Room at the Inn (Novella): A Loveswept Contemporary Romance

by Ruthie Knox

  “I heard that. They’re talking about a record December.”

  Martin grunted, shuffled the cards, and dealt. “Five-card stud. Nothing wild.”

  Carson threw a chip into the middle of the table and stared at his cards without seeing them. He played by rote while he ate, not really trying to beat his father, not really wanting to lose. It just didn’t matter very much. Poker was Dad’s game, a ritual Carson participated in because it gave them something to do together.

  “I walked through the shoe factory the other day.”

  His father’s eyes drifted upward from the cards. “Who let you in?”

  “Leo.”

  “No shit.”

  Leo had given him the key and left. Drop it by the office when you’re done, he’d said, but Carson had pocketed it. He wanted to go back. Leo knew where to find him if he needed to.

  The shoe factory was amazing. Filthy, of course, the floor covered with shards of glass and ancient grease, strange collections of machinery and crumpled paper. But the main rooms were vast and reverberant, surprisingly bright.

  Something young and long neglected inside Carson came alive inside those walls. Something that wanted.

  “You ever been in there?” he asked.

  “Sure. I worked in the warehouse.”

  “When?”

  “High school. After school, and one summer.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “Loaded shoe boxes on trucks, mostly.”

  Carson mulled that over. It didn’t surprise him that his father had worked at the factory, though he never spoke of it. The building was part of the town, its beating pulse, long muffled.

  “Julie wants to fix it up, you know,” Martin said.

  “How’s that?”

  “Wants to turn it into an arts and crafts place, some kind of cooperative to bring up the tourists from the city.”

  “It would cost a fortune.”

  “I know. She tried to get the Chamber interested a few years back, but they stonewalled her.”

  Carson wondered if she’d talked to Leo about it. If Leo liked the idea, planned to invest in it? Maybe that explained why Julie was attracted to him—all that money a form of potential she couldn’t resist.

  But he didn’t believe it. She’d never been interested in money. Other currencies moved Julie.

  Community. Belonging.

  “You taking a card or not?” his father asked.

  Carson returned his attention to the game. Tried to, anyway. Part of his head kept running off on him, thinking about what it would take to fix up that factory. What contractors he’d have to hire. How much it would cost, how many months it would take. He could preserve most of the limestone, keep the window openings but replace all those small panes with larger expanses of glass. Knock down some of the walls that darkened the smaller wing.

  Leo would mess it up. He didn’t have the imagination for this kind of project, and Julie had the vision but not the knowledge.

  “It’d be a good job for you,” Martin said.

  Carson’s head snapped up. “What would?”

  A lame question. His father didn’t bother to answer it.

  “If you weren’t goin’,” he added.

  “But I am going.” For the first time, something inside him stumbled over the declaration. He ignored it. “You need to get ready for when I do. I called a woman to come over tomorrow and steam clean the carpet. If you like her, I think you should keep her on. She can stop by three, four times a week and do laundry. She cooks, too.”

  “What woman?”

  “Danya Marvelle.”

  “She’s a busybody.”

  “And you’re not? Bruce told me you two were gossiping about Julie and Leo over at the hardware store.”

  “Wasn’t gossiping.”

  “Whatever you call it.”

  “I don’t want that woman in your mother’s house. Your mother never liked her.”

  “Mom is dead,” Carson said firmly. “And you need to get on with it.”

  He looked down at his cards, pushing back against the rush of feeling his own words had unleashed. They needed to have this talk. His father had to hear the plain truth.

  Martin threw a chip onto the pile. His hand trembled. “Raise you ten.”

  “Call.”

  Instead of laying his cards down on the table, his father met his eyes. “What if I don’t want to get on with it?”

  Carson thought he had nothing to say to that. But he fanned his cards out on the table and said to his hands, “I’ll help you.”

  Martin grunted. They left it at that. The closest thing they’d managed to a moment of real communication—and a far cry from good enough.

  Chapter Six

  He’d gotten accustomed to the view out the kitchen window—a clear shot down the slope of the broad lawn to the pond, where dried reeds bent under the weight of the snow. It was a clean, empty view, and he liked to rest his eyes on it when he’d been focusing on the ceiling too long.

  So when he saw her out there skating on the pond late one afternoon, it took him longer than it should have to process what he was looking at.

  A bird, skimming over the water. No, ice.

  A person.

  Julie.

  She moved in elegant figure eights, fast across the middle with her hands tucked behind her and her legs scissoring out, then slower as she leaned in and took each turn in a broad, graceful swoop.

  He had his coat on before he’d made any kind of conscious decision, and by the time he got around to second-guessing himself, he was halfway down to the pond, and there wasn’t any point.

  She spotted him as she rounded a turn and came to a neat stop directly in front of him, smiling across the six-foot gap between them.

  Not smiling—beaming. At him.

  “You want to skate?” she asked. “I’ve got a bunch of pairs in the house. I was pulling them out for the Christmas guests, and I couldn’t resist.”

  “No, thanks.” Carson shoved his hands in his pockets. It was cold, and she had on only a heavy white sweater and leggings, plus a scarf and a hat. Not enough layers to keep warm unless she kept moving.

  “Is it safe?” he asked. “Did you test it?”

  “I was careful to look it all over before I got on, and Norm Baker gave it the thumbs-up last time he was over. He volunteered to be my ice certifier when I moved in.”

  Norm did a lot of ice fishing. If he said it was safe, Carson was inclined to trust his judgment.

  Which left him no reason to be here, talking to her. No reason whatsoever to have rushed out of the house like a fool at the sight of Julie on the pond.

  No reason except he wanted to be around her.

  “All right. Carry on.”

  “Wait,” she called as he turned to go. “You want some cocoa later? I always have cocoa after I skate.”

  Carson faced her but kept walking backward. “I’m not really a big cocoa guy.”

  “I put a lot of peppermint schnapps in it.”

  “That sounds better.”

  “We could get a pizza, maybe. Watch a movie upstairs. Elf is on tonight.”

  Her cheeks were bright pink. She wore a blue scarf that made her eyes look unreal. She wanted to watch a movie with him.

  His smile felt too big. Goofy. “Are you sure we should? Is that what ‘old acquaintances’ do in a situation like this?”

  She fidgeted on her skates, sliding them forward and backward, cutting thin lines in the ice. “Maybe it’s what old acquaintances do when they’re starting to be friends.”

  “Just so they know where to draw the line.”

  She glanced at him, more tentative than he was used to seeing her. “They know. I mean, they have a lot of practice, right?”

  He had years of practice not touching her. It made no difference. Right now, he could think of ten different ways to get her naked in the guise of warming her up.

  “They do.”

  “So we should be fine
.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Well, don’t stay out here too long. You’re going to get cold.”

  “I know my limits, Vance.”

  She skated away, and he went back to the kitchen to watch her, just in case she fell in.

  And because she looked beautiful.

  Julie knelt at his feet, rummaging around on the floor of an attic storage closet.

  “You know, I’m not even sure what you do?” she said. “I don’t know what you’re going to run on back to once you blow town. Your mom used to keep me up to speed.”

  “I’m a construction engineer for the State Department.”

  “I know that.” She knee-walked deeper into the closet. The seat of her jeans was dusty, and she had that awful bandana on her hair again, and he wanted to knock her onto her back and peel off every frustrating layer of clothing that kept her naked skin from his sight.

  Pretty much par for the course.

  “Here, take this,” she said.

  He stooped down to accept the box she handed him. When he’d offered to help her carry the decorations downstairs, he hadn’t anticipated there would be so many. But with the lacquer drying in the kitchen, he had nothing better to do.

  And he found her so interesting.

  She wasn’t quite the Julie he remembered from college. Or maybe she was, only more so. It fascinated him to watch the way she lived, the way she was, inhabiting her life. He’d never stayed long enough to get a full picture of Potter Falls Julie, so he hadn’t understood what she had become. Mature, creative, ambitious. Her house was a central place, the hub of frequent drop-in visits and phone calls made to gauge what Julie thought about some matter of concern or to enlist her help in making something happen.

  It had struck him the other day that she’d lived Upstate exactly as long as she’d lived in Manhattan. No wonder she wasn’t the same person anymore. She’d picked up the local way of talking. She’d made herself indispensable. Julie knew what she wanted, knew how to make people work for her. He listened to her on the phone with her parents, still a little stiff but more relaxed than she used to be talking to them. He eavesdropped while she served tea and scones and courted potential library donors.

  She joked with people. Laughed. Flirted with old men.

  She was happy.

  Christ, it was sexy.

  He hadn’t seen any sign of Leo.

  “So what’s it all about, being a construction engineer? What do you actually do all day?”

  “Yell at people. In a number of languages.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “It’s true. Basically, I boss around local contractors to get embassies constructed—and other stuff the Foreign Service wants built, too. I’m in charge of the schedule, making sure materials get delivered. I make sure the government gets its money’s worth.”

  “This must be so emasculating for you—working on my ceiling and saying ‘How high?’ when your dad says, ‘Jump.’ ”

  Carson flicked his eyes down to the box in his hands. “I don’t mind it when I’m working. If I sit around thinking about it, I get antsy.”

  She smiled. She’d been smiling more the past few days. The ice princess had departed. “Do you like it?”

  He had liked it, back when he started out. Now it was just his job. Three weeks and change in Potter Falls, and he’d barely thought about it.

  “It’s important work.”

  “I’m sure.”

  She stood up and pointed to a pile in the corner. “We just need these now, and we’re good to go.”

  “What’s in them?”

  “Garlands. I have to hang them all over the front of the house, and then I put a whole bunch up downstairs, and I decorate them with mistletoe and Christmas ornaments and the whole shebang. It’s like a Christmas explosion. The guests eat it up.”

  “Who are your guests, eighty-year-old women?”

  “You might be surprised.”

  Carson picked up the boxes, surprised to find that garlands weighed a ton.

  “Let me get a couple of those.”

  “No.”

  “One.”

  He let her take one off the top, and he followed her down the curved staircase to the front of the house.

  “Show me where you want this outside, and I’ll hang it for you.”

  “You don’t have to do that. You already did the kitchen, and—”

  “It’s just something to keep me occupied. You know how I am.”

  She pushed open the door onto the covered front porch, smiling even as a bitter wind picked up her hair and flung it into her eyes. “Yeah, I know. You should really get a house like this. It’d keep you busy for forty years. You wouldn’t even have to think hard about what to do. There’s always something breaking or falling down or coming apart. It’s like your perfect residence.”

  Then her face fell, and she covered her eyes with her hand. “I didn’t mean that like it came out.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Forget I said it, all right? I don’t want you to think I’m pining. Everyone else thinks I’m pining, but I feel like at least one person in town other than me should be aware of the actual situation.”

  “Which is that you’re not pining.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Got it. It’s fine.”

  She took her hand away and peeked at him from under her lashes. “Is it?”

  Carson’s chest tightened. It wasn’t okay. It was four degrees and windy, she wasn’t wearing shoes, and he’d been living with her for two weeks. He wanted her like a heartbeat, the pulse of it low and insistent whether he was sleeping or awake. He wanted to take her, to fuck her until she couldn’t move, and he was pretty sure she wanted that, too.

  And none of it troubled him as much as the fact that he also wanted to please her.

  Every time he walked into town, somebody told him how much they loved Julie. She’s worked miracles over at the library. We couldn’t get by without her at the hospital gift shop. The Methodist Women’s Auxiliary wouldn’t exist anymore without Julie. You wouldn’t believe the way she’s whipped the Chamber into shape.

  He didn’t know if it was supposed to mean “thank you” because he’d brought her here or if it was a warning to back off. He just knew it kept happening, and he’d stopped resenting it.

  She worked miracles, and everyone loved her, and he woke up every day having burrowed a little deeper into her life.

  She scared him, but he wanted her anyway.

  “Tell me where to hang these, so I can go inside and get my coat on,” he said. “It’s fucking freezing out here.”

  “Is that how you order around your minions?”

  “More or less.”

  “How many languages can you say ‘fuck’ in?”

  Carson smiled. “I’d need my fingers to count, and they’re busy holding your fucking boxes.”

  That made her laugh. She walked down the porch steps, wool socks on a scrim of snow, turned around, and began pointing. “All along the front there, and also up there. You’re going to need the extension ladder to do that level. Then down the gutters …”

  It was the laugh that did it. Her laugh, directed at him. Her hair whipping around in the wind, and her socks planted in the snow, and just … the Julie-ness of her. Seeing her that way, smiling up at him without reserve, struck a final blow to the dam he’d built against all the old feelings. It gave way with a flood of pleasure that warmed him despite the cold.

  She was special. She was Julie. She was his.

  Forget keeping his distance. As soon as he got her fucking garlands up, he was going to kiss her.

  Julie sat by the front window, watching Carson’s legs on the ladder. She couldn’t see his face or his hands, but just his being up there made her wobbly, nervous for his safety, weak with yearning that just kept getting worse.

  At night, she dreamed he was in her bed, in her body. She dreamed he was part of her life, here in the house. Cruel dreams that she wished away, bu
t wishing didn’t get her anywhere with Carson.

  When she was twenty and she decided to give Glory her kidney, she’d wished Carson would understand, but he didn’t. For Julie, it had been the first opportunity she’d ever had to prove that she could be selfless. Different from the way she’d been raised. She’d liked Glory, known she was a good woman, known she would die within the year if she didn’t get the transplant.

  Why not give it to her? What did Julie need two kidneys for?

  But Carson—despite being grateful—had read her the riot act. He’d repeated the risks of general anesthesia and major surgery, staph infections and renal failure, shortened life span. You barely even know my mother. You don’t know what you’re getting into.

  After the surgery, she was weaker than she’d expected, and he grew more restless every day, pacing the hospital room, pacing the corridors. The semester was starting, and he wanted to head back to Alfred and finish up his degree.

  I’m staying here for a while, she told him when she got released to recuperate at his parents’ house. I like it here.

  College hadn’t really worked out for her. Except for Carson, she hadn’t found anything there to latch onto. She didn’t know who to be. And without knowing that, she was afraid to latch on to him too hard. Afraid of being subsumed in the very energy and purpose that attracted her to him in the first place.

  He was so confident, even then. So sure of himself, when Julie was still just finding her feet.

  But in Potter Falls, strangely enough, she knew exactly who she was.

  He hadn’t even tried to talk it through. You can go, she’d said, and he’d just left. Packed up his things and drove back to school.

  It took her months to process that it was really over. Years of wondering if she could have done something different, kept him somehow without ruining him. Gone with him without losing herself.

  She became his mother’s friend, and he became a stranger who came to visit periodically and knocked her equilibrium out of whack.

  In his room across the hall from hers, his backpack leaned against the wall, the top an open mouth from which he retrieved things as he needed them. He’d been around for half of December, and his dresser sat empty.