With This Kiss (13 page)

“Sean, I’m okay,” she said again.

At last, his eyes locked onto hers and he seemed to hear her. Obviously realizing that he was holding onto her like she was a breakable figurine, he dropped his hands and took an abrupt step back.

“I heard the noise and I thought for sure it was you. I was so afraid that someone was hurting you.”

As irritated as she was that he hadn’t even come close to starting to apologize yet for either the manhandling or the barging in, she couldn’t deny that a little part of her was touched that he’d been so intent on making sure she was okay… and that she mattered enough to have him barely pulling clothes on and rushing to her suite of rooms.

“It freaked me out at first, too,” she admitted. “I was worried it was one of the guests, but then I realized the sound is loudest in my bedroom.”

She’d looked away for a moment to gesture toward her bedroom door and when she looked back at Sean his eyes were darker and filled with something that made her warm all over.

Suddenly she remembered he wasn’t the only one who hadn’t had time to pull on clothes. Every instinct she possessed had her wanting to run into her bedroom to throw on a thick, ankle-length robe, but she made herself remain right where she was.

Not only were her pajamas not overly sexy by any means—heck, she wore less on the beach during the summer—but Sean would surely think she had some sort of crush on him if she freaked out about what she was wearing in front of him.

“Stay in here while I go check things out.”

She scowled at his back as he walked into her bedroom
without even asking if he could, then followed him and said, “I was thinking it might be an animal stuck in the ceiling.”

Clearly more than a little irritated that she hadn’t been a good little girl and stayed out of the way, he said, “Maybe. There isn’t much space up there between the roof and the ceiling tiles.” He looked around the room again. “Did you notice that the sounds seemed to stop when I came inside?”

She looked down at the keys dangling from his fingertips and raised one eyebrow. “That wasn’t exactly the use I had in mind for the master set of keys when I gave them to you yesterday.”

A muscle jumped in his jaw, but he didn’t apologize. She wasn’t surprised. She could already tell he was a man who did what he thought was right, regardless of the consequences.

Frankly, she was glad she’d been wearing any clothes at all. Imagine if he’d come in and found her naked.

She shivered at the thought she shouldn’t have let herself have, a thought that made her feel much too warm in the usually cool room. Warm enough that she found herself saying, “Actually, my bedroom hasn’t been this warm since I moved in. Not until right this second.”

“You’ve noticed other strange things in here?”

Feeling slightly foolish for having said anything at all, she admitted, “It’s been really cold at times, like the windows are wide open in the middle of a storm. But only in the bedroom. I mentioned it to your grandmother and—” She cut herself off, tried to think of a way to put it that didn’t make either her or Celeste sound like they’d been eating straight out of a bowl of nuts. “She said this room had been closed off for sixty years. Did you know that?”

“I knew it hadn’t been used in a while, but I didn’t realize it was that long.”

“Your grandmother would have been in her early twenties, right?”

Instead of answering her question about his grandmother, he finally noticed her festival paperwork spread out across the foot of the bed along with the slip she’d been knitting on top of the pattern book.

“Were you even asleep, or were you still working?”

She bristled at his accusing tone. Crossing her arms over her chest, she said, “Not that it’s any business of yours, but yes, I was taking care of a few things.”

“Don’t you have enough on your plate already? You can’t do it all, Rebecca. Not without things starting to fall apart here at the inn. With Stu gone and while you’re teaching me the ropes, wouldn’t it be easier if you let the festival go for now?”

Hating that he thought she would ever intentionally do anything to damage the inn, she called him on what was really behind his frustrated words. “This isn’t about the festival. This isn’t about the inn. This is about what happened this afternoon, isn’t it?”

In an instant, she watched Sean shut himself down. He hadn’t been thrilled with her before, but that was different from the way he literally pulled himself away from her now.

“Don’t try to turn my concern for your well-being and the inn into something it isn’t.”

She knew she should let it go. That she should let him go. But she was sick and tired of men not telling her the truth. Especially this one, who claimed truth was everything to him.

“I saw your reaction to my conversation with Mark.”

Instead of answering her direct question, he took another step away from her. “I shouldn’t have been listening to your private conversation. And I shouldn’t have barged in here tonight, either.”

Beyond frustrated, she all but yelled, “But you were! And you did!” And the truth was that she hadn’t been able to get his judgmental expression out of her head all night. “Why don’t you be honest with me, for once?”

His mouth was tight, his eyes narrowed. “You broke up a marriage.”

“I don’t need to explain myself to you, but if I’d known he was married, I never would have—”

“You must have known.”

Rebecca’s eyes widened at Sean’s accusation, at the way he’d actually voiced aloud the horrible things she’d already guessed he was thinking about her.

“He didn’t wear a ring, he had his own apartment, he was free on evenings and weekends. There were no pictures of a family, no strange phone calls he didn’t want me to hear.”

But Sean clearly refused to take her explanation at face value. “There had to be signs, Rebecca. Signs you were ignoring. Times you couldn’t call him. Places you couldn’t meet him. But you chose to ignore all of them.”

It would be so much easier to stay on the defensive, but the truth was his words were pricking at so many things she hadn’t wanted to admit to herself. Was it true that she’d been more concerned with the fantasy than what was really right in front of her? And if that was the case, then wasn’t she guilty of ignoring the reality about Stu, too? Along with the truth that a platonic life with him would have never worked out either?

“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” she finally said, exhaustion playing havoc with the extremely tenuous hold she had over her emotions. “And I’ll never stop regretting the pain his wife and children must be in.”

She waited for Sean to say “I told you so,” or to hammer on her more, but all he said was “I’ll check the roof and the water pipes tomorrow.”

Even though a maintenance issue like this was something she would have passed off to Stu in the past, she was angry enough at the way it felt like he was judging her past to come back at him with, “Do you think I don’t know what I’m doing here? Do you think I can’t handle looking into those issues myself?”

For a moment, she thought he would argue with her, tell her again that she wasn’t Superwoman.

Instead, he simply shook his head and said, “I know you can handle anything that comes your way, Rebecca. You’ve proved that to me in spades this week.” The low rumble of his surprising words washed through her senses, making her powerfully aware of the attraction still coursing between them despite their angry words with one another.

It would be so much easier if she could pretend it was only the energy they’d whipped up between them in their frustration. But Rebecca knew that it wasn’t.

Only, more than anything else, she knew exactly where tumbling into bed with Sean Murphy would get her. Yes, there’d be pleasure. She wasn’t naive enough to think there wouldn’t be. But there would be infinitely more heartache.

Along with an immediate search for a new job. In a new town.

But with her brain—and heart—still stuck on thinking of what his kiss would taste like, although she tried to find a response, before she could, like the ghost she was starting to believe really lived in the walls of her bedroom, he was gone.

T
he next morning, Rebecca knew exactly whom she needed to talk to about the sounds in her bedroom. She knocked on Celeste’s door midmorning, but there was no answer.

She was turning to leave when she saw a small figure down on the beach. Squinting, Rebecca recognized one of Celeste’s many hats. As she headed down to the sand, she wondered if she should take to wearing hats since Celeste’s skin was incredible for a woman in her eighties. Yes, there were lines in it, but they were mostly around her eyes and mouth from smiling. Remarkably, she had very few frown lines between her eyebrows.

What, Rebecca wondered, had kept Celeste so young in so many ways? Case in point, with the same clear delight that a child would have exhibited, she was picking up pebbles from the sand and skipping them across a patch of water where the ice had melted.

Celeste waved a hand in greeting. “I’m so glad you came out to the beach to join me, Rebecca.”

She stood there beside the older woman for several
long moments as she continued to skip rocks. But soon Rebecca could no longer resist picking up her own handful of pebbles that had washed in during the last storm. Feeling foolish at first, she wound up and threw her first pebble. It skidded off nearby ice and she winced at how bad her aim was.

“Just takes a little practice,” Celeste said, as if reading her mind.

A few minutes and many dozens of throws later, Rebecca finally managed her first good skip. She couldn’t help but cheer.

Celeste smiled at her fondly. “The wind is picking up. Why don’t you join me for a cup of tea in my cottage.”

“I’d love that,” she said, but before turning away from the lake, Rebecca took another deep breath, letting the clean, crisp air fill her up and push away her lingering tiredness.

The Adirondacks were so lovely in all seasons. Having arrived at Emerald Lake the previous summer, it was a real thrill to experience her first spring in the small lakeside town.

“It really is lovely here,” she said aloud.

“I never wanted to live anywhere else,” Celeste told her as they walked together across the sand and toward the yellow-and-white cottage that sat just up from the beach.

“That’s what I thought the first time I came to Emerald Lake,” Rebecca admitted, feeling safer with Celeste than she did with almost anyone.

A few moments later, they were in the tidy, bright cottage and Celeste was fussing with her teapot and tray. A few minutes later, the two of them were having an incredibly elegant midmorning tea, complete with special butter cookies imported from England.

“This is marvelous, Celeste,” Rebecca said as she sipped at her Earl Grey and nibbled at a cookie. In fact, she didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it before: What if she did a special tea once a week at the inn? For both guests and locals? If it was successful enough, maybe they could even open up a tearoom off to the side of the inn, with teas from all over the world.

After saying as much, Celeste said, “You remind me so much of myself when I was younger. My brain was always spinning, always creating something new and exciting.”

Rebecca flushed at the lovely comparison. “You built an entire company from scratch. I’m only managing the inn.”

Celeste took a sip of her tea. “How have you been managing without Stu there to help you?”

Not wanting to say anything negative about Celeste’s grandson, Rebecca carefully replied, “Well, my workload has certainly increased, but now that Sean is here I’m hoping to be able to have some breathing room soon. At least enough to make sure the Tapping of the Maples Festival is successful.”

“What do you think of Sean?”

Rebecca worked like crazy not to blush. “He’s very intelligent.” She tried to think about him without remembering his hands on her, or how much she’d longed for him to kiss her. More than once. “He seems interested in everything around him.”

Uncomfortable talking about Sean, knowing she was bound to give her ridiculous—and inappropriate—feelings for him away if they continued down that path, she said, “Last night at the knitting group when I asked you about the old ghost stories, you said something about
my living in the attic rooms.” Celeste, who had been so focused, so lucid only moments before, almost seemed to blur before Rebecca’s eyes. Still, she pushed on. “What did you mean when you said you knew it would happen? What does
it
refer to?”

Celeste didn’t answer right away. She took her time finishing her cup of tea, and then poured again for both of them. Rebecca worked to rein in her impatience. Celeste had always been a woman who lived by her own timetable. Something, she knew, that drove her daughter-in-law Elizabeth crazy.

Finally, Celeste put down her teacup and began to tell Rebecca a story.

Emerald Lake 1945

Celeste Farrington was the second daughter of one of the richest men on the lake. Evelyn was two years older; Rose two years younger. Celeste grew up in one of the biggest houses on the lake, content with her loving parents and sisters, although the past years had been bumpier than expected, what with the boys she’d grown up with going off to war… not to mention all of the drama surrounding Evelyn and the man she’d fallen in love with.

Her older sister’s happiness had been a long time in coming. Celeste was glad to see her sister happily wedded to Arthur—finally! But, selfishly perhaps, Celeste wasn’t only happy for her sister.

She was happy for herself, too.

In the aftermath of learning about Evelyn’s forbidden love affair with a man he deemed far below their family’s station—and his precious daughter’s
love—their father had all but dropped prison bars around his three girls. Evelyn had been old enough—and especially bold after falling in love with Carlos—to still come and go pretty much as she pleased. But for Celeste and little Rose, well, they’d had to learn to live under a microscope.

Rose was fanciful enough that she could always disappear into her own world. But Celeste didn’t like being stuck in a cage one bit. She longed to learn as much as she could about the world around her. She enjoyed female pursuits just fine and was an admirable knitter and sewer, but knitting was never going to become her passion, as it was for Evelyn.

No, what she really loved was building things. Even as a little girl she’d been happy to play for hours with blocks and her teachers had always remarked on her remarkable aptitude for math and science.

Still, she instinctively knew that no one would ever approve of her picking up a hammer or saw, so she funneled her interest first into her dollhouses and when she grew too old for those, she began to sketch first her father’s house and then most of the other houses around the lake, big and small.

She especially liked the tiny cottages where happy families came to play in the summer. For years, she’d had a picture in her head of the cottage she was going to build for her own family. She could even see her babies playing on the sand, her sisters coming over with their own children.

The only thing she couldn’t see clearly was the man who would be her husband.

She knew all of the boys in her classes at school well. Too well to actually imagine marrying one of them. And, of course, her father hadn’t given her much chance to get out and date anyone who didn’t live in Emerald Lake. Besides, with all that grilling he subjected her dates to, any boy who dared ask her out ended up sorely regretting ever looking her way in the first place.

Fortunately, in the spring following Evelyn’s fall wedding, Celeste found more freedom at her feet than she had in years. The weather was crisp, but the sky was clear. Overly proud of her porcelain skin, she grabbed one of the many sunhats she’d made over the years, one with large pink silk flowers and a knitted rose-colored sash around the brim. She slung her bag over her shoulders, left a note for her mother that she was going to wander the beach for a while, and then headed out in the sunshine.

She walked for a long while, stopping now and again when she found a patch of open lake water amidst the ice that still mostly covered the water to skip a pebble or two over the water. She knew it was something a child would do and that she was supposed to have grown out of the habit a long time ago, but she couldn’t see the point of giving up something that was so much fun.

She was planning on sketching one of the new houses that was being built about a mile down from her house. She loved watching the foundations go in and the studs go up for the walls. While she enjoyed seeing the finished product, cozy or grand, cute or
historic, it was the internal workings of the building that truly captivated her.

For all her vanity, she couldn’t resist turning her face up to the warmth of the sun. Storms had been battering Emerald Lake for most of January and February. It was only in March that the ice and snow had started to melt.

Dorothy, a friend from school, called out her name and Celeste realized she’d walked all the way downtown. She didn’t usually come this far and she was thirsty. Fortunately she had some coins in her bag.

When she’d slowly made her way over to Dorothy, her friend was shaking her head. “Have I told you how much you remind me of a turtle?”

Celeste nodded. “Many, many times.”

She just couldn’t see the point of rushing anything. Perhaps it was because she was the second child. Evelyn had always been the one in a hurry. To walk, according to their parents. And certainly to fall in love. Rose was content to live in her dream world.

Celeste simply enjoyed the world around her. She loved the lake. Loved her family. Loved reading about all the places she’d travel to one day.

She wasn’t worried that the day wouldn’t come. She knew it would.

When the time was right.

And until then she’d soak up as much knowledge as she could, letting images and histories of Egyptian pyramids and French towers and Italian palaces fill up her imagination and heart until the day
the knowledge transformed into a reality she could walk up and touch with her hands.

The two girls headed into the diner and drank hot chocolates while they chatted. Suddenly, Dorothy’s eyes got big as she looked at something over Celeste’s shoulders.

“Oh my. Now, there’s a man.”

Dorothy had a tendency toward being boy crazy, so Celeste didn’t give much credence to her statement, not bothering to turn around and see whom she was talking about.

She was pulling out a few pennies to leave as a tip when Celeste grabbed her arm and hissed, “He’s coming over here. Act natural.”

Celeste had to laugh out loud at that. Of course she was going to act natural. She didn’t care one way or another about some strange man.

Didn’t care, that is, until the moment she heard him say, “Excuse me, ladies, could I intrude on your conversation for a moment to ask a quick question?”

His deep, rich voice had little goose bumps popping up one by one across the surface of her skin.

“Sure!” Dorothy chirped in an overly bright voice. Chalking up her goose bumps to the wind blowing through the diner’s front door when someone walked in, Celeste knew it was up to her to act normal for both of them.

She slowly spun around on her stool. “How may we help you?”

It was fortunate that she finished her sentence before she lifted her eyes to the man’s face.

He was beautiful.

She’d studied beauty and proportions for years both in books and with pencil and sketchbook in hand. But she’d never seen a face that held such symmetry. Only the slight bump across the bridge of his nose broke up the perfection. At the same time, she quickly noted that it was the imperfection that so well highlighted everything else.

Perhaps it was her father’s lockdown during a formative period in her growth, or maybe it was just her natural personality… but Celeste had never learned the art of disguising her reactions.

Which meant that she simply stared wide-eyed at the stranger before them. It wasn’t hard to do, considering his eyes had locked onto hers as well. Despite being in a crowded diner, in those moments they were the only two people in the room.

She’d been right not to search, not to worry that love hadn’t struck her yet.

Deep in her soul she knew that the man she would marry was standing right in front of her.

At long last, the man cleared his throat. “My name is Charlie Murphy. I’ve come to Emerald Lake from New York City to meet with a Mr. Farrington this afternoon. But I’m afraid his business office on Main Street is locked. Do you have any idea where I might find him?”

Celeste didn’t stop the smile from curving across her mouth at how completely fate took care of everything. If this man was already a colleague of her father’s, she wouldn’t have to invent a reason to be with Charlie, like Evelyn had done with her precious Carlos.

Smiling up into his light green eyes, she said, “He’s my father.”

Their courtship was short and oh-so-sweet. Just as Celeste had expected, her father was overjoyed by Charlie’s attention to his middle daughter.

Celeste was overjoyed by it, too, even if she didn’t always understand Charlie or the things he clearly seemed to think he needed to do to make her love him. He gave her so many gifts, expensive things that were pretty and fragile. She supposed she could have simply said thank you over and over again, but that felt like a lie to her. And Celeste didn’t believe in lies.

“I don’t need pretty things,” she told him one night when he sat across from her at another fancy restaurant, another box sitting on her empty dinner plate. She lifted the box and gave it back to him. “If this is who you think I am,” she said, pushing back her chair to stand, “then you don’t know me very well at all.”

She was out the door by the time she heard him say, “I know exactly who you are, Celeste.”

The passion, the sincerity in his words—along with the fear she couldn’t miss—had her stopping, turning around to face him.

“Prove it.”

He blinked at her challenge. She knew what she’d said wasn’t ladylike, that her father would be horrified to hear her speaking to one of his business associates like this, but she simply wasn’t willing to continue to give her heart to anyone who didn’t deserve it.

“You’re a loving daughter. You’d do anything for your sisters. You’d risk a piece of yourself before you’d ever let one of your friends be hurt. You have no idea that you’re the center of so many lives, that you’re the lynchpin that holds them all together.” He paused, looked down at the box in his hand. “And anyone who knows you, anyone who loves you, would never try to keep you in his life with stupid gifts. Do you know why, sweetheart?”

She realized then what he was feeling, why he’d been showering her with presents.

He was afraid.

Afraid of losing her.

“Charlie—” she began, but the look in his eyes had whatever words she’d been about to say turning to dust on her tongue.

“Because he would know that once you loved, it was forever.”

She was in his arms a moment later, the word
forever
echoing on her lips just as she kissed him.

Three weeks after they first met at the diner, Charlie found Celeste by the lake, sketching. He hadn’t needed to say a word to her, hadn’t needed to announce his presence for her focus to shatter. Anytime he was in the same room, anytime he was near, she lost hold of anything but him, was literally unable to keep from smiling. And there was nothing more she loved than the look in his eyes when he smiled back at her, as if she was a perfect surprise, a gift he’d never expected would be given to him.

But although she’d smiled at him and reached out her arm for him to join her on the sandy shore, neither his serious expression nor his position changed.

“What is it, Charlie? Is something wrong?”

His eyes roved over her face. “What would a brilliant girl like you want with a man like me?”

She frowned, put down her drawing pad, and moved across the sand to him. She didn’t have to think about her reasons. They were obvious. And very simple.

“I love you.”

She put her hands over his and he lifted them to his lips in a gesture that seemed almost desperate. Something was wrong, but she didn’t know what it was, didn’t know what it could possibly be.

And then, almost as if in slow motion, she watched him drop to one knee on the soft green grass that bordered the sand.

“Charlie?” Her voice was strangely breathless.

“Marry me, sweetheart.”

And later, after they’d gorged on kisses and whispered promises, when Charlie met with her father to ask for her hand in marriage, her father was as happy as she’d seen him since Evelyn’s wedding day.

Their wedding day dawned sunny, the spring flowers all around the inn for the ceremony and reception.

Celeste’s sisters were helping her with the finishing touches on her hair and makeup when there was a knock on the door. Rose went to answer it and
her giggle told Celeste all she needed to know. Her baby sister’s crush on the groom made her giggle incessantly whenever she was in the same room as Charlie.

Evelyn raised an eyebrow at Celeste, then ushered Rose out of the room to leave bride and groom alone.

“Celeste.” He was staring at her as if he’d never seen her before. “You’re beautiful.”

She knew she was pretty at best. But around Charlie, when she saw herself through his eyes, she believed what he’d said.

A teasing smile on her face, she moved toward him in her wedding gown. “Don’t you know it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the ceremony?”

But he didn’t tease her back. “My luck changed the moment I set eyes on you, sweetheart.” His arms came around her then and she barely had a chance to whisper, “Mine too,” before he was kissing her with all the love in his heart… and she was kissing him back with just as much, if not more.

As she said “I do,” Celeste realized that although she’d never felt incomplete, Charlie had completed her just the same.

At the same time, she savored every moment of their wedding night, from the sweet kisses Charlie ran all across her skin to his whispered words of love. Her mother and then Evelyn had both pulled her aside to warn her of what was expected in the wedding bed. She’d let them play their caring roles,
never once telling them that she’d read enough books over the years to be well prepared to be naked with the man who held her heart.