“We’re hopeless, aren’t we?” she said quietly.
Nick shook his head. “I’m hopeless. You’re beautiful.”
He was vaguely aware of a sound in the foyer, but he couldn’t seem to pull his gaze away from Brittany’s sad smile. The door opened before he came to his senses.
“Yoo-hoo, we’re home.”
Nick swung around and swore under his breath. He’d seen corpses with a better reaction time than his had been.
Home? he thought, recovering slightly. Exactly how many people lived here?
Crystal Galloway closed the door for a frail, little old lady. “We would have been here sooner,” she said, slipping an arm around the old lady’s shoulders, “but Mertyl wanted to do the chicken dance one more time.” Pointing to the back of Mertyl’s head, Crystal mouthed, “She’s sloshed.”
“Mertyl,” Brittany said, reacting to Crystal’s head gesture, “you must be exhausted.”
A cat meowed its way down the open stairway, landing in Mertyl’s arms with a thud that nearly toppled her. The old lady mumbled something Nick couldn’t make out. She listened for a moment before mumbling something else. He didn’t know who was keeping up the other end of the conversation, but even her overweight yellow cat looked at her strangely.
Mertyl couldn’t have weighed more than ninety-five pounds. Obviously she couldn’t hold her liquor. Her eyes were a little too bright, her smile crooked, her head nodding like those toy dogs people put in the back windows of their cars. She was a head shorter than Crystal and was getting shorter by the second. Nick made it to her side and had her back on her feet before her knees gave out.
“Beautiful bride, just beautiful,” Mertyl declared out of the blue. “Cake was a mite dry, but the punch was the best I ever tasted.”
“Come on, dear,” Crystal said from Mertyl’s other side. “Let’s get Daisy settled upstairs. Want me to show Nick to a room, too?” she asked Brittany.
Brittany felt Nick’s eyes on her, but her gaze was trained on Crystal. There was something exotic about the shape of Crystal’s green eyes and the way they peered out at the world beneath all that wavy blond hair. The two of them had become fast friends soon after Crystal had moved to Jasper Gulch three months ago. Soul sisters, Crystal called them. The woman could speak her mind one minute, bare her soul the next and put a person in his or her place without batting an eye. Right now, in her own straightforward way, she was offering Brittany a reprieve. That would allow Brittany to put a little distance between her and Nick, and she could put things back into perspective.
Feeling less shaky, Brittany looked at Nick. He stared back at her, a muscle working in one lean cheek. She’d missed him these past six months, but she hadn’t missed the upheaval he brought back into her life. It wasn’t anything he did. It was the way she felt when he was near. His kiss had left its mark on her senses, and on his. She knew what he wanted. It was there in the way he looked at her, in the way he held his shoulders and drew in a sharp breath. One word from her could make all the difference in the world. And no difference whatsoever.
They’d been down this road before, giving in to the physical aspect of their marriage time and time again. Six months apart had sharpened that need, but she didn’t see how it could have changed all the reasons they had for separating. And it certainly hadn’t changed the biggest reason of all.
Taking great care to tear her gaze away, she said, “Crystal, are you sure you don’t mind showing Nick and Mertyl to their rooms?”
Crystal smiled down at Mertyl. “If Nick would be kind enough to help Mertyl and me up those tricky old stairs, we can handle the rest, can’t we Mertyl?”
Mertyl continued to nod, but Nick ground his teeth so hard his jaw ached. The only room he wanted to be shown to, dammit, was Brittany’s. There happened to be two very good reasons. One had to do with desire, the other with her safety. She would scoff at his mention of those two things in the same breath. When had one ever had anything to do with the other?
From his position he could see two of the four doors on this floor. He glanced over his shoulder where the open stairway stretched toward a dark upper level. He wondered if he would hear an intruder from that far away. And if he did, could he get down here and into Brittany’s and Savannah’s rooms in time?
“Come on, Nick,” Crystal said shrewdly. “You’re starting to look as green around the gills as poor Mertyl. Up we go.”
Nick gave Brittany one last look, leaving her to make what she wanted of his dark expression. No matter what she thought, things weren’t over between them. They would talk again. Morning, noon and night if necessary. Maybe they had already tried to make their marriage work a hundred times. Somehow he had to convince her to try once more.
For now, he helped Crystal get the elderly lady into one of the bedrooms upstairs. The cat hissed at him for his trouble. Coming out of her stupor, Mertyl did the same, squinting up at him with distrust. “Who’s he?” she asked Crystal.
“This is Nick Colter,” Crystal said, turning back the blankets.
Clasping the lapels of her pink cardigan sweater tightly in one hand and holding her cat in the other, Mertyl still managed to point a shaking finger at Crystal. “I don’t entertain strange men in my room, Missy, and neither should you.”
Nick found himself backing from the room, Crystal right behind him. Laughing out loud, Crystal said, “Believe me, Mertyl, I’m with you.”
The old lady gave Crystal a feeble good-night, glared at Nick and closed the door with a firm click. Within seconds a lock ground into place.
“Why, Nicky, I don’t believe she trusts you.”
Nick scowled. Nobody had called him Nicky since the third grade.
“Which room do you want to sleep in tonight?” Crystal asked. “Perhaps I should rephrase the question. Which room upstairs? You can have your choice of the three that aren’t rented.”
Nick stopped at the first door he came to. “Rented?”
Dropping a stack of blankets and sheets she’d taken from a hall closet into his hands, Crystal said, “Yes, rented. By boarders.” At his blank expression, she said, “You might have noticed that motels aren’t exactly popping up all over town. In fact, this is the only boarding house in Jasper Gulch. Didn’t Brittany tell you she bought it?”
Now that Nick thought about it he remembered the old man at the wedding reception saying something about a boarding house on Custer Street. But no, Brittany hadn’t mentioned anything about the fact that she’d purchased it.
Suddenly the tedious twelve-hour drive from Chicago, the fear that came from looking over his shoulder and the seemingly impenetrable walls Brittany had erected converged into one huge knot between his shoulder blades. He really was exhausted, emotionally and physically. He needed a good night’s sleep. The bedroom next to Mertyl’s wasn’t his first choice of places to spend the night, not by a long shot, but at least it was near the top of the stairs and within hearing distance of the first floor. Dropping the sheets and blankets over the iron bed frame, he turned around. He expected to find Crystal hovering nearby, but a quick glance in the hall found it empty.
Kneading the knot at the back of his neck, he closed the door and looked at his surroundings. The room could have come straight out of an old Western movie. The walls and ceiling were covered with faded wallpaper. The floor was hardwood, a throw rug the only thing covering the marred and scuffed surface. A lamp was perched on a painted bedside table, the only other furniture in the room a mismatched dresser and the double bed. He’d slept in a lot worse places, and supposed that for now any bed would do.
He was in the process of stuffing a pillow into a case when a knock sounded on the door behind him. Hope that it might be Brittany sprang out of nowhere, only to die at his first