First Crush

by Ashley Ludwig

  “But, I didn’t pay for—”

  “Consider it a welcome home gift.”

  She angled the seat and mirror back to her favored positions, realizing that although Nick was strong, tall, and protective, he wasn’t standing guard for her. Not really. Everything he did for her was to make up for how he’d failed Rebecca. Natalie would do well to remember that.

  She placed his rose in the dashboard bud vase. “Thanks for today.”

  “You’re welcome.” He squeezed her hand through the window. “I’ll see you around.”

  She pulled away from the lights and the buzz of the mall traffic, reaching for peace. The worry her engine would shut off at any moment evaporated from her shoulders as if it had never been there, and that was because of Nick. She wondered at the simple, confused blossom he’d given her. Pink, or yellow? Sweetheart or friend? Doubt sliced like a thorn with an ugly truth. What if she was just a surrogate for Rebecca?

  His headlights spun onto the street a fair distance behind her, joined by another vehicle two cars back—probably Dalton in his unmarked sedan.

  Natalie did her best to embrace her part in the Hardaway brothers’ plan. Dalton was a police detective, even if he was coloring outside of the lines. He’d protect her, and Nick would be right there, watching over her.

  She flipped on the radio. The Eagles’ song matched the world of trouble on her mind, and she sang along for good measure. She was fine on her own. Always had been. She’d never been one to rely on her brother or her many guy friends to take care of her, though they often tried. Playing a damsel in distress was her sister’s thing.

  But now she had volunteered to play a damsel in distress to lure a kidnapper, a possible killer, out into the open.

  She turned up the radio, wanting nothing more than to take it easy, as the singer suggested. Not caring that her harmony was a bit off-key, Natalie belted out the lyrics on her way to the hospital. Her thoughts wove to the new people in her life. In a mere twenty-four hours, her circle had grown.

  She hung a left toward the hospital while Nick’s truck skewed right, toward the hotel.

  The sedan stayed on her tail as she angled toward the medical building, hesitating between valet and self-parking. Remembering the flickering lights in the concrete tower and the man who offered to take her out to dinner while he called for a tow truck sent an icy shudder racing across her neck. With a sigh, she angled the wheel and did as Corie would: paid to park.

  The unmarked cruiser passed to wait in a red zone. She winced a smile at Dalton as the valet opened her door.

  Trading keys for ticket, she hurried through the sliding doors into the hospital. She passed the stained glass door of the chapel and continued to the elevators, praying all the while for Mrs. Valence, for the girls who had been taken, but most of all, that Nick’s sister was safely in God’s embrace.

  Chapter 13

  By the third night, the habit of visiting her grandmother in the hospital became mundane. She’d arrive, meet the nurse in charge, and trade the HIPPA code word of the day. The nurses and doctors suggested chatting with Mrs. Valence as if she could hear and understand what Natalie was saying to her grandmother. Natalie found herself sharing some tidbit she’d found at the house, a new question that arose, wondering out loud what charity Mrs. V. would want things donated to. Most of all, she promised to stay and help the property reclaim its glory. Somehow.

  Tonight, Nick wove his way into her running conversation. The plans he discussed, the way he suggested fixing some things and all-out replacing others. Sometimes it seemed he was more invested in the project than she was, and that got Natalie thinking. Would he stay after all of the work was completed?

  Natalie snapped awake in the chair as three nurses hustled down the corridor toward a clanging alarm, their shoes squeaking over vinyl tile.

  Wrist covering her yawn, she blinked her watch into focus. Twelve thirty in the morning? How had it gotten so late?

  After the disappointing update from the doctor, Natalie had decided to stay longer, but she hadn’t meant to stay this late—or fall asleep. She’d told Marie about seeing the house and the beautiful grounds, revealed her plans for getting the hotel aspects started again, and wondered about the journal.

  “I wish I understood it,” she’d said, typing a few of the German phrases into Google Translator. “It just talks about weather, almost like some kind of almanac. Was it important? Did your husband write this?”

  But Marie’s wordless whispers had faded into an unsteady sleep.

  No nurses had come to check on Mrs. Valence during Natalie’s visit. She supposed they were busying themselves with patients who had better chances than an old woman in long-term hospice.

  That was why she was here. To stand guard and make sure that this woman’s dying needs weren’t forgotten in the shuffle of the living.

  She swiped another lemon swab along Marie’s chapped, parched lips and cooled her fevered head with a cloth. It was only for the woman’s comfort; nothing would save her body now.

  She had days. Weeks, maybe, if she was lucky. Lucky? It was better to go on to what was next, wasn’t it? This wasn’t the movies. Death wasn’t swift, but an anguished, lonely path.

  On the wall-mounted television, a late-night talk show faded to a white screen advertising insurance.

  Natalie leaned over and adjusted the elderly woman’s blankets. A small, thankful moan showed that somewhere, somehow, Marie remained partially aware. Her soul was tethered between heaven and earth, floating somewhere between this world and the next.

  “Don’t worry about the house. No one’s going to take it away,” Natalie whispered. She patted the woman’s withered hand, careful to stay clear of IV tubes dripping clear liquid into her rail-thin body.

  “I’ll see this through for you.”

  A dull throb went through her knees. She’d sat for too long again. Time to get back to the hotel.

  When a nurse finally came to change out the IV bag, Natalie bid her goodbye, promising she’d call in the morning. Getting the HIPPA password for tomorrow’s check-in, Natalie walked down the hall, only dimly aware of the world around her.

  Murmurs sounded from the room across the hall. The name on the door said WENTWORTH, P.

  Nick’s friend. Philip.

  Inside the room, a woman—his wife?—lay curled against him in the narrow hospital bed. They lay like spoons in a drawer, her front to his back, her hands feathering his salt-and-pepper hair.

  The woman’s trilling vibrato sang sweet praise music, asking for grace like rain to wash away their pain.

  Grace.

  Natalie hesitated in the doorframe, unnoticed by the pair. At once, she was both arrested and embarrassed to view the private moment between husband and wife. It was one of their last, surely.

  The man’s body arched in pain as she whispered. She got up and cooled his head much as Natalie had done for her grandmother.

  She saw their hands clutched, tight. Fingers threaded and tangled. It was difficult to tell whose was whose.

  Natalie sagged against the doorjamb, her throat clogged with the sheer beauty of it. The injustice. They weren’t old. Maybe Mom and Dad’s age? A little younger?

  The reality of loss thunderbolted along her spine and weakened her aching knees.

  The woman brushed a hand across her husband’s hair as she spoke. “I promised you ’til death, my sweet, but my love goes much deeper than that.”

  “It better.” His muffled laugh descended into a wracking cough. “I’m off to find us … a little place of our own … by that stream we love. In the mountains.”

  “I won’t be far behind you.”

  “Don’t go rushing God’s time, now.” His eyes drifted shut, winced with pain. “So tired.”

  Worry clouded the woman’s eyes as she sat up. She framed his face with her hands. Tears ran a steady river down her cheeks. “I—I’m trying to let you go.”

  “I’m t-trying to stick around.”
<
br />   She nodded, weeping, kissing his cheeks, forehead, and mouth before she sank to his chest and closed her eyes, crying quietly.

  His hand rose to her back, comforting her as their praise song began again, singing of grace in slow, aching harmony.

  Natalie stepped back from the private moment. Her heart banged hollow as she passed the nurses’ station at a fast walk before breaking into a jog.

  She passed the elevator and went straight to the stairs. Climbing them two at a time, she stopped to rest on the landing. Her tears came hard and fast as she leaned against the wall, the icy handrail digging into her back. Her choked gasps echoed back to her inside the empty stairwell.

  That was love she’d just witnessed. Love that went beyond this world and into the next. Love even while death’s scythe hovered, threatening to sever a lifetime of memories.

  Natalie palmed her throat, and her locket rattled on its chain as prayers filled her thoughts. A storm of grief raged through her, hot and fast. Sobs for the loss, for the unfairness of a life not fully lived.

  How can that woman sing when she’s losing everything? It hurts … I hurt for her … she’s losing the love of her life.

  Forever.

  Gathering herself, she stuttered a long breath. Her steps sounded a funeral drum as she walked down the stairs to the exit. When Gramma Anne passed she had been too young to understand what forever meant, but Nick had understood forever when his sister was ripped from their family.

  She never imagined that watching someone die could hurt this much. Anger surged as she railed heavenward at the injustice.

  This isn’t a celebration! There’s nothing celebratory about watching someone struggle for breath. Cling to that tether of life …

  Backhanding tears away, Natalie pushed through to the lobby exit, handed over the valet ticket, and sat to wait on the bench.

  Foggy mist wrapped around amber streetlights, obscuring the starlight. God’s grace washed over that couple; only divine grace could see someone through pain like that.

  Still, where was the victory while his soul prepared for heaven? Was it in knowing these earthly bodies would only die once? That they would be together someday, for eternity, where time has no meaning?

  I want a love like that, Lord. I want to know that here, in heaven, and forever after, that someone will love me that way.

  She had done more than make a promise to Marie tonight. She had rekindled the desire of her heart. For love. For trust. Natalie hummed the chorus of the old hymn. She knew it well, often sang it at church.

  At the approaching chug of her little car, Natalie fisted her locket, realizing that for the first time, she hadn’t had to explain how to start her car.

  That was Nick’s doing.

  Natalie traded places with the valet and drove out of the parking lot.

  Just by being around, Nick made things better, easier. Pausing at a red light, she clicked her locket open to reveal the pictures. The image of her parents on one side, grandparents on the other, both on their wedding days, spoke of real love that would last beyond the grave.

  That was why she’d saved herself. Why she’d cried into her pillow after prom night, embarrassed by her refusal and horrified by what came after. Mom promised that someday it would be different, when real, forever love found her.

  She’d been raised on her parents’ love story. Their rapid-fire romance led to a marriage just a few weeks after they met at the scant ages of twenty-one and twenty-two. Their first kiss had been accompanied by a literal earthquake while serving on a mission trip in Haiti.

  Her parents’ real-life fairy tale had inspired her to wait for a happy ending of her own. Natalie spent years praying that someday she would find the man whose kiss would stir not just her body, but cause an earthquake in her soul.

  Corie lived to experience that feeling. Her sister saw a chance at love with every guy who asked her out. Aaron was more tight-lipped about his forays at romance.

  But as much as she longed for it, not once had the earth crumbled beneath her feet. No boyfriend had ever come close to the love she dreamed of.

  Was Nick the one she’d been waiting for?

  She thought about the way he handed her that flower and spoke of his love for the Lord in a way that stirred her soul. His haunted eyes, the shadowy brokenness of him, his ever-protective nature, it all worked to fan the flame of something she hadn’t known existed.

  There was friendship, yes, but also attraction. Mutual, she guessed, cupping the flower that now bloomed in her little car. He was protective of her, her white knight, but when the danger passed, would he still be there?

  The hotel sign beckoned like a beacon in the darkness, golf course sprinklers washing the air with loamy, grassy perfume. She hadn’t seen Dalton, but she assumed he was somewhere behind her, watching, waiting for the killer to make his move. But it was best not to think about that.

  Crossing the lobby, she waved to Stacey behind the desk. Her glossy ponytail bobbed with her hello-nod before she went back to typing. The video monitors at her back showed the garage, the grounds.

  The illusion of protection wrapped around her like an invisible shield. Yawning, she made her way to the elevator.

  The longer this marathon day dragged on, the easier it became to convince herself that the Hardaway brothers were just grasping at straws. Her car had always given her trouble. It was bright and whimsical like a yellow butterball, Corie teased. The V-Dub was so easy to spot that friends posted “Natalie sighting” pictures all over social media sites.

  Friends who knew Mike. A chill froze her blood. She’d blocked him on social media, but had he figured out how to find her? Was he trying to terrorize her again?

  That hit hard, but it definitely made more sense than being stalked by a serial killer, didn’t it? After all, Mike had reason to despise her after she exposed him for the would-be rapist he was.

  And if it wasn’t Mike, wasn’t it just as likely to be a group of high school kids targeting a funny-looking Volkswagen? Like Dad always said, when you hear hoofbeats, it’s usually horses, not zebras. The simplest explanation was usually the right explanation.

  What she needed was a hot bath, cozy jammies, and bed.

  The elevator chimed her arrival on the third floor. Natalie angled toward her room, following the vine-patterned carpet, stepping only on the swirls as she and Corie did as children.

  Her B&B’s upstairs hall would need a new runner to replace that threadbare, industrial-looking liner. Tomorrow she would check out of the hotel and move into the estate after a stop at the discount home shop. A few odds and ends would do wonders to make the space homey. It’d start to feel like hers in no time.

  She would make her B&B into a fantasy getaway. Utilizing the castle theme, she would create something magical, something completely out of the ordinary. Everyone who entered would be treated like royalty.

  Nick kept mentioning getting the place ready by Halloween. That only left her a few months of planning.

  Mentally, she ticked through the list of permits she’d require to get things done right. Nick, with all of his expertise, could surely lend a hand—if he had the mind to stick around.

  She fished through her purse for the key card tucked in her wallet, thinking on how to manage her budget. What she could afford to pay Nick would be a pittance for a guy used to running a major vineyard in the most populated winery city in California.

  She passed his room, swept a hand across the numbers, and sent a “sleep well” prayer his direction. He’d volunteered to stay at Creekside another few nights as her protector. Her smile grew at the thought of working in such close proximity with him out at the property.

  At her swipe, her hotel door clicked open and she sighed her way inside, surprised to find all the lights on. Hadn’t she turned them off before she left? And closed the closet doors?

  A quick study of the room showed that things were not quite as she had left them. Not out of order, per se, but shifted just
enough so she’d notice. Yesterday’s heels were stowed at an odd angle while she always left them soldier-straight.

  Housekeeping must’ve been bored. But trying on her shoes? Staff at The Grand had been fired for less.

  She exchanged the day’s peasant skirt and tank for loose pajamas, and her bed beckoned with fluffed pillow and stacked foil-wrapped chocolates.

  She unwrapped one and sampled it. Not gourmet, but any chocolate was a balm after a day like this. Natalie sat on the bedside and brushed the tangles from her hair, thoughts on the estate.

  She’d do chocolates at the B&B, but not these synthetic, imported treats. Something local, from one of those shops in Old Town. She’d make friends with that candy shop owner on Main Street, maybe, and have a special recipe made just for the hotel.

  She’d want to develop relationships with the wineries, too. Perhaps she could offer a complimentary bottle of something sparkly in each room?

  She could almost see it. Room service delivering silver ice buckets and crystal glasses. Couples in love—either young or young at heart—sharing a wedding or an anniversary toast on those rounded balconies as the sun set.

  Perfect, she thought, rubbing her bare arms. I’m already having visions and goose bumps!

  She headed to the bathroom to brush her teeth. Next item on the agenda, tell Margot I’m quitting.

  Her smile broadened. No more Margot breathing down her neck and dangling a promotion that would never come? That would be the biggest victory of all.

  The bathroom light flickered to life.

  Red block letters scrawled across the mirror like bloody gashes: I’M WATCHING.

  She backpedaled from the bloody message and stumbled into the shower curtain, sending the rings clattering.

  A frozen fist of terror stole her breath as she raced for Nick’s room.

  Someone was watching her.

  Stalking her.

  Someone had been inside her room and rifled through her personal things.

  Oh, God! Was he still inside the room?

  They were right. Nick and his brother were right!

  Natalie pounded on Nick’s door, crying his name over and over even as his door flew open and she sagged into his arms.