“Assuming you could find someone to clean and cook them for you. We don’t clean and fry fish for our guests at The Scottish Captain.”
“Now I’m doubly glad I stayed behind. Today will be a perfect opportunity to recharge my batteries. There’s a day trip to the Outer Banks tomorrow.”
“Then you have no plans for this morning?”
“Not really. I shall pretend that I’m a road weary New England snowbird who decided to spend a down day in Glory, North Carolina. The tour of the grand houses and local museum yesterday was fascinating. I shall continue to browse around the town and soak up the ambience.” He brushed a cookie crumb out of his beard. “With luck I’ll find another Beetle on another porch.”
Emma hoped that Simon didn’t notice how she winced. The last thing Glory needed was a rowdy reputation among travel writers. Emma had her future tied up in The Scottish Captain. Her B and B must succeed and that would only happen if Glory prospered as she’d predicted it would.
“Please don’t get the wrong idea about Glory,” she said evenly. “We specialize in quiet, prank-free vacations.”
“Oh yes, Glory is definitely a quiet place—which leads me to ask an impertinent question. Why would someone like you decide to abandon Seattle, a vibrant big city, and move to a pastoral southern town that even the Union Army avoided during the Civil War?”
The jolt of astonishment she felt came out as a nervous hiccup. She hadn’t shared her biography with Simon Rogers, but he seemed to know a lot about her. Emma took a sip of coffee to help clear her throat. “You mentioned that I moved here from Seattle. Where did you come across that tidbit of information?”
“On the Internet, of course. Yesterday, I visited the Glory Public Library and typed your name into Google. Several ‘hits’ pointed to your biography.” He grinned. “That’s what happens when you become well-known enough in your field to make presentations at national hotel management conferences.”
Emma bit her tongue. When she’d calmed down, she said, “My presenting days are over. I didn’t realize that my bio was still online.”
“Oh, yes, once on the Internet, information seems to linger forever. I must say that your hostelry credentials are impressive. As I recall, you earned your bachelor’s degree from the prestigious Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, and you were appointed general manager of the Pacific Monarch Hotel in Seattle at the tender age of thirty-three. I’ve stayed at the Monarch—it’s one of the most elegant hotels in the west. You obviously know your stuff.”
Emma smiled. “Thank you. I like working in the hospitality business.”
“I’m equally fascinated by your athletic prowess. Imagine, a champion women’s softball pitcher serving us breakfast.”
“I loved softball when I was a kid. I played on an intramural team at Cornell, and I joined a women’s league in Seattle. My team, the Pacific Princesses, did manage to win the league championship three years ago. Softball is great fun and good exercise. End of story.”
“To restate my original question in different words,” Simon said, “why did you give up managing a world-class Seattle hotel and decide to run a small B and B?”
Emma tried to look thoughtful, as if she were pondering a difficult question. In fact, this was a question she had faced dozens of times, always with a pat answer that seemed to satisfy people—and had little to do with reality.
“After working in large hotels for more than a decade,” she said, “I decided that I prefer the personal touch of managing a B and B. Back in Seattle, I dealt with crises from dawn to dusk. I had no time to think, much less talk to the guests. I prefer sharing a pot of coffee with you and enjoying a pleasant fall morning.”
Simon grinned with apparent delight. Emma grinned back.
She could hear the conviction in her voice. She had become uncomfortably adept at avoiding the truth, but how could she admit that her chief motivation for moving to North Carolina’s coastal Albemarle Region was its distance from Seattle, Washington? A small B and B in a dot-on-the-map town seemed the last place in the country that her ex-husband or his vast family would ever visit.
More to the point, Emma thought, the “truth” was rapidly becoming irrelevant. So what if she ran away from a bad situation? After a year at The Scottish Captain her perspective changed. She now realized that she’d actually run toward a much happier life.
Emma poured a second mug of coffee for Simon.
“Now, as for choosing Glory,” she went on, “I applied every scrap of economic forecasting and financial-planning experience I’d acquired working at large hotels. I concluded that Glory is an undiscovered treasure, an unspoiled little town with lots to see and do, that is destined to become a highly regarded attraction. I invested every cent of my savings in The Scottish Captain. I truly believe that I selected the right place at the right time.”
Emma punctuated her words with an emphatic nod. Here, she was expressing the way she really felt, even though she knew that little Glory was still overshadowed by its well-known neighbors. Edenton, some twenty miles west, had more history to offer tourists—including its own Revolutionary-era “tea party.” And Elizabeth City, fifteen miles north, was the region’s commercial center, a popular stopping point for yachtsmen traversing the Dismal Swamp Canal on the Intracoastal Waterway.
“I agree with you,” Simon said. “Glory is a surprising little town, and I am difficult to surprise. What has impressed me most are the people I’ve met so far. Really top notch. Lots of fascinating characters.”
“Characters?”
“That came out badly. Let me start again.” He poured cream into his mug and stirred. “Travel writing is fun, but I don’t want to mass-produce travel articles for the rest of my life. I hope to write fiction some day. Consequently, I’ve made it a habit to make note of interesting people who have the potential to become great characters in a novel. Glory added several new possibilities to my collection.”
“So that’s how novelists do it,” she said. “You adapt real-life people.”
“Sure. A good example is Glory’s high school football coach. I met him yesterday morning. He’s a hoot.”
“Tom Yeager,” she said with a sigh. “A man who knows how to strike a tough bargain.”
“Exactly! He’s an unusual blend of zeal, skill, confidence and cunning. That’s what makes him a good coach.”
Emma saw no point in arguing with Simon, who clearly thought himself a great judge of character. He wouldn’t want to hear that the Glory Gremlins had a losing record that most townsfolk blamed on Tom Yeager’s lack of coaching skill. “Who else have you met?”
“Sam Lange, the fellow who owns the Glory Book Nook. I don’t think I’ve come across a more knowledgeable book expert anywhere, and I love to visit bookstores. The fascinating thing about Sam is that he combines great expertise with a healthy dose of curmudgeonly behavior.” Simon threw back his head and laughed. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way. A sour temper is an integral part of his persona. It’s like the splash of malt vinegar on a plate of fish and chips.”
“Very perceptive.” Emma drank from her mug and imagined the “recipe” that Simon might assign to her. Mix a can of hospitality with a cup of wishful thinking. Season with a dash of rotten luck in choosing a husband, then bake for thirty-seven years. Yields one healthy serving of Emma McCall. Or perhaps he didn’t see her as a fascinating character. “Did anyone else in town catch your literary eye?”
“Rafe Neilson, of course. A cop in a small town, but hardly a small-town cop. I could write a whole novel about the past five years of his life.”
“Really? I don’t know much about him,” she