dropping to one knee. Oh. My. God.
“I want you to stay here, Whitney. Forever. As my wife. So what do you say? Ready to marry a Rutledge boy?”
Her laughter bubbled up. “I’ve heard rumors about those Rutledge boys.” She sobered when he took her hand and held up a delicate diamond ring.
“So...will you?” One brow rose in question.
When I give my word, it sticks.
“Do you promise to love me forever?” she whispered. The warmth in his eyes told her he knew what she was asking.
“You have my word. I’ll stick, Whitney. For good.”
“Then...yes!”
He slid the ring on and leaped to his feet, lifting her in the air and spinning her before letting her slide down his chest. They kissed—sweetly at first, then it deepened and she wound her fingers into his hair. There was a nice, big sofa right over there, and she tugged him toward it.
“No can do, babe.” His voice was pained.
She pulled back, confused.
He chuckled and shook his head. “One more surprise—there’s a party waiting for us downstairs.”
She cocked her head. Sure enough, she could hear laughing voices below.
“Who...?”
“Everybody.” He rolled his eyes, then glanced at the ring sparkling on her hand and shrugged. “You’re not the only one who can conspire with those gray hairs in the book club. It’s part engagement party and part open house for your new office.”
“Hmm. Engagement party, huh? Pretty sure of yourself, weren’t you?”
“Let’s call it hopeful. Hope is kind of a new thing for me, and I’m liking it so far.”
She kissed him, then turned and tugged him toward the door.
“Okay, let’s go party. But when everyone leaves, I’m hopeful we’ll come back up here to try out that sofa.”
He let out a bark of laughter, glancing back at the sofa over his shoulder. “You have my word we’ll get naked on that sofa soon. And often. But first, I want to show off my fiancée to our friends.”
She headed out the door, amazed at the change in Luke since the festival. He had hope. He had love. And he finally realized he had friends here in Rendezvous Falls. They were all waiting at the base of the stairs—Helen and the book club cohorts, Father Joe, Evie and Mark, Steve Jenkins and others from town—cheering and raising their glasses high.
Their friends. Their family. Their hope. Their beginning.
* * *
Read on for a sneak peek at the next book in Jo McNally’s charming, funny and heart-tugging Rendezvous Falls series, Stealing Kisses in the Snow.
Stealing Kisses in the Snow
by Jo McNally
PIPER MONTGOMERY WAS plunging the toilet in room twelve of the Taggart Inn when her four-year-old daughter announced she wanted to dress up as Deadpool for Halloween.
It wasn’t even ten o’clock in the morning, and this was already turning into one of those days. Piper was pretty sure she already knew the answer to her next question, but she asked anyway.
“Lily, where did you even hear of Deadpool?”
Lily brushed her white-blond curls from her face with a big smile. “Ethan told me! He said Deadpool was a superhero and he wears red and red’s my favorite color, so it’s perfect!”
Piper sat back on her heels on the marble bathroom floor. Mr. and Mrs. Carlisle would be finished with breakfast soon, and they’d expect their bathroom to be fully functional when they got back. But Lily’s grandparents would have some expectations, too. She could just imagine the look of horror on Susan Montgomery’s face if Lily dressed up as a foul-mouthed superhero.
“But Grandma Montgomery already bought you that pretty butterfly costume, remember?”
Lily’s face scrunched. “Ethan says butterflies are stupid. He says...”
“Yeah, Ethan says a lot of things.” Her grip tightened on the wooden plunger handle, wrinkling the rubber gloves she was wearing. She had no doubt this whole Deadpool idea was her thirteen-year-old son’s payback because she told him he might be too old for trick-or-treating this year. Or it could be payback for her working three jobs. Or for moving into the house he claimed to hate. Or it could just be payback for the fact that Piper was his mother, which seemed to be on the top of his resentment list lately. “I think Ethan was teasing you, honey. He knows you’re too young to be Deadpool. It’s not appropriate.”
“Oh! I know what ‘appropriate’ means!” Lily, often light-years ahead of her age, loved big words. “It means what people expect, right? So people wouldn’t expect me to be Deadpool and they wouldn’t like it?”
Piper could think of one person who definitely wouldn’t like it. “That’s right, honey. Let’s talk about this later and we’ll come up with something for you to wear that will make everyone happy.” Except Ethan, of course, but making her son happy seemed a lost cause these days.
She put her frustration into her plunging efforts, and was relieved when the toilet drained with a whoosh. Lily clapped her hands and started dancing. Victory dances for toilets that flushed. Livin’ the good life. Piper wiped down the bathroom, then shooed her daughter out to the hall.
Plumbing wasn’t normally her responsibility at the B&B. She usually just handled cooking breakfast and some cleaning for the owner, Iris Taggart. But Iris broke her hip a week ago, so Piper was, as the only employee, the Woman in Charge. Iris was eighty, so “temporarily” could last awhile. And as long as Piper was in charge, she was not paying a plumber a hundred bucks for a job she could handle on her own.
She’d just peeled off her rubber gloves and tucked them, and the plunger, into the hallway closet whe
n Mr. Carlisle came up the stairs. Just in time. She doubted the guests she’d served salted caramel pancakes to forty minutes earlier would want to see their cook with a toilet plunger in her hand. She gave him a bright smile as she grabbed Lily to stop her from twirling and singing about toilets.
“Your room is all set, Mr. Carlisle. So sorry for any inconvenience. If you’d like, I can box up some of those cookies your wife liked so much so you’ll have a snack while you tour the wineries today.”
“That was fast. Then again, you probably have a plumber on call with a place this ancient.” He looked around the hallway, with its bold floral wallpaper, and wrinkled his nose. Piper had been campaigning for a while now to get Iris to update the decor, but the old woman had built this business and decorated it herself, and she wasn’t a fan of change. Mr. Carlisle shook his head as he put his key in the door. “No offense, but the wineries and this place are my wife’s idea of a good time, not mine. But I’ve heard there’s a distillery around here, so I’m hoping that’ll be worth the drive from Phillie.”
“Eagle Rock Distillery? Oh, you’ll love it. Ben Wilson has done a great job up there, and the views this time of year are spectacular. And if your wife likes wineries, you’ll drive right by one of my favorites on the way up there—Falls Legend Winery on Lakeview Road.” She moved past him toward the main staircase. “That way you’ll both have a good time today!”
Lily nodded solemnly, precocious as ever. “Yes, the views at Ben’s are spectac-alar this time of year.”
Mr. Carlisle chuckled, leaning down to the little girl’s level. “So you’ve spent a lot of time at the whiskey distillery, have you?”
Lily’s blue eyes were shining at being talked to like an adult. She was in way too much of a hurry to grow up.
“Oh, yes! Grandma and Grandpa take me there. Mr. Ben has a donkey named Rocky, and I feed him carrots. Mr. Ben was my daddy’s best friend, but my daddy’s dead, so Mr. Ben says he’s my best friend now.”
Piper had to give John Carlisle credit. He hid his shock well, his smile barely faltering as Lily info-dumped all over him. Meanwhile, Piper was adding talk to Ben to her to-do list. Ben Wilson was a great guy. Her in-laws adored him, and she’d already suspected Susan had decided he was the “anointed one” to take over Paul’s role as husband and father. But, like so many other things, that wasn’t Susan’s—or Ben’s—decision to make.
“Come on, peanut. Momma has work to do.” She tugged Lily toward the stairs. “Enjoy your day, Mr. Carlisle!”
Once downstairs, Piper started clearing the dining room. There were only three rooms occupied last night, but the weekend ahead was fully booked. Not only was it the peak of leaf-peeping season, it was also Harvest Fest weekend in Rendezvous Falls. The festival would take place downtown, just a few blocks from the Taggart Inn. Iris usually had the porches decorated and set up for folks to enjoy tea and spice cookies to showcase the bed-and-breakfast. But it was already Wednesday and Piper had no idea how she would get the decorating done in time, much less the food.
“Look, Momma! I’m an Iroquois princess!” Lily had grabbed a garland of brown-and-gold silk leaves from the bannister of the formal staircase and wrapped it around her head like a crown. Piper had been reading a children’s book aloud to Lily about the rich Iroquois history in the Finger Lakes region of New York, and the many legends handed down through centuries.
“Very pretty, Lily. Just be careful not to pull those down by accident, okay?” At least Piper had managed to get some autumn decorations inside of the inn, even if it was mostly pumpkins and gourds and silk leaves. Iris had been hauling out the boxes of decorations when she took the fall that led to her broken hip. Thank god Piper had been cleaning a room on the second floor and heard the awful thud and Iris’s cry of pain from above. Another half hour and the elderly woman would have been lying up there the whole day before anyone knew she was hurt.
“Momma, I’m going to go feed Mr. Whiskers, okay? Because I’m responsible for him.” Lily had been thrilled when Iris pronounced her the cat’s caretaker while she was recovering.
“Just be sure not to let him out of Iris’s apartment, and lock the door when you leave.” Lily started to skip away as Piper called out one more order. “And no playing in the guest areas!”
The Victorian mansion, built in the late 1800s, had three floors plus a full attic and a creepy basement. The first floor held several common rooms for guests to enjoy, a large dining room, the kitchen and Iris’s living quarters in the back. When Piper bought the house next door, she’d started helping Iris part-time, eager for any job she could find. The elderly woman had gradually added more duties to Piper’s list, and she was glad for the extra hours. Even better, Iris didn’t mind her bringing her daughter with her. She didn’t have live-in babysitters these days, unless you counted Ethan. But he was barely a reliable babysitter in the afternoons, much less in the early mornings. Lily bounced out of bed every day raring to go, but Ethan was more of a don’t-talk-to-me-until-noon kid.
Iris insisted she didn’t mind the endlessly active girl being around while Piper worked, as long as she didn’t disturb the guests. Of course, Lily did that on a fairly regular basis, but most of the time the guests were charmed by her. She was so much like her father, with her ability to make people just like putty in her hands.
Piper loaded breakfast dishes into the commercial dishwasher sitting on the stainless steel kitchen counter. The big kitchen was the one area in the inn where Iris didn’t mind a modern look. There was stainless steel everywhere, including the oversize appliances and backsplash. It was sterile enough to be a hospital operating room. Piper had made sure of that, spending her first month here scrubbing every surface until it gleamed.
“Momma!” Lily’s shriek as she ran into the kitchen startled Piper so much she almost dropped the platter she was holding. She should be used to the child by now, but tell that to her heart that just tried leaping out of her chest.
“Lily! Please don’t scream like that. There are guests...”
“But, Momma, I saw a giant! He was walking right down the hall—a real live giant!”
Piper probably had Ethan to thank for this, too. He tried to tell Lily the inn was haunted by monsters. Luckily, her fearless little daughter loved that idea, so his plan to scare her had failed. But Piper was going to have yet another talk with him. Seriously? Giants now?
“Lily, it’s not nice to tell stories.” She talked over her daughter’s objection. “I know, your brother loves tall tales, but we should always tell the truth, okay? Did you take care of Mr. Whiskers? Did you lock Iris’s door?”
“Yes, but, Momma, that’s when I saw him! A big, shaggy giant dressed in black!”
Piper slid the door open on the dishwasher and rolled the steaming tray out onto the counter. She glanced at her watch. Damn, she was going to be late to the insurance office if she didn’t get moving. They’d been understanding of her need to help Iris more, but Piper still needed both jobs. She humored her daughter to move things along.
“Okay, Lily. If you see that giant again, you bring him to me so I can tell him to stop hanging around here during the day. That’s bad for business.”
Lily giggled and dashed out of the kitchen before Piper could tell her they were leaving soon. She put away the last of the dishes and tossed the dishrag into the bin to be washed. She was mopping up the last corner of the floor when she heard the kitchen door open again. Good—Lily hadn’t wandered far.
“I’m glad you’re back, sweetie. I’m almost done, so—”
“Momma! I found the giant! Isn’t he humongous?”
Piper turned and froze, clutching the mop handle tightly. Lily was standing in the doorway, holding hands with a stranger. Well over six feet tall, with straggly wet hair hanging to his shoulders and a scruffy beard, the man was clothed entirely in black leather, including leather chaps on his long legs. He had
the deepest-set eyes Piper had ever seen, shadowed under heavy dark brows. With his size and overall menacing appearance, it was no wonder Lily thought he was a giant.
And he was holding her daughter’s tiny hand.
Piper bristled, brandishing the mop handle in front of her like a sword as she went toward him. “You let her go right this minute! And get out of here! I’m calling the police...” She fumbled to get her phone out of her back pocket while still aiming the mop at him. Her voice was fast approaching a scream. “You get the hell away from my daughter and get out!”
* * *
LOGAN TAGGART HAD been thrown out of plenty of places in his lifetime, but never by a pretty little ponytailed momma wearing a yellow apron. He managed to squelch his amusement, knowing it would be a mistake to laugh.
The golden-haired munchkin clutching his fingers right now was clearly the woman’s daughter, and he probably looked like an ax murderer. He gently freed himself from the child and stepped back, raising both hands and modulating his voice carefully.
“I’m sorry. The little girl said she wanted me to go to the kitchen, and I was heading here anyway...”
The woman was flummoxed for a moment. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, her blue eyes wild. She raised the mop higher with one hand, then dropped her phone on the counter with the other so she could snatch her daughter’s hand and tug her to safety behind her. She waved the mop again, as if that would really protect her if he posed a threat. He was a foot taller and close to a hundred pounds heavier than she was. The biggest danger to him was in her other hand—the cell phone she’d picked up again.
“Please don’t call the police,” Logan said, trying to sound as reasonable as possible. “It’ll upset the guests and I haven’t done anything wrong.”
The woman hesitated, glancing back at her daughter. Mama bear had saved her cub. She swallowed a couple times, then gestured to the door with the mop. Her voice shook. “You need to go.”