The Cottages on Silver Beach

by RaeAnne Thayne

  * * *

  HE WAS AN ASS. No question.

  Elliot walked with Megan in silence. The easy camaraderie they had shared earlier had disappeared on the breeze, replaced by this tight, awkward tension. When would he ever learn to keep his mouth shut?

  Is that why you kissed me? Were you hoping to distract me from digging further into the case?

  His own words felt ugly and small. He didn’t even know why he had said them. He didn’t believe that. She had kissed him because she wanted to, as she said. The same reason he’d kissed her earlier in the day.

  It was a stupid thing to say and he wasn’t even sure why he had. Was he trying to sabotage this attraction between them before it had a chance to bloom into something real?

  Not that anything could come of this. She had made it clear she wasn’t interested in more than a few kisses. Maybe that was why he overreacted, because he wanted so much more and had the sudden grim realization that it was impossible.

  Even her dog seemed to pick up on the seething tension between them. As they walked toward the hotel, Cyrus started dragging his feet, dawdling enough that Megan finally picked him up about a hundred yards from the hotel entrance and carried him the rest of the way.

  How could he restore the easy peace between them? He had no idea.

  “I was able to rent a car for tomorrow,” he said when they reached the corridor outside their rooms. “I’ll use that in the morning. I expect to be done by noon and can return the car here at the lodge. Then we can head back to Haven Point whenever you’re ready. Does that work for your plans?”

  “That’s fine.” Her voice was clipped, tight. “I don’t expect to be done at the gallery before that.”

  “If I’m going to be later than noon, I’ll let you know.”

  He was almost tempted to suggest he could drive the rental all the way back to Haven Point, if she preferred not to spend any more time with him. Some part of him was afraid she might take him up on the offer.

  When they reached her door, she had her key card out already, as if she couldn’t bear to spend a moment longer than necessary in his company.

  He couldn’t leave matters like this between them, marred by this heavy, aching awkwardness. How could he scale the wall his suspicious words had erected between them?

  She unlocked her door and pushed it open, then set Cyrus down. The dog went immediately to the water bowl. With the dog settled, she turned back to him. “Good night,” she said stiffly.

  Elliot sighed. “Megan. Forgive me. Please. I shouldn’t have said what I did. I don’t think that.”

  “You must believe it on some level, or you wouldn’t have said it.”

  Perhaps it was easier to let her go on thinking that. The alternative was to bare his heart. After a lifetime of hiding any deep emotions, that course of action filled him with something that felt suspiciously like panic.

  “I’m...not good at this. I suppose that’s obvious.”

  “At what?”

  “Relationships. At least the...messy kind.”

  Instead of smoothing things over, he was making things worse. He could see it in the way she folded her arms across her chest and lifted her chin. “I’m sorry you find things between us messy. I’ll remind you that you kissed me first last night, Agent Bailey.”

  Had it only been last night? He could hardly credit that. It seemed a lifetime ago that he’d first tasted her. “You’re right. I kissed you first and I insisted on coming with you to Colorado.”

  He didn’t know what was happening here. This thick knot of...angst in his chest was completely foreign territory. He didn’t know how to explain it to himself, forget about explaining anything to her.

  “You have to understand. I have spent my entire adult life working hard to keep every relationship casual and uncomplicated. I haven’t wanted anything to get in the way of my career.”

  He had been the oldest son in a large family, and had taken that responsibility seriously.

  Set the right example for your brothers and sisters, Elliot.

  We need to be able to count on you.

  What would we do without your common sense, son?

  His parents had been loving and kind but had buried him under the weight of their expectations.

  He had tried. He had studied hard, had graduated top of his class in criminal justice and been recruited into the FBI. From there, he had set out to be the best agent he knew how to be.

  The structure had felt comfortable to him. He had always been working for the next commendation, the next promotion. Expectations piled upon expectations.

  When he dated, he chose women who didn’t threaten that focus, who were happy with infrequent, casual encounters.

  He thought that was enough, but lately—maybe when he had found himself facing a flurry of bullets a few weeks earlier—he had realized that in all that hard work and concentration, he hadn’t left much room for life.

  “This...thing...with you is anything but uncomplicated. Or casual, for that matter.”

  He drew in a breath, wondering if he were making another mistake, if he should keep his mouth shut and let things remain awkward and cool between them. It might be easier that way, in the long run.

  He couldn’t. He missed the warm rapport of earlier in the day. He wanted it back.

  Sometimes life had to be messy and uncomfortable and honest. Sometimes a man had to embrace the chaos. He had accepted that, too, a few weeks earlier when he had disobeyed orders for the first time in his career.

  “I am beginning to have feelings for you,” he finally blurted out. “Feelings I don’t quite know what to do about.”

  She lifted her gaze to him, shock and something else, something he couldn’t read, in her eyes. “You...what?”

  He sighed. “Actually, that’s a lie. I’m sorry.”

  Confusion warred with the shock in her eyes. “What’s a lie? That you have feelings for me? Or that you don’t know what to do with them?”

  He would have to tell her all of it, no matter how embarrassing. Somehow it didn’t seem honest to keep from her this secret that had weighed on him for years.

  “I, um, lied when I said I was beginning to have feelings for you.” He cleared his throat and avoided her gaze, focusing on her cranky-looking dog instead. “There is no beginning about it. My, um, feelings are not necessarily new.”

  The mistrust in her eyes transformed into something else, astonishment and disbelief and no small measure of arrested fascination.

  “They’re...not?”

  Why had he gone there? So what, if he kept secrets? This was one he should never have revealed to her, of all people.

  He wanted to escape the hotel room but knew he would still have to face her the next day. Hell. He had come this far. Why not blunder through the rest?

  “You might as well know the truth. The entire time you were with Wyatt, I was crazy with jealousy. I tried to be happy for my brother that the two of you had found each other, but the whole time, I felt like I was burning up inside. Why do you think I didn’t come home much during that time?”

  She lowered to the edge of the bed, staring at him as if he had suddenly sprouted wings. “You were always so cool and stuffy to me,” she whispered. “I figured you couldn’t stand me, that you thought Wyatt deserved better.”

  “No. I’m sorry you thought that. I was doing my best to keep my...attraction to myself.”

  She still looked at him doubtfully. “Wyatt has been gone for a long time. All these years, you’ve never given any sign of this attraction you claim to have.”

  “When would you have suggested I do something about it? Six months after Wyatt died, Elizabeth disappeared and you were tangled up in that. Then my father was shot and that didn’t seem the time either.”

  “Then my inn burned down.”

  “
Right. And you were up to your elbows trying to rebuild. Given everything that’s happened, I just figured things weren’t meant to be between us. Fate was making that pretty clear.”

  “You don’t strike me as a man who puts much stock in fate or kismet or anything else woo-woo like that.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe it was simply a coincidence when the inn’s rental cabins were the first things to come up on the search engine when I was looking for a place to stay for a few weeks. I knew I would likely run into you while I was here trying to finish my book. I just never imagined I would find you living next door.”

  “I...don’t know what to say.”

  He shifted closer to the door. Yeah, he shouldn’t have opened his mouth. He had been hoping to ease the awkwardness between them but had only introduced far more. Sometimes honesty wasn’t the best policy, though his mother would probably disagree with him.

  “You don’t have to say anything. In fact, it would probably be better if you didn’t. I don’t even know why I told you, other than to explain that I’m not always in my right head when it comes to you. Why don’t we both pretend this conversation never happened?”

  She snorted. “You might be able to do that, but my imagination isn’t nearly that advanced.”

  Unexpectedly, he felt some of the tension ease and he even managed a smile. “Don’t sell yourself short. I’ve seen your portfolio, remember? It takes a keen eye and a creative brain to capture the world as you do.”

  She was quiet for a long moment, still sitting on her bed. She looked tired and vulnerable and beautiful.

  “For the record,” she finally said, not looking at him, “you’re not the only one who might have...an attraction here. You’re a hard man to ignore, Elliot.”

  A low heat uncurled inside him. “What do you suggest we do about it?”

  “Not find ourselves in the moonlight again, to start.”

  “Check.”

  She smoothed down her skirt and swallowed. “I’m...attracted to you. I can’t deny that, Elliot. But anything between us is...completely impossible. You see that, don’t you?”

  What was he supposed to say to that? Before he could come up with an answer, she went on.

  “I mean, look at us. We couldn’t be more different. You’re all about focus, control, while I’m an artist, impulsive and scatterbrained. I don’t think three moves ahead like you do.”

  He had his impulsive moments. Kissing her, for instance. And blurting out his feelings for her.

  “Neither of us is in a good place for a relationship right now,” she went on. “I know I’m not, anyway. After years of putting my dreams on hold to take care of my grandmother and Cassie and Bridger, I finally have the chance to see my dreams of being an art photographer come true. I don’t have much room in my life for the...messy.”

  She was right. A relationship between them made absolutely no sense on paper.

  That didn’t make him want her less.

  “Okay.” He forced the words out. “We’re agreed. We might be attracted to each other but that’s as far as we will let things go. We’ll lay off romantic dinners and walks in the moonlight from here on out.”

  An oddly wistful look crossed her features, and then she nodded. “Probably for the best.”

  She paused. “I do have room in my life for a friend. I would like to think we still have that.”

  He could count on one hand the people he trusted enough to consider good friends. Somehow over the last week or so, Megan had slipped into that number.

  “Of course,” he answered.

  She looked tired, he thought again. A true friend would be cognizant of everything she had at stake right now in her life. They had another big day starting in the morning and she would need sleep to give her the strength to deal with it all.

  “Get some rest. I likely won’t see you in the morning as I’m heading out early, but I’ll be in touch with you at the gallery.”

  “Sounds good.”

  He stood somewhat awkwardly in the doorway, then thought friends would probably have no problem with a small kiss good-night either. He moved toward her and kissed her softly, imprinting the taste of her on his memory.

  “Good luck at the gallery tomorrow. I’ll see you around midday.”

  “Sounds good. Night.”

  “Good night.”

  He drew his hands into fists to keep from reaching for her and forced himself out of the room.

  As soon as he unlocked his door and was in his own room, Elliot tossed his key card on the desk and stalked to the balcony, desperate for the cool mountain air on skin that felt hot and itchy.

  What the hell was he thinking, to tell her all that? What was wrong with him? He wasn’t the kind of guy to talk about his feelings. She was bringing out sides of him he didn’t know how to handle.

  He scrubbed his face. His whole world felt like it was in shambles right now. His job, his personal life, even the writing. His book should have been wrapped up days ago but he kept struggling with the ending.

  For the record, you aren’t the only one who might have...an attraction here.

  Her words echoed around inside his head. What did she mean? She hadn’t elaborated, obviously eager to end the conversation before things could get even more awkward.

  Now that he had kissed her and discovered the magic of holding her in his arms, he didn’t know how he could shove all that away.

  He would simply have to try.

  She had asked if they could continue with their friendship. If that was all he could have of her, he would do his best to forget that her mouth tasted of sugar and cinnamon and about the sexy little breathless noises she made when he kissed her.

  And while he was reaching for the impossible, he might as well grab that moon out there and deliver it to her on a room service cart.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE NEXT MORNING Megan cringed as she caught her reflection in the rearview mirror while she backed out of her parking spot at the lodge.

  If she ever wondered what people meant when they described someone looking like death warmed over, she only had to remember this moment.

  Beneath her sunglasses, she had deep hollows under her eyes and pinched lines of fatigue bracketing her mouth. Her skin looked sallow and even her hair seemed to have lost its usual shine.

  This was what a long drive followed by a sleepless night could do for a woman.

  Blast that Elliot Bailey anyway.

  What was he thinking, to drop a bombshell like that on her after she had already had an exhausting day? And then to casually walk away as if what he said meant nothing? Did he really think she would be able to sleep a wink, with his words playing in her ears over and over again?

  I’m beginning to have feelings for you... No, there is no beginning about it. My feelings are not necessarily new... The entire time you were with Wyatt, I was crazy with jealousy.

  She still didn’t know whether to believe him. It seemed utterly impossible.

  Could he really have been trying to hide his growing feelings for her during those months she dated Wyatt? He had given no hint of it. Quite the opposite, actually, as she had told him. The few times circumstances had put them all together, Elliot seemed to have gone out of his way to avoid talking to her.

  She had always thought he considered her beneath his attention. The silly friend of his younger sisters who had started dating Wyatt.

  Would he ever have told her, if they hadn’t traveled together here to Colorado? Or would he simply have let her move on with her life while he did the same?

  As she drove the winding canyon road toward the gallery—with steep mountains on one side and a beautiful reservoir on the other—some part of her couldn’t help wishing he had never told her.

  While her heart might embrace the possibilities, her head told a completely differ
ent story.

  So what, if he was attracted to her? Or if she had begun to feel the same way, for that matter? Both of them knew nothing could come of it.

  How could it? He believed her brother capable of killing his wife. By default, that also meant she was naive or worse for believing in Luke’s innocence.

  She couldn’t help wondering if it would have been better if she’d never found out everything that lurked beneath the surface. Ignorance was bliss, right? At least she might have been able to squeeze out a few hours of sleep the night before instead of wondering about the man who was only a connecting door away.

  The morning was cool but warming as the sun came up. Puffy white clouds floated past, tangling in the mountaintops around Hope’s Crossing.

  Few people were out and about on Main Street as she approached the door of the still-closed gallery, though she could see a steady stream of people going in and out of the bookstore/coffeehouse down the street. Nearby, a café called The Center of Hope looked to be doing a bustling business.

  Megan knocked softly on the door of the still-closed gallery and only had to wait a few seconds before Mary Ella answered.

  “Good morning!” the other woman exclaimed. “Oh, it’s a glorious one, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Beautiful.” She walked into the gallery, wondering if Mary Ella would think she was hungover if she kept on her sunglasses.

  The thought instantly escaped her mind when she spotted a man in his early seventies, handsome and stately, with a shock of silver hair.

  She had the impression of power somehow, that indefinable sense of command some men carried. Before Mary Ella even spoke, Megan guessed his identity.

  “Megan, I would love you to meet my husband, Harry Lange,” the gallery owner said with a smile that clearly conveyed a deep love for her husband. “I talked him into coming in today to help us.”

  Help them? Weren’t they simply deciding where the photos would hang?