The Red Door Inn

by Liz Johnson

  His laugh was deep, like the baritone who had just sung the closing hymn. “Marie has quite the eye for antiques.”

  The girl still tucked under her arm squirmed at the praise but didn’t pull completely away. Aretha tightened her squeeze just enough to keep Marie in place, her gaze never leaving Jack’s face. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  A pleasant flush crept up Marie’s neck, and she stared hard at her simple black flats as though without careful supervision they might run off by themselves.

  Leaning into the young woman, Aretha continued. “She picked the very best typewriter in the store without a single suggestion from me.”

  Seth shifted his weight to his other long leg. “The best? It wasn’t the most expensive. Not by a long shot.”

  “Why should the cost make it the best?” She shot Marie a look that the younger woman immediately nodded to. Some things about shopping, men just didn’t understand. “Marie chose the only antique typewriter in my store that actually works.”

  “What?” Marie’s head whipped up, her blue eyes alight. “I didn’t know that. But how could it possibly be in working condition? It’s got to be at least ninety years old. And the nicks and scratches on the keys—it’s seen plenty of use over the years.”

  “The man who owned it before you, the man who sold it to me, was a bit of a tinkerer. He spent hours with that thing, fixing the letters, replacing the ribbons, greasing the levers. He showed it to me when I bought it. The old girl works like a charm.” Aretha turned to Seth. “I hope you’ll write me a letter on it.” She winked at him without losing sight of Jack’s full-on grin. The man had joy in his eyes and a full-throated chuckle that made her spine tingle like a woman half her age.

  Jack thumped his nephew on the back. “Just don’t trifle with Miss Franklin’s affections, son.” His laughter mingled with her own.

  Maybe those tingles were more like a woman a quarter of her age.

  “How are the rest of the renovations coming on the inn? Nearly ready to open?”

  “Not quite.” Jack scratched at the back of his neck, dipping his head low.

  It sounded like there was more to be done than time to do it.

  Seth rubbed his stomach, his long fingers making slow circles over his flat belly. A man working on a home needed to eat. And from the size of both him and Jack, they needed to eat regularly. It couldn’t hurt to offer them a meal.

  “I made up a pot of potato stew. Care to join me for a bite and a little furniture talk? Perhaps I could even give you a peek at the other pieces selling at the auction this week.”

  Marie’s posture straightened. She had the girl’s attention.

  “My stew’s not much, but it’s a sight more than a pork and jerk.”

  “Pork and jerk?” Seth and Marie asked at the same time.

  Aretha laughed. “I suppose it’s not a common phrase anymore, but my mother often used it to refer to a meal so small it didn’t suffice. In the old days of the island, if a family had only one piece of ham for dinner, each person got a chance to chew on it. But if they hung on to the meat too long, well . . .” She held up a hand and mimicked yanking on the end of the string.

  Seth and Marie both looked shocked, but Jack’s chuckle bubbled over in unexpected delight. “I’ve never heard such a thing.” His mirth choked him, and he pressed a hand to his side before taking two long breaths.

  The young ones stared at each other, then at Jack as Seth grabbed his uncle’s elbow, steadying the swaying man.

  “Well? Shall I plan on noon guests, then?”

  “We’d be delighted,” Jack said.

  Seth scowled, not nearly as enthusiastic as Jack, but whatever was poking the seat of his trousers would work itself out in due time. For now, she had a lunch date with her new little friend. And the first man to make her insides dance in more than forty years.

  9

  Seth twisted the wrench with a sure grip, the last piece of pipe below the kitchen sink finally in place. As he curled to fit his wide shoulders through the cabinet doors, he slid onto the neutral tile floor. Picking up the orange bucket that had lived under the leaking drain, he walked through the laundry room, toward the back door, and tossed the brown water into the yard.

  The open door sent a chill up his arms, the wind making the damp ring around his shirt collar nearly frigid. Still, the cool fabric felt good against his clammy skin.

  They wouldn’t need the bucket again anytime too soon, so he threw it into the empty walk-in pantry, eyeing the walls and hoping to find something more than the freshly painted shelves. But it was as empty as his growling stomach.

  He’d enjoyed the leftover potato stew Aretha had sent home with them on Sunday. Rich potatoes, chunks of ham, and cheesy goodness. It was the best meal he’d had since arriving on the island. But they’d finished it off for dinner the night before.

  And the three-day rain that had postponed the antique auction had also kept him from making a real grocery trip. It was high time they had some food in the house.

  But maybe not tonight. Tonight he wanted something sweet. Something cool and creamy.

  He strode to his toolbox, which sat on the floor in front of the sink. His trusted monkey wrench fit back into its place just where it belonged.

  The weight of his tools in his hands felt good. His fingers fit around the box’s handle like they always had. Nothing had changed about his comfort or skill or knowledge.

  Reece hadn’t been able to take that away from him when she walked out of his life.

  And the money she’d stolen, the bank account she’d emptied . . . well, that money could be made again. There was risk in every business endeavor. He’d known that when he started his own construction company in San Diego seven years before.

  He just hadn’t figured a threat would come from his own fiancée.

  “Pretty color.” Jack’s voice carried through the swinging door, and Seth turned in that direction. He hadn’t seen the paint they’d picked out for the dining room or the three bedrooms on the second floor.

  “It’s a perfect complement to the silver chandelier.” Marie’s voice rose with animation as he pushed open the door between the rooms. “And when we get the buffet and tables at the auction next week, the cherrywood will just sing against this wall.”

  “Singing wood? Sounds like you’ve got a bad batch.”

  The paint roller in Marie’s hand tumbled, paint marks skidding down the wall, until it thumped onto the tarp beneath her step stool. With little more than a surprised glance in his direction, she jumped to the ground to retrieve it.

  She didn’t reply to his mild joke, so he leaned against the doorjamb, admiring the slate-blue color that made the crown molding pop. “It’s a beautiful color.”

  Without missing a beat, she said, “It’ll be even better after the second coat. When you can’t see the green behind it.”

  Jack grunted. “It’s not that bad.” It was his same old argument. And it still wasn’t working.

  “It really was.” Marie resumed the smooth movements of her roller, forming perfect Ws with each stroke.

  “Where’d you learn to do that?”

  “What?” She sounded innocent.

  But she had an eye for design and skills that were more than basic. Her movements were practiced and her design arguments solid. He’d worked with enough interior designers to pick up a few tricks of their trade. Hanging mirrors in a small room made it appear larger. An entire room could be designed around a single focal point. And the fastest way to overhaul a room was with a fresh coat of paint.

  What a difference a new color could make. Even now, the long room was beginning to look like it could actually serve as the dining hall. At least the color of the walls no longer made his stomach roll.

  “Where’d you learn how to stand up to stubborn old men with no sense of aesthetics?”

  “Hey, now.” Despite the tone of his words that implied offense, Jack’s grin gave him away.

  Marie
shrugged, never taking her gaze off her section of the wall as she stepped from her stool and moved it closer to the corner. “Here and there, I guess.” She swiped the back of her wrist across her forehead, the roller in her hand precariously close to the knot of brown waves tied on top of her head.

  When it was clear she wasn’t going to continue, he prodded her. “Like where?”

  “Like, I might be more interested in telling you if you picked up a brush and finished off that corner.”

  Jack’s snort ricocheted off the high ceiling, until Seth joined in with a chuckle of his own.

  Picking up a soft-bristled brush, he dipped the very tip of it into Marie’s pan. He caught her eye and nodded to his hand, reminding her of her promise to expand on the heres and theres of her history. After a week under the same roof, he didn’t know any more about her than he had when Jack had first brought her home.

  “This will go so much faster if we don’t have to go back and do the corners.”

  He nodded as he daubed into the corner, filling every crevice with the new color, covering the offending one. As he lifted his arm over his head and brought it back down to his side, he cleared his throat. Silence remained.

  Had she forgotten her end of the deal? It was high time she filled in some holes of her own.

  He coughed again.

  “Got something in your throat, boy?”

  “I’m just fine.” He caught Marie glancing in his direction, the corners of her mouth quirked in the slightest grin. So her smile at Aretha’s wasn’t a fluke. She couldn’t be bothered to show any emotion most of the time, and this unexpected moment between them made his heart thump a little heavier than usual.

  He couldn’t help the grin he offered in return. Before she could look away, he prompted her. “So, Marie, tell us where you learned all about fancy antiques and color swatches and such.”

  A cloud slipped across her face before she ducked back into the paint pan. “A friend.”

  Could she be more vague? “What sort of friend?”

  “A very kind one.” Her voice nearly disappeared on the last word, and he leaned toward her to make sure he wouldn’t miss anything she might add. But she was done.

  “Where’s this friend now?”

  Jack coughed, clearly a bid to draw attention from Marie and save her from having to answer Seth’s personal question, but she didn’t seem to get the message. He frowned in his uncle’s direction. No need to keep her from opening up.

  “I’m not sure. We lost touch when my—when I left for college.”

  Whatever she had been about to say, she shut down, afraid to say the truth.

  But why? What had she come so close to sharing?

  And more importantly, what secrets was she intent on keeping?

  It had been his experience that women with secrets did whatever it took to keep hidden things in the dark. At the moment she was spending more of Jack’s money than her labor was worth. And that was an investment he couldn’t risk without knowing more about her.

  Maybe he could ease her into talking more. Once the conversation flowed, she might let down her guard just a bit and actually tell them something more than Boston. “Where’d you go to college?”

  She shook her head without looking up from her paint pan.

  “Boston University? Harvard?”

  “No.”

  “MIT?”

  Her snort was more sarcasm than humor, but it was still the closest to a laugh he’d heard from her.

  “Science not your thing?”

  He expected a shake of her head to be her only response until she said, “Not even close.”

  “Seth here was an—”

  Seth cut Jack off with a loud cough, quickly moving the conversation into safer waters. He might want to know her background, but it didn’t mean he was going to tell her all about his own degree in engineering or his penchant for number games. “So what is your thing?”

  Her roller flashed in the air. “Today it’s painting. Next week it’s antique hunting. And one of these days it’s going to be quilting.” She looked up at the ceiling and pressed her lips together. “That’s not quite right. I’m going quilt shopping.”

  “Will there be some at the antique show?”

  “Aretha said she thought so. I’ll definitely check.”

  Jack poured more paint into his tray, shooting a wistful glance in her direction. “Wish I could go too.”

  The rescheduled day of the auction hadn’t worked any better for Jack, who had another one of his endless meetings. But Marie had been as excited as ever.

  While her back was turned and her gaze focused on the path of blue left by her roller, Seth stole another quick glance. Escaped strands of dark hair hung over her narrow shoulders, which tapered to a slim waist, no matter how hard she tried to hide it under baggy sweatshirts. She couldn’t be much more than five feet tall, but as she stretched across the wall, she managed to reach all the way to the line that he’d painted from the corner.

  Another swipe of her forearm to get the hair out of her face left a blue stripe along her temple, and he chuckled.

  “What?”

  “Blue’s a good color on you.”

  Her pert little nose wrinkled and her pink lips pursed. “What does that mean?”

  He pointed to the spot above his own ear with his brush.

  Reaching around with her left hand, she patted her hair. When she pulled her fingers back, she shot him a scowl like he’d been the one to throw paint on her.

  “Hey, why are you looking at me like that? That’s not my fault.”

  She opened her mouth, then snapped it closed. Ice-blue eyes still flashing, she shook her head and returned to the work at hand.

  The suddenly silent work.

  Except for Jack’s off-tune whistling, the room was quiet. Not even the walls groaned as they slathered on another coat of paint.

  Jack hit a particularly sour note halfway through “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” and Seth glanced at his uncle’s hunched shoulders that rose and fell in quick succession. Marie seemed happy enough to talk with Jack. So why wouldn’t she open up to someone closer to her own age?

  Maybe it’s because you’ve been about as welcoming as a hungry shark.

  He silenced the voice in his head with a quick shake.

  Even if it might be true.

  Maybe it would help if he was a little warmer. He could do that. In fact, if he just got her alone for a bit, maybe she’d talk with him about what had brought her to the island. And he’d find out why she didn’t want to tell them where she’d come from. Or what her intentions were with Jack’s property.

  “I was thinking about getting some ice cream after we’re done here.”

  Out of the corner of his eye he caught a quick jerk of her head. Definite interest.

  “There’s an ice cream shop at the end of the boardwalk, near the beach, by the fishing village.”

  “The boardwalk?” Marie squinted at him as though trying to envision the wooden path to the creamy treat.

  “Yes.” He pointed toward the bay. “The one that’s practically right outside the front door.”

  She shook her head slowly and looked at the ceiling.

  Had she really missed the two-kilometer footpath around the bay’s inlet? The tree-lined boardwalk where couples strolled at dusk. The one filled with equal parts tourists and locals. The one along the bay that sometimes matched the color of Marie’s eyes.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen it.”

  Jack laughed as he scooped the last dregs from his can of paint. “Been inside quite a bit with the rain and all, huh?”

  “Well . . .” She frowned.

  Three days of rain and sleet had kept them mostly inside. Except for Marie and Jack’s trip to Charlottetown to pick up paint. As far as Seth could tell, Marie had been responsible for the paint while Jack went to the hardware store to pick up the u-bend pipe that Seth had just installed.

  There had been plenty to keep them bu
sy. Seth had finished the grout work in one of the downstairs bathrooms while Marie painted the upstairs bedrooms. Those walls were nearly dry enough for them to move the furniture in.

  Which meant working with her again.

  She’d managed to mostly avoid him during their confinement, and he hadn’t argued the point. It was easier keeping his distance.

  Just not if he needed to know her secrets.

  Maybe the shining sun that morning had signaled more than just a change in their freedom. It could mean a chance for them to start new projects and finish conversations like the one she’d been avoiding for the past forty-five minutes.

  At this moment, it certainly meant the ability to walk the boardwalk. Of course, it wasn’t quite spring in the Maritimes, so he’d probably regret his craving by the time he arrived at the hole-in-the-wall ice cream shop. But a few goose bumps had never kept him from a frozen treat in the past.

  “I’m pretty tired. I think I’ll go to bed early.” Marie sounded like she immediately regretted her decision. Good. Maybe she’d be easily swayed.

  “Are you sure?” He gave her his best, least sharklike grin. “It’s not a far walk, and they have the best ice cream on the island—besides cows, of course.”

  “Cows?”

  “Come with me. I’ll tell you all about it.”

  Hope flickered in her eyes, then vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “I’m really tired. I’m going to clean up my roller and then go to bed.”

  He motioned to the nine-paned window. “But the sun is barely setting.”

  She shrugged and hopped from her ladder. “It’s been a really busy day.” Scooping up her materials, she hurried toward the kitchen and thumped against the laundry room door before it slammed behind her.

  “Wow.” He breathed the word before remembering that he wasn’t alone.

  Jack chuckled. “Never seen a girl run from ice cream that fast. Maybe that’s why she’s so small.”

  Seth couldn’t help but laugh, despite the twist in his stomach that implied true regret. Of course he wished she’d go with him. He wanted answers.