“They’ll be happy seeing the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Maggie and Brandon figured they might as well see some sights if they were coming all the way to England for our wedding. Makes sense.”
“They love a good adventure.”
Justin slowed to let another car bypass them on a straightaway. They were in no hurry, Samantha thought. They were officially on their honeymoon. They had plenty of time to get to Edinburgh, their first stop in Scotland on their ten-day trip.
“I should have mentioned Charlotte would be house-sitting,” Samantha said, calmer. “I didn’t think of it. It’s a maybe, too. I haven’t heard from her. She could have decided to go straight to Washington and see about Max’s house.”
“Weddings can make people agree to things they later have to wriggle out of. Rawlings was beat. I don’t know when I’ve seen anyone that tired. Eric says it was fun watching him try to provoke Charlotte. She had no trouble holding her own with him.”
Of that, Samantha had no doubt. “It’s fine if Greg stays at the inn. It could be awkward if Charlotte shows up, too, but they’ll work it out. There’s loads of room.”
“Seriously, the guy was bone tired,” Justin said. “He could end up staying at the pub and sleep and drink beer all week.”
“His type gets restless after forty-eight hours. He’ll rally.”
“Then maybe he’ll stay at the pub and hike and drink beer all week.”
Samantha smiled. “Ever the optimist.”
“I wouldn’t say optimist. Realist. You saw what Greg Rawlings was like when he was in Knights Bridge last winter. He’s an adrenaline junkie who thrives on action. Not much action at an old country inn that hasn’t been in use for a few years.”
“There are cards and musty board games in the library.”
Justin grinned at her, his eyes a dark blue in the gray light. “He won’t last if he does show up in Knights Bridge. How long do you think Charlotte would last?”
“Not for days and days, maybe, but she looked ready for a real break.”
Justin nodded thoughtfully. “I agree.”
Samantha tilted her head back, eyeing this man she loved. Justin was solid, a concrete thinker who didn’t beat around the bush. She appreciated his bluntness and had seen him get better control of it in their months together, just as she’d gotten better control of her tendency to think she had to do everything herself and couldn’t trust anyone.
She trusted Justin Sloan with all her heart.
“Charlotte needs some downtime,” Samantha said. “She wouldn’t get into any details with me, because it was my wedding day, but I could tell.”
“Greg is a federal agent. If he and Charlotte end up at the inn together, it’s not as if she’d be holed up with an ax murderer. They’re adults. The inn’s got a dozen guest rooms and plenty of other rooms—way more space than I had growing up with five siblings. They can spread out. It’ll be fine.”
“You saw them dancing together yesterday?”
“I did.”
“It was her first wedding since she abandoned Tommy Ferguson at the altar.”
“She was happy for you, Sam. That’s what mattered to her.”
Justin downshifted, slowing to a near crawl as they approached another pretty English village. They were taking a scenic route north. Samantha didn’t know the details, didn’t have a map. She wanted to relax and enjoy the scenery. But here she was, worrying about her thirty-six-year-old cousin. Normally she’d never worry about Charlotte. No one did. She was ultraindependent, competent, good at so many things and yet not one to draw attention to herself. Not showing up for her wedding had been out of character in that sense. In character in the sense that Charlotte Bennett took decisive action once her mind was made up about something.
“Do you want to warn Charlotte?” Justin asked.
Samantha thought a moment. “No. There are too many variables. I don’t want to get her worked up about something that might not even happen if she’s about to get on a transatlantic flight.”
“This is what life’s like with our two families.” Justin brushed his fingertips on her cheek as they stopped for a traffic light. “Welcome to the Sloans and the Bennetts.”
“I love you, Mr. Sloan.”
“And I love you, Mrs. Sloan. Shall we enjoy our honeymoon?”
“Every minute.”
Six
Knights Bridge, Massachusetts
As Greg switched off the bedside lamp in his corner room at the Red Clover Inn, what felt like a million years after breakfast on the wet terrace of his Cotswolds pub, he could hear scurrying in the walls.
Mice.
He crawled under the top sheet and lightweight blanket on his lumpy double bed. Built in 1900 as an inn, the place nonetheless had the feel of a large, rambling house. It was run-down but not in disrepair, at least from what he’d seen so far. He’d arrived after dark and had turned on a few lights and headed upstairs to find a room. He didn’t have a good fix on the inn’s layout, but he didn’t need one. All he’d needed was to peel off his clothes and fall into bed. Everything else could wait. Red Clover Inn was about what he’d expected.
He’d chosen a corner bedroom on the second floor. Someone had left a set of sheets and a cotton blanket folded at the foot of the bed. He hadn’t minded making the bed himself. It wasn’t as if he could call housekeeping. He hadn’t bothered to get every tuck just right. Nobody cared. It wasn’t a real inn.
He’d opened a window and settled in, lying on his back in the pitch dark, relishing the late-spring breeze.
And then came the scurrying.
Whatever.
If the mice stayed in the walls, they weren’t his problem.
The scurrying stopped, at least for the moment. He’d considered changing his plans and checking into an airport hotel when he’d landed in Boston, but he’d had coffee while he waited for his luggage. Good to go. A flight delay, a guy snoring next to him for six hours, one fateful wrong turn coming out of the tunnel from Logan Airport—it’d been one of those travel days best forgotten.
He’d half hoped Charlotte had beaten him here but no sign of her. He was alone.
It was almost morning in Edinburgh.
Greg couldn’t keep his eyes open. He sank into the mattress—for all he knew, it had been new in 1982—and relaxed, letting his travel fatigue and twitchiness ooze out of his body. He didn’t hear any squeaks or telltale sounds of flapping wings that would indicate bats were about. A bat on the loose he’d have to deal with. Mice... He could go to sleep with mice doing their mice thing in the walls and ceilings.
How would Charlotte do with mice and bats?
No mystery. He knew.
She’d have no problem.
* * *
Hours and hours after she’d left her cozy Edinburgh apartment for her westward journey, Charlotte relished the first sips of her coffee at Smith’s, a small restaurant in a converted house just off Main Street in picturesque, totally adorable Knights Bridge, Massachusetts. She was already in love with the tiny New England town.
In love.
She smiled, relaxing, at ease now that she had arrived. She’d be fine unwinding at Red Clover Inn for a few days. No wonder Samantha had decided to make her home here. Even without hunky Justin, Knights Bridge was home-worthy.
Charlotte cautioned herself against overreaching with her expectations. She didn’t want to set herself up for a crash later when she started noticing Knights Bridge’s warts. So far, though, her inn-sitting adventure was working out even better than she’d expected.
Smith’s first customer on the early Monday morning, she ordered a three-egg omelet with green peppers, onions and ham, home fries, local cob-smoked bacon and multigrain toast.
Just what she needed to get
her internal clock onto her new schedule.
As she drank her coffee, she became aware of someone sliding into her booth across from her.
She blinked. No.
But it was true. Greg Rawlings had materialized in the little restaurant as if out of thin air. Maybe actually out of thin air. How else could Charlotte explain him? She hadn’t heard the front door, felt a breeze—anything.
“Don’t say a word,” she said. “You’re not here. You’re not real.”
“I’m not?”
“I conjured you up in a caffeine-deprived, jet-lagged haze. People can hallucinate after a long trip, a wedding, too many hours without coffee. It’s not possible that Diplomatic Security Agent Rawlings is here with me in a Knights Bridge café.”
Unfazed by her dismissal of him as a figment of her imagination, he motioned for the waiter to bring coffee, then turned back to her. “It’s a stretch to call this place a café. I like it, though.”
The waiter, a local teenager, brought Greg coffee, a sign that, in fact, Charlotte hadn’t dreamed him up. Maybe she was in a somnambulant state. Maybe she wasn’t really awake, or her flight yesterday had messed with her head due to her recent decompression illness.
“We need to work on your situational awareness,” Greg said, lifting his mug.
“I see you drink your coffee black. Is that only when you’re conjured up, or do you add cream in real life?”
“Always black. Never any cream. I don’t drink latte, cappuccino, café au lait, flavored coffee. Just coffee.”
“Of course. Not surprised.” She blinked. Then blinked again. “Nope. You didn’t vanish.”
“You’re a riot, Charlotte. Okay if I order breakfast or do you want me to pretend to be invisible?”
“I doubt you’d succeed.”
“You’d be surprised. I can be invisible when it suits me.”
“Order breakfast,” she said. “I’m not imagining you?”
He shook his head. “You are not imagining me.”
“I suppose we do need to work on my situational awareness. I didn’t notice you come through the door.”
“You also didn’t notice you had company at Red Clover Inn.”
She really needed more coffee and a few more hours’ sleep. “Company?”
“Correct. The car in the driveway was your first clue. Second was the house key missing by the hose spigot. Third was finding the back door unlocked.”
She ignored the quickening of her heartbeat. “How do you know all this?”
“Because I’m the one who used the key and left the door unlocked. Apparently we’re both inn-sitting this week.”
Charlotte gaped at him. She had no words.
Greg settled back on his cushioned bench. “I bet that doesn’t happen often—you not knowing what to say. I was up early and heard your car purring outside my window. Whose Mercedes-Benz?”
“It belonged to my great-uncle Harry. Samantha is sorting through his house in Boston. He...” She stopped, breathed. “Why didn’t you let me know you were there?”
“You were only inside for a minute and I didn’t want to scare the hell out of you. I needed to get dressed. I’d just come out of the shower and only had this threadbare towel tied around my waist.”
The image of him in only a towel did Charlotte in. She covered for herself by grabbing her water glass but then took a huge gulp, a dead giveaway.
“Easy,” he said. “You don’t want to choke.”
She set her glass on the table. “I was hungry and I wanted coffee. That’s why I didn’t stay. I saw this place on my way to the inn and decided to walk here and have breakfast.”
“You had no idea anyone else was at the inn?”
“No. I thought the car belonged to Justin or Samantha or some other Sloan. I didn’t think twice about the key. I emailed Samantha before I left Edinburgh yesterday that I was coming. I figured someone had opened up the place for me.”
“Not bad reasoning—not that you’re looking for my approval.”
“Not that I am,” she said.
Their waiter arrived with more coffee and took Greg’s order of plain pancakes—no blueberries or chocolate chips—with pure maple syrup, lots of butter and a side of sausage links.
Charlotte could feel her mouth water. “Now I wish I’d ordered pancakes,” she said as the waiter withdrew.
“My cure for jet lag. You can have some of mine, unless it’s a skimpy order. Then you’re on your own.”
“It’s lunchtime in Scotland. My internal clock is nagging me to eat.”
“You haven’t had anything today?”
She shook her head. “I try to eat according to the time zone I’m in. It helps me reset my internal clock. I spent last night at Harry’s house. It’s quite a place. I could always stay there this week. I love Boston. I just was intrigued by Samantha’s new town. I woke up at four and got on the road, and here I am.”
Greg raised his turquoise eyes to her. She noticed deep marine flecks that matched the color of his lightweight sweater. He didn’t look nearly as tired as he had the other night in England. In the cool morning East Coast light, he looked in control. Sexy. It took a lot for her to react to an alpha type, but she was jet-lagged.
“Did you know I was en route here?” she asked.
“Sort of.”
“It’s a yes-or-no question.”
“I had an idea you might be en route but I didn’t have any details. We could have landed here at different times and missed each other altogether. You could have changed your mind at the last minute or stopped in Iceland for a few days.”
“Iceland’s gorgeous,” she said.
“Agreed.”
“When did you arrive in town?”
“Midnight.” He smiled over the rim of his coffee mug. “I managed to get myself to bed without incident. Barely, but I did it.”
“You’re having fun with the mess we’re in, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yeah.”
His sense of humor was contagious, and by his standards—by her own standards—landing at Red Clover Inn at the same time wasn’t much of a mess. It didn’t seem to bother him at all.
Their waiter delivered their breakfasts. Charlotte could have wolfed hers down but she forced herself to take her time. She picked up her fork and knife. “I had half a cup of instant coffee before I left Boston. I swear Harry brought it to the Antarctic with him.” She cut into her omelet. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
“Hoped you would or hoped you wouldn’t?”
“I looked at the facts and drew the conclusion that the odds were against it. Hope...” She paused. “Hope doesn’t factor into my life that much. I’m not a pessimist.”
“Okay.”
“I’m not.”
“Going to admit you’re hoping I share some of my pancakes with you?”
“It doesn’t look like a skimpy order,” she said, watching the butter melt into the soft, fluffy pancakes.
“Best I share rather than have you fight me for them.”
“Just a bite. That’s all I need.”
“You won’t stop at a bite.”
“Two bites. I promise. I’ll stop after two bites.”
He lifted his knife and fork. “I assume you want butter and syrup.”
“Lots, yes.”
He laughed. “You don’t have to trade me a bite of your omelet.”
“I would,” she said. “I’m indulging myself with all this food.”
He set the triangle of pancakes, butter and syrup on the edge of her plate. “Enjoy yourself.”
“You, too. We can sort out our predicament after breakfast.”
“This isn’t a predicament. It’s my idea of a good time. A pretty town, a ram
bling country inn and an uptight woman who needs to relax. Can’t go wrong.”
She figured she could easily think of a hundred ways things could go wrong, but she was adjusting to his presence. She’d finish breakfast, walk back to the inn and then decide what to do. Stay there, find another place in Knights Bridge, return to Boston. She had options. She wasn’t trapped.
“Any critters at Harry Bennett’s place?” Greg asked, seemingly out of the blue.
Charlotte frowned. “Why would you ask that?”
“Just making conversation.”
“No. Not that I’m aware of.”
He nodded, swirling a forkful of pancakes in syrup. “Red Clover Inn will be different.”
Despite coffee, Charlotte felt a wave of fatigue. Still firmly on UK time, she hadn’t slept well last night and almost not at all on her flight. She must have arrived in Boston later than Greg had. Lucky for her, she’d been too tired upon landing to fetch Harry’s car and make the drive west. She didn’t want to imagine if she’d dragged herself into Red Clover Inn and discovered Greg Rawlings then.
Eric and Christopher Sloan entered the small restaurant, greeting the staff by name. The two brothers, too, must have flown back across the Atlantic yesterday. They sat at a table near Charlotte’s booth.
“Welcome to Knights Bridge,” Christopher said.
Eric, in his police uniform, thanked the waiter when he set a mug of coffee in front of him. “I see you two have discovered one of our hot spots,” he said, grinning at Charlotte and Greg.
Greg excused himself and took his coffee to the table with the two men. Charlotte seized the moment and dug out enough cash to cover her breakfast and a tip and scooted, giving a quick wave as she made her exit.
Out on the street, in the June sunshine, she decided there was every chance in the world that she’d fallen asleep in her booth and had dreamed that episode in the restaurant. She’d get to Red Clover Inn, and there’d be no rental car in the driveway, no Greg Rawlings camped out in one of the rooms and no threadbare towel, still damp from his shower, tossed on the bathroom floor.
But was that what she wanted?
Red Clover Inn--A Romance Novel Page 7