Up to Me (Shore Secrets)

by Christi Barth

  “I’m surprised you lasted that long,” he mumbled.

  “Why, when did you move out?”

  The rhythmic stroke of his curled fingers stopped cold. “It’s, uh, complicated. Sooner, let’s just say.”

  Yup. It was definite. Ella wasn’t the only one with a thorny past. But that would be for another time. If Gray decided both that she wasn’t crazy-pants, and that there would be another time. “I found a great little place. Dad shot it down. Insisted the complex was at an unsafe corner. A dangerous blind entrance. I don’t know if you noticed, but big stretches of the road that hugs the lake don’t have streetlights. Locals don’t care, and tourists don’t know enough to care. Or they’ve visited eight wineries in three hours and are way past caring about anything.”

  “You guys should put up streetlights.”

  Right. Like nobody from the mayor all the way down to the trash collectors had thought of that. “Well, if you’ve got a spare five hundred thousand dollars to implement that plan, feel free to stick around and present it at the next Town Council meeting.”

  A soft chuckle, and his hand resumed its stroking. “Message received.”

  “I put down a deposit on the apartment. Mom and Dad both kept calling, trying to get me to change my mind. I said if it was really that dangerous, somebody would’ve died already, or there’d be a stoplight, and they just couldn’t stand the thought of me reaching for a little piece of freedom.”

  “Typical boundary stretching for someone your age.”

  “Exactly. How many people get crappy apartments in the seedy part of town right after leaving college? It’s almost a required rite of passage.”

  “Like eating ramen noodles four times a week to save money for Margarita Madness Mondays?”

  Gray had a knack of expertly tickling her funny bone. “I knew you’d understand. So I begged them to just come over and see the apartment. See the adorable bow window and the breakfast nook. The pretty, deep blue tiles in the bathroom. I knew if they saw it for themselves, they’d fall in love just like I did.”

  “Did they?”

  “A little. Mom thought it was adorable. Dad kept his stubborn chin point going on the whole time, but stopped grousing.” Ella refused to pause. Refused to give herself the chance to not say the words that always cut through her like a jagged shard of glass. “And then they turned out of the parking lot and got T-boned by an SUV. Right in front of me. The SUV pinned their little Jaguar against a wall. Mom died instantly. Dad, well, I ran to him, talked to him while we waited for the ambulance, but he died just a few minutes later.”

  The lazy hand on her shoulder pulled Ella into a full, tight embrace. No words, just the comforting thump of his heart beneath her cheek. It might be pity, or sympathy, or just plain good manners. Ella didn’t care. She just let the warmth of his chest beneath her and the sun on her back bring her back into the peace of the moment.

  “My bad decision led to them emptying their savings to buy back my shares. Even worse, it was my bad decision in choosing an apartment that directly led to their death.”

  Gray’s breath stirred across the top of her hair. “That’s a lot to take on yourself. You didn’t force them to buy your shares back. You weren’t driving the car that killed them.”

  Funny, that’s just what her therapist had said on day one. And at every visit thereafter. “Grief clouds rational thought. You could say I freaked out for a while. My therapist called it an intermittent fugue state. The bottom line is that I didn’t trust myself to make decisions anymore. Not at all.”

  “Couldn’t you just lay low for a while? Not think about things?”

  “I wish. But once my parents died, I suddenly became the sole owner of Mayhew Manor. Business decisions were thrust upon me, whether I liked it or not. Smaller things, too. Like whether or not to sublet the apartment I’d never even moved into. It was all too much. So I did what felt natural. Habitual. Safe. I came out here to the mailbox, wrote down my problems, and asked for advice.”

  Gray tilted her chin up to glare straight at her. “That’s insane. You let the town barber or, or nursing-home bedpan washer or whoever, make decisions that affected the day-to-day running of your midsized boutique hotel?”

  Yep. There it was. The tight, barely controlled screech in Gray’s voice that labeled her one-hundred-percent, certifiably bonkers. “Yes. I mean, no. The management of the hotel wasn’t affected by my epic indecision. Eugene, our manager, has been in place for years. He kept the day-to-day stuff running smoothly. All my friends you met today? They kept everything else in my life going.”

  He dipped his head in a nod of appreciation. “Those are some amazing friends you’ve got.”

  “Don’t I know it.” But as much as she relied on them, they relied on her, too. Ella couldn’t let Gray think that she just sat back and let other people handle her like a marionette. “Let me be clear—I could make decisions. It’s just that I questioned them. On a daily basis. I didn’t second-guess myself. I quadruple-guessed myself every third second. Reading what people wrote calmed me. Soothed me. Dr. Takeuchi, my therapist, noticed the change right away. He called the mailbox a coping mechanism. Not something I should turn to forever, but a way to get out from under the crushing, immobilizing grief.”

  Gray smoothed her head back into the hollow of his collarbone and resumed running his fingers languidly through her hair. God, she could let him do that all day, every day, it felt so good. “Then I’m glad it helped,” he said.

  “It did. I’m much better now. Stronger. More sure of myself. But it’s hard to just quit the habit of turning to the mailbox. The entire town pulled together to help me. To comfort me. To guide me by the hand through the worst experience of my life.” There was a freedom in talking to Gray, a complete outsider. Ella could admit to him what she’d told no one else. “Except that now, I’m kind of stuck in a rut with it. When too much time elapses between my journal entries, people swing by to check on me. What used to be reassuring is becoming smothering.”

  “Because they care so much.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” But she couldn’t tell anyone that. It would sound ungrateful. Hurtful.

  “That’s why Brooke texted everyone yesterday? To give you a group consensus on dating me? And now you’re compelled to let the whole town weigh in, too?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Yesterday Ella hadn’t been sure she was ready to ask Gray out. She’d caught herself willing to rely on the mailbox, just like always. But after their chat—and other things—on the stairs, she’d spent a considerable portion of the rest of the night thinking about it. This—the sexy temptation that was Gray—was her line in the sand. It was time for her to stand entirely on her own two feet, decision-wise. She’d still ask for advice in the journal until she could figure out a way not to, but she’d also find a way to move forward without waiting for a reply.

  His chest heaved in a deep sigh beneath her cheek. “Well, on the bat-shit-crazy scale, it isn’t quite up there with eating chalk. Or collecting those hideous porcelain figurines with big eyes.”

  “You’re setting a pretty low bar for me. I appreciate it.” His teasing whisked away her pensiveness. This emotional outpouring had been exhausting. Which meant her experiment had failed, at least partially. No way could Ella possibly go through this every time she met an attractive man. But her only other option—besides marrying Gray, and how insane was that—would be to only date men who lived on Seneca Lake. Men who already knew the story. Too bad she couldn’t think of a single, viable candidate.

  “It comes from a good place.” He paused. “Everyone wanting to help you. I see that. God knows I’ve never seen anything quite like it before.” Another pause, as if he fighting with himself to look past his knee-jerk response. “But it seems to work for you. Who am I to judge?”

  Could he really be that easygoing? Gray’s initial reaction h
ad angled much more towards shocked ridicule. The whole death thing probably squeezed the snickers right out of him. But she didn’t want him to only see a broken woman leaning on a town. The beauty of the mailbox was that everyone leaned on each other, in equal measure. She pulled out of his embrace to pin him with an accusing glare. “Is it possible you’re humoring me a little bit? Are you worried I’ll fall apart on you? I know that women’s tears are like acid-laced Kryptonite to men.”

  “Nope.” His eyes slid down, and to the side. A definite tell. “Look, I’m not worried you’ll fall apart. From what I can tell, you’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever met. Am I humoring you?” Gray waved his hand back and forth. “A little. Maybe a lot.”

  “You don’t believe in the mailbox. You are being judgey,” she accused.

  A long push of his hand through his thick hair, down the line of his cheek to wipe across his lower face, specifically those lips Ella really, really wanted to kiss again. He ended by gripping his chin in a thoughtful pose. Oh, he was thoughtful, all right. Probably racking his brain for a way to skirt her question.

  Finally, he said, “I believe it works for all of you. Heck, if the whole town does this, who am I to judge? No skin off my nose either way. I just know it could never work for me. My life, my choices. Nobody else gets a vote.”

  Ella had to admit, he’d come up with a fair response. But she didn’t want to settle for just fair. Fair was a C grade. Her beloved town and its wonderful tradition deserved nothing less than an A from Gray.

  “Now you’ve thrown down the gauntlet.” She pulled the journal off the bench onto her lap. “You have to write in it. Just to see what sort of response you get.”

  “You’re really going to make me do this?”

  “We’ll both do it.” Ella flipped through the pages to get to the last entry. “Oh, look. It’s the secret romance.”

  “It doesn’t sound like anything in this town’s a secret,” he grumbled.

  “This is. It’s been going on for a year. Two people, conducting a love affair, from what we can tell, solely in the pages of this journal.”

  “Must lead to some nasty paper cuts.”

  Ella thwacked him on the leg. “This is no joking matter. Apparently somewhere in town are a man and a woman who desperately care for each other, but can’t be together.”

  “Married? To other people?” he suggested, leaning over to peer at the page.

  “No. You can see them fall in love with each other as they write. I don’t think they even know who the other person is in real life. Just think, they might walk past each other every day and not realize the object of their affection is five feet away.”

  “Sounds like a waste to me. Why not stop hiding behind a ballpoint and get on with it? Get some balls and get your woman, is what I’d write in there.”

  She unhooked the pen from the cover, and pointed with it. “Look at this. ‘Your sweet spirit shines through these pages like the sun streaking through a bank of clouds.’ He’s romancing her.”

  “Maybe he’s a soldier, and got a ball shot off.” Gray grimaced comically. “That would explain why he won’t just ask her out.”

  “You’re terrible.”

  “Hey, you like someone, you feel that click, and no matter how complicated it may be, you ask them out. So. Ella. I’d like to take you to dinner.”

  She put pen to paper. I met a guy. Gray grabbed the pen, drew a tiny arrow, and inserted the word handsome above. Ella grinned. I want to go out with him. I’m ready. I think I’ve been ready for a while. Should I let him take me to dinner? He grabbed the pen again, scratched out the last half of the sentence and replaced it with romance me? Wow. If only she could remember that fancy term from the Summer Olympics when the divers rolled through three somersaults and ended on a twist. Gray made her stomach do that.

  Signing her name in a big, loopy scrawl, Ella pushed the journal over onto his thighs. And wished she was the one sitting atop all the hairy muscles she remembered peeking out from between the flaps of his robe last night. “Your turn.”

  “Can’t I wait and see how this turns out? One big question at a time?”

  “Don’t be a scaredy cat. I told you this can be anonymous. Take a chance. Ask something big and bold that you’d never risk asking your friends or colleagues.”

  He sucked in a short, sharp breath at her words, then turned away for almost a full minute, staring out at the glimmer of the lake. Ella was just about to ask him what was wrong when he bent and whipped the pen across the page.

  Should I quit my job? The pay is good. I don’t have a plan or even an idea of what else I could do. But I think it’s slowly crushing my soul. Gray dropped the pen. Looked away.

  Wow. Ella didn’t know what she’d expected, but it wasn’t that. “I guess I should jump ahead to a standard first-date question. Just what is it exactly that you do, Gray? Because right now I’m guessing either hit man for the Mafia or a casino craps dealer. Definitely a soul-crusher, handling all that money and never getting to keep any for yourself.”

  He thumbed the top of the ball-point pen. In. Out. In. Out. “If I don’t tell you, if I make you wait to find out on our first date, does that come off as creepy, or just confident that the town will vote yes?”

  “A little creepy. Since you didn’t deny the whole hit-man thing.”

  “You can have the hotel maids search my room for weapons. Will that put you at ease?”

  “I suppose.” But now she wondered. Why the caginess? What sort of man didn’t want to talk about his job—whether to complain or brag? The secrecy set off a tiny alarm bell. “Besides, we should have an answer soon.”

  “How soon? I’m only here for two weeks, remember.”

  Ella didn’t intend for that to be an issue. She’d formulated a work around to waiting for a response. “A day or two. But we can spend time together while we wait for the answer. As long as it isn’t anything officially date-like.”

  “Isn’t that cheating?”

  Technically. “I call it bending the rules, not breaking them. I’m slammed with back-to-back massages until eight tonight—Saturday’s always our busiest day. How about we meet up again tomorrow for breakfast?”

  A slow, conspiratorial smile spread across his face. “If that’s your best offer, I’ll take it.” Gray cupped her cheek in his big, warm palm. “I’m sorry I made you dredge up those painful memories.”

  “They’re a part of me, now. I can’t shy away from the past. But I can focus on the future.”

  “You really are remarkable, Ella.”

  His words warmed her as much as his touch. If she didn’t break the bubble of sensual tenderness building around them, she’d probably cover him in kisses in about two seconds. And Ward was right—this was the least private spot on all of Seneca Lake. It was definitely not the spot for a secret make-out session.

  Ella stood. “Now put the journal back in the mailbox, spit on it, and turn in a circle on one leg three times.”

  His jaw dropped open. “What does that do—initiate some magical bat signal letting everyone know we left a question?”

  “No.” She dissolved into peals of laughter. Oh, but this was going to be fun. “I just wanted to see if you’d fall for it.”

  Chapter Six

  Gray racked his brain for another question. This whole non-dating thing was turning out to be harder than he’d anticipated. Not a complaint, though. Because a simple breakfast with the beautiful Ella was more fun than he’d had on his last year’s worth of dates put together. Even without any of the fancy trappings that usually made a date special. Like champagne, a cleavage-baring cocktail dress on her, or second-base groping in the back of a cab.

  Of course, it didn’t hurt that the supposedly simple breakfast of raspberry-stuffed French toast topped with warm maple syrup was served to
them on a secluded stone patio overlooking the bright blue lake. The patio curled off the main dining room like a snail. Towering weeping willows shaded it from the morning sun. Ducks—geese—hell, Gray didn’t know, just that something grey that quacked kept waddling by with a trio of tiny, fluffy chicks following behind. Only big enough for three tables and covered by a green metal awning, the patio lent the illusion of privacy. A feeling often hard to come by at a hotel. Which meant a tick in the pro column of his notes on the place.

  Sadly, the secluded patio didn’t come close to the privacy they’d shared the other night on her stairs. The lip-to-lip sort of privacy Gray badly wanted to revisit. The plain, light purple top Ella wore shouldn’t tempt him so much. Her loose skirt fell all the way to her deep purple sneakers with the hot pink tongue and racing stripe. The outfit was probably chosen for comfort as she stood over the massage table all day. It shouldn’t tempt him into a state of semi-arousal. But it did. She did. And he’d damn well return the favor. No reason they both shouldn’t leave the breakfast table hot and bothered.

  As casual as could be, he asked, “What’s your favorite sexual position?”

  The crystal tumbler of orange juice almost slid through her fingers to crash onto the flagstones below. But Gray was prepared for her reaction. He nipped it out of her suddenly lax fingers as Ella gaped at him.

  “Why would you ask me that?” She took a breath and looked furtively over her shoulder. “For Pete’s sake, there are Manor guests right on the other side of those French doors.” Ella jerked her head in that direction. It was anything but subtle. Much like her loud stage whisper. “You can’t ask a thing like that. Not at breakfast.”

  He enjoyed her adorable spluttering. It brought color to her cheeks. And Gray figured it was nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction. The woman who’d wrapped herself around him with such passion on the stairs up to her bedroom couldn’t truly be embarrassed by his question. Caught off guard, sure. But Gray would jump right into that big-ass lake in front of them, fully dressed, if she didn’t come back with a sassy response before he drained his coffee.