by Cindy Gerard
While Slater stood there, his eyes darkening to slate, Scarlett’s suspicions became more and more clear. She and her reluctant partner had been set up by a master.
“Damn that man,” she muttered. “If Maggie wasn’t such a good friend, I would cheerfully strangle that blond, bad-boy husband of hers the next time he shows his devious, grinning face around here.”
“Look, this is really fun,” he said, sounding as if he’d prefer another dunk in the lake to this conversation, “but would you mind being a little more specific?”
Scarlett eyed him with guarded concern. “You’re not going to like specific.”
“I’m not going to like paying my taxes this year, either, but that doesn’t mean I can avoid it.”
She gave him one last, measuring look and decided it was inescapable. “You’d better sit down.”
Two
He didn’t sit down, of course. He stood facing her, legs spread, arms folded over his chest, as Scarlett shook her head. “I can’t believe I was so gullible.”
She forced herself to meet his eyes. When she did, she forgot all about her intended resentment and actually felt sorry for him.
“Don’t you get it? J.D. had well-thought-out and convoluted ulterior motives for getting you up here.”
“Convoluted ulterior motives?”
The man may be a corporate whiz and he may be gorgeous, but he was a little too slow on the uptake to suit her. She really didn’t want to put this part into words, so she decided to lead him to his own conclusions.
“Okay, he leveled with you about the significance of saving the hotel, of preserving the land and the lake the way it has been for hundreds of years. But, what, exactly, did J.D. tell you about me?”
His dark brows drew together. “About you?”
She nodded, reading his blank look for what it was. The man had no clue.
He thought for a moment then shrugged. “I don’t know. That you were struggling to make the hotel work. That you were...” His words trailed off as a shadow of comprehension slowly clouded his face.
“That I was...?” she prompted.
Closing his eyes, he raked a hand through his hair, then recounted wearily, “He said that you were intelligent. That you had a great sense of humor. Were a wonderful cook. A good mother. A good single mother.”
“What?” she asked, when his sheepish look told her he finally realized he’d been had. “He didn’t mention that I have all my teeth?”
“That would probably come under the attractive part,” he admitted with a quick, self-deprecating smile. “Damn. I’m usually a little quicker out of the gate.”
He cupped his palm around his nape and let go of a deep breath. “So...it seems our pal had a little more than rest and relaxation on his mind when he initiated this little retreat.”
“Our pal is a snake,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “A miserable, misguided, bona fide, serpent-in-Eden snake. He is allays trying to match me up with someone. It’s been worse since he married Maggie last fall. But this—this fries it.” She stopped, suddenly more embarrassed than angry. “Look. Up-front, you need to know that I had nothing to do with this.”
He walked to the counter beside her. “Same goes. I can’t believe I was so clueless.”
“It’s absurd. You—I mean—look at you. Look at me.”
Colin was looking at her. Truth to tell, the only time he hadn’t been looking at her was when he’d been busy trying not to. And despite the obvious differences, he was liking what he was seeing.
She wasn’t anything like the women he was used to, most of whom, unlike her, would never be caught in daylight without the aid of Elizabeth Arden. But J.D. was right: Scarlett Morgan was one attractive woman.
From the moment he’d walked into the kitchen and seen her and Casey side by side, he’d been struck by her natural beauty. He’d also been struggling with the mother-daughter relationship. It was an old cliché, but in this case it hit dead center: Scarlett could easily pass for Casey’s older sister.
Their resemblance to each other was also quite striking. Not only was their hair the same strawberry blond, they both chose to wear it in a French braid. On the daughter it looked cute. On the mother it looked nothing but sexy. Kind of a supposed-to-beneat-but-can’ t-help-looking-a-littte-wild sort of sexy. Just like the sparse smattering of freckles, almost lost in the summer tan of her face, and the smudge of frosting on her cheek, which gave her a wholesome yet disarmingly seductive look. Her arms were the same glowing bronze and made him think of health and vitality instead of damaged ozones and UV rays. An overwhelming curiosity to find out if her skin was the same honeyed gold all over hit him hard and low.
Not that he’d act on that curiosity. Or on this unexpected attraction he felt toward her. As she’d been wise enough to point out, they lived in different worlds, and he was making a brief pass through hers.
That conclusion, though obvious, caused an unsolicited sting of regret to stir fleetingly through his mind. Employing the discipline that had made him so successful, he dismissed it as quickly as it came.
“This explains so much,” she went on, expounding on her conclusions. “Like why J.D. wasn’t here today when you docked. And why he was so busy trying to make me believe the only reason you were coming to Crimson Falls was to check out your investment. It was a smoke screen.”
“Just like his insistence that I not only get away, but that I get away here,” he said, adding his own charges to the list of Hazzard’s transgressions.
“I’m really sorry,” she said.
He had no doubt that she meant it. “It’s not your doing.”
“Well.” She offered him a weak smile. “There is one thing. At least you can get the rest you need. If you want to relax, Crimson Falls is the place to do it.”
“If I wanted to relax,” he countered, not even trying to cover his sarcasm as he wandered to the screen door, looked outside and wondered distractedly at the wire fence strung in a circle around it, “I’d hire a masseuse. I wouldn’t fly off to the edge of nowhere, where the only game plan is to bounce off the walls with boredom.”
Even before he turned back to face her, he sensed that he’d hit a nerve. A very raw nerve, judging by the look on her face. She wasn’t merely angry. She was royally ticked off. And she was something to see in that state. The most notable change was in her eyes. Warm, melting chocolate transformed to a hot, spicy cinnamon.
Another one of those unguarded thoughts breached both his reserve and his resistance. What would they look like fired by passion? The possibilities were as provocative as black silk; the desire to kindle that passion as forbidden as a broken vow.
“Crimson Falls may seem like the edge of nowhere to you,” she said, all righteous indignation and feminine pique, “but it’s my home and I like it fine just the way it is. I’m sorry you find it lacking.”
When he managed to tear his gaze away from the fire in hers, he collected his thoughts and offered the apology he owed her. “And I’m sorry for the way that came out. I didn’t mean to step on any toes. It’s just that I don’t appreciate being manipulated. Which my buddy Hazzard has managed to do quite easily. I didn’t mean to take it out on you. It’s very...quiet here, is all. It makes me a little nervous. I’m used to a lot more—”
“Noise pollution? Smog? Muggings?” she suggested with an acerbic little smile that pried a quick, self-mocking grin out of him—something she’d been doing with an increasing amount of ease ever since he’d come into the kitchen.
She had a sharp tongue and an even sharper wit. Both of which he appreciated—almost as much as her eyes.
“Excitement was the word I was searching for,” he countered, realizing as he said it that, as excitement went, Scarlett Morgan had generated a little of her own. She was not the kind of distraction he’d anticipated finding out here in the midst of all this water, woods and solitude.
Another one of her soft, secret smiles had him smiling in return. “What?�
� he asked. “You just thought of another joke somebody forgot to let me in on?”
“Actually, I was finding a sick sort of humor in all of this. It occurs to me that J.D. went to a boatload of trouble setting us up. He had me resenting you sight unseen for interfering in my business. And that letter you wrote... Ah...” She paused, reacting to his “what letter?” scowl. “I should have known. You didn’t write any letter, did you?”
He shook his head. “What was it that I didn’t write in this letter?”
She waved it off. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s just say he managed to make you come off as a prude of major proportions and then sat there defending you and begging me to give you a chance. He was really quite wonderful,” she added with a reluctant chuckle of admiration, before she sobered and gave him a meaningful look. “We can’t let him get by with this.”
The devious spark that lit her eyes was just this side of dangerous, not to mention irresistible.
“I suppose staking him to an ant hill would be out of the question.”
She took her time considering. “Not necessarily. We’ll keep it as a backup plan if I can’t come up with something nastier. But I do like the way you think.”
They shared a quick, conspiratorial grin. As olive branches went, it was a big one. What they shared in the aftermath of that grin, however, went way beyond making peace and delved into something risky for Colin. Awareness—of her smile, of the brown eyes that danced with humor and pride, of an unbendable spirit and a suppressed sensuality—crowded around him like a sweet, tantalizing liqueur. Tempting, teasing, playing with his senses and luring him in.
She would try to deny it, but he sensed that she felt it, too. He understood her struggle to keep the awareness at bay—was grateful, in fact, that she had the sense to. He wasn’t so sure if he was capable of the same restraint.
Unsettled by the suddenness and the strength of his attraction to her, he started pacing again, determined to get some perspective.
You’re talking about two weeks here, Slater.
Two weeks and he’d be gone. Now was not the time, this was not the place, and she was definitely not the woman to start something with that he couldn’t finish. End of discussion.
Scarlett watched him pace, thinking that in her entire life she couldn’t remember fielding such a muddled mess of contradictory emotions in such a short time span. She’d been prepared to grudgingly tolerate Colin Slater. She’d been anticipating suffering through the inquiries of a dull, fiscal mind. Instead, in addition to being unwisely attracted to him, she found herself liking him, enjoying his sense of humor.
While all of that added up to pleasant in the surprise department, she’d have felt a lot more comfortable around him if he’d had the doughboy body and pasty city pallor she’d envisioned. He was too handsome, too masculine, too vital to ever feel comfortable around physically.
Despite that, though, she felt an unsolicited tug of sympathy for him as he roamed around her kitchen, looking irritable and anxious and amazingly attractive in spite of it. He hadn’t asked for any of this, either.
And unfortunately she wasn’t finished springing surprises on him.
Intentionally avoiding contact—eye, body or otherwise—she walked to the fridge, opened the door and decided to get on with it.
“As long as we’re uncovering subterfuge, I’m afraid there’s another contender to deal with. Casey’s also played a little trick on you.”
“Well, what the hell.” He sounded weary and resigned and just cranky enough to make her lips quirk upward. “Why not her, too? After all, it’s hard to resist a slow-moving target.
“I’m going to take a wild guess,” he went on, “and venture that you’re not referring to the two times her hand accidentally slipped when she was hauling me out of the lake?”
That child! Scarlett thought, keeping her head down, her eyes on the lettuce she’d dug out of the back of the crisper.
“Well, you’ve got to admit,” she said, unsuccessful at squelching another grin, “you’ve got a few pounds on her.”
“And she’s got a sly sense of humor,” he suggested, but not in anger.
Giving him more points for his tolerance toward her daughter, she let go of the last remnant of her resentment. “That she does. And it’s that sense of humor that leads me back to the subject of your accommodations... specifically, your room.”
“Oh. Then you’re talking about the ghost thing.”
She couldn’t hide her surprise. “So she did tell you.”
“What she told me was that she was putting me in the most popular guest room because it’s believed to be haunted. By the spirit of a soiled dove if I remember her story correctly. How did she refer to it? ‘The Legend of the Bride of Crimson Falls’.”
Scarlett shrugged, accepting the skepticism in his eyes for what it was. “That would be the short of it.”
“And what would be the long of it?” Leaning a hip against the counter beside her, he managed to look amused, gorgeous and bored all at the same time.
She didn’t blame him for being a nonbeliever She would be one herself if she hadn’t lived in the hotel for the past six years. Like anyone grounded in reality, she’d tried to rationalize the unexplained phenomena as being coincidence, weather related, electrical failures... whatever. Finally it just became simpler to accept the possibility that Belinda—or more precisely, Belinda’s spirit—was a presence in the hotel, and to learn to live with it. Whatever the explanation, living with the things that went on in Belinda’s room meant never putting a man in there. It kept the atmosphere in the hotel much calmer and kept her male guests from running from the room and boarding the next boat for anywhere.
In any event, whether Belinda was or wasn’t a reality really didn’t matter. Neither did Colin Slater’s skepticism. What mattered was getting him out of that room.
She decided to downplay the situation. “You don’t really want to hear about a silly old ghost story.”
“But I do. I’m a business man. I appreciate a good business ploy when I hear one. A resident ghost is good for business. That’s a proven fact. There’s not an inn on the East Coast that doesn’t boast a ghost or two to lure the curious or adventuresome. Why not an old hotel in the middle of nowhere? Humor me. Tell me the whole story.”
He wanted the story? Fine. She’d give it to him. She knew she couldn’t make him believe it. Only Belinda could do that, and Scarlett wasn’t going to give her the opportunity.
“The hotel was built back in the 1890s,” she explained as she rinsed the lettuce, then gathered the rest of the makings for a salad. “It accommodated fur traders and loggers in, shall I say, more than overnight lodging and a hot meal?”
He quirked a brow and drew the correct conclusion. “Working girls?”
She nodded. “Lots of men and lots of money traveled through the boundary waters back then. Lots of lonely men. The hotel was the perfect setup for a brothel.
“Belinda,” she continued, tearing the lettuce, then chopping fresh mushrooms and cucumbers, “was one of the professional ladies. When a big Swede wandered in one day, took one look at her and asked her to marry him, she thought her prince had come.”
“But the prince turned out to be a frog?” he suggested, spinning his own twist on the tale.
“So the story goes. When the big day came, he got cold feet. He left her standing at the altar—or in this case, at the bar just off the dining room.”
Though she’d told the story hundreds of times to both the curious and the skeptics, she always felt a sadness when she thought of Belinda. As a woman, she supposed, she even felt a connection.
“And...” he prompted.
She shrugged, forcing herself to snap out of the momentary melancholy. “She walked to the top of the bluffs and threw herself over the falls. Her body was never found.”
“And now she haunts the hotel,” he deduced in a patronizing tone.
She decided to forgive him that attitude, since h
e really didn’t know any better. “More specifically, the room Casey put you in. It was her business room.”
“And she’s searching for and seeking revenge on men in general for what her bridegroom did to her.”
Scarlett smiled, recognizing the look of a man who felt he’d just been fed a long line of hooey. “That about sums it up.”
“It’s a great story,” he conceded. “But that’s all it is. A great story.”
“Suit yourself,” she said agreeably.
“You mean you actually believe it?”
“Casey believes it.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
She shrugged. “Certain events haven’t given me a lot of choice.”
It didn’t take much to translate the look on his face. He thought she was loony. No matter. Scarlett had dealt with nay-sayers before. No doubt she’d deal with them again. If someone could come up with a rational explanation for what happened in that room when a man occupied it, she’d buy it in a heartbeat. In the meantime her money was on Belinda, and she had to get Colin Slater out of there before Belinda started making mischief—even though Scarlett had begun to agree with Casey. It might be fun to let him experience Belinda’s wrath firsthand.
“Regardless,” she countered, when her conscience just wouldn’t allow it, “I think you’d be more comfortable in one of the other guest rooms. After dinner, we’ll move you to the Annabelle. It’s a little larger, and the view of the lake and the falls in the distance is better. It’s also at the end of the hall, so you won’t have to put up with traffic walking by your door.”
“No need.” A spark of challenge danced in his eyes. “The Belinda will do just fine. Besides, I’ve already unpacked.”
“No problem,” she breezed on, trying to ignore both his insistence and the tumbling in her tummy caused by the look in his gray eyes. “We’ll just transfer your things. You really will prefer the Annabelle.”