Room at the Inn (Novella): A Loveswept Contemporary Romance (10 page)

He had no control.

He gripped her shoulders tight, alarmed because he was wide open—too open—and she touched him everywhere she could reach, and whispered, “It’s okay.”

Carson shuddered when he came. More than an orgasm. A terrifying emptying out. A collapse of resistance.

It took him a long time to pull himself together again.

Julie didn’t say anything. She ran her fingertips over his back, held him with one leg slung over his hip, and let him breathe.

Chapter Ten

Julie popped her head into the pantry to replace the brown-sugar container on the lazy Susan. She gave it a spin, just for kicks. She had a batch of sweet rolls in the oven, muffins and scones to get out of the freezer and warm up just before breakfast, and omelets to cook to order.

It was like playing, if playing could be your job.

When the house was full, breakfast became a grand affair, which meant she had to get up at 4:00
A
.
M
. Not a problem normally, but then normally she wasn’t awake until all hours, messing around with Carson under the covers. For reasons known only to him, he’d come to bed last night with a tiny Maglite and proceeded to shine it in all sorts of places, which gave her the giggles.

Until he’d started
putting
it in all sorts of places, and she’d started to gasp.

She had to give him points for creativity.

When she emerged, he was just walking into the kitchen, his face sleep-creased and stubbled. He had some gray in his beard, though his hair defied the passage of time. She resented that. She’d been dying her own hair for years.

“Morning, sleepyhead.”

“Morning, Jules.”

She poured him a cup of coffee and added cream, setting it in front of him along with the newspaper.

“Thanks.”

She checked the time on the oven clock. Six thirty. His dad was supposed to be coming over for breakfast at seven. A new thing, but one that seemed to be working. The two men rarely argued in front of her. She’d been reluctant to insert herself between the two of them, but if Carson wanted to invite his father over here, she was fine with it. She loved Martin.

She loved both of them. And she’d started to hope maybe, just maybe, Carson loved her back.

Though even if he did, she knew it might not be enough to keep him here. It hadn’t ever been before.

Carson unfolded the paper and grunted.

“What is it?”

“Potter’s got an offer on the shoe factory from out of town.”

Julie’s heart sank. That was
her
factory. Or it would be, someday, if she ever talked Leo
into helping her get the investments she needed to make it happen.

“How much?”

“Doesn’t say.”

“What do they want to do with it?”

“Doesn’t say that, either. Some operation out of Canada.”

“Fuck
that
.”

Carson glanced up, and his mild expression made it worse, somehow. That he didn’t care, when she cared so much.

“I want that factory. I want it renovated, and I want it collectively owned and run so the town benefits. It’s Potter Falls’s showpiece, and it would bring us a boatload of tourism. If Leo takes that money, I’m going to kick his ass. I’ll make him regret it for the rest of his life.”

“I’ve been in there,” Carson said. “He gave me the key.”

“So you know what I’m talking about. It’s beautiful.”

“It could be beautiful.”

“It’s
going
to be beautiful.”

He looked down at his thumb, hooked through the handle of his mug. “It’ll take a hell of a lot of money and even more work.”

“I’m not afraid of hard work. I just need the money.”

“You need somebody who knows what they’re doing.”

“I’ll find somebody.”

“You already know somebody.”

She crossed her arms. As usual, her body had caught on before her brain. He was talking about staying. The man who’d run countless Foreign Service construction projects and whipped contractors into shape in half a dozen different languages.

The man who never stuck around.

The man she loved.

She couldn’t believe he meant it, so she spoke back a little icier than she should have. “I know a lot of somebodies.”

“Nobody else who’s qualified.”

“I know people with a better track record.”

Carson crossed his arms, matching her body language. “I’ve been here a month, Jules.”

“And you still don’t have a plan.”

“I’m trying to keep an open mind.”

“Keeping an open mind is not the same as making a commitment. You’ve got one foot out the door. There’s no way I can trust somebody to run the project who I don’t even know if he’ll be around—”

“Forget it.”

“See, that’s exactly what I’m saying. I don’t want to forget it, but I need you to talk to me. Tell me what you think we’re doing here, because I honestly don’t know. Are you going to be here in another month?”

Carson shifted uncomfortably, and his eyes went out the window behind her shoulder, toward the pond.

“You’re running out of time, aren’t you? And then you’ll go back.”

He took a sip of coffee, then stared down the mug as if it held all the answers. “I got a call.”

“When?”

“Couple days ago.”

A couple days ago, he’d made love to her with an intensity that left her breathless and right on the verge of tears.

A couple days ago, she’d admitted to herself that not only was she in love with him again but that maybe, just possibly, some part of her had
always
been in love with him. That her feelings for Carson had torpedoed every attempt she’d ever made at an adult relationship.

And he’d been taking work calls and engineering his escape hatch.

The son of a bitch.

“When do you leave?”

“I’m not necessarily leaving, Jules. I just got a call. They gave my project in the Netherlands to my deputy, and there’s a new one they want me to head up.”

“Where?”

“Dubai.”

“That sounds safe.”

He frowned. “It’s safe enough.”

“When are you supposed to be there?”

“Last week.”

“So are you going or not?”

“I don’t know. They’re being good about the leave. Family emergency.”

“But it’s got to end sometime. And then you take off again, because the world needs you.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You thought it.”

“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”

The oven timer went off on the sweet rolls, which gave her an excuse to turn her back on him. She found a pot holder and opened the oven door, releasing the rich scent of cinnamon
sugar and yeast. Homey, she’d always thought. Loving.

Her eyes filled with tears. She thought
she
made a difference, too. The kind of difference Glory had made. That the smell of sweet rolls mattered, and the fate of the factory building. The rescue of a stately mansion. Ordinary, everyday kindness.

He made her feel so small sometimes. Judged and found wanting. Diminished.

And he didn’t even know it.

She must not have been paying close enough attention to the oven, because the next thing she noticed was a burning smell, and then dark smoke and a yellow, flickering flame at the corner of the pot holder where she’d allowed it to touch the heating element.

“Aah!” Julie cried. She straightened abruptly and dropped it on top of the stove, then pushed the rack back in with her foot and slammed the oven door shut.

The whoosh of air pushed a tendril of smoke toward the ceiling and made the flame leap to life, four times as big.

She rushed to the sink, but he was already there, wetting a hand towel. He elbowed past her and dropped it over the pot holder to put it out.

She blinked. So much smoke. It had taken only a few seconds—how had the kitchen filled with smoke so fast? She reached over his shoulder and switched on the stove hood at high speed. The vent vibrated and rattled, magnifying the sound of the fan.

Carson turned around. His eyes scanned the ceiling.

“Why isn’t your smoke detector going off?”

“I don’t know. I—”

“When did you last test it? There’s enough smoke in here, it should be going off.” He stalked to the far window and flung it open, then did the same on the opposite wall. His face had gone dark and menacing. His movements were rough and jerky, not like him at all.

“I test it on a schedule. It was fine last time.”

She remembered the sweet rolls, grabbed another pot holder, and pulled them from the oven before they burned.

As soon as she’d set them down, his hands landed on her shoulders. He spun her around.

“It’s not fine
now
. The whole kitchen could’ve gone up in flames, and the fucking smoke detector wouldn’t have gone off.”

But that would never have happened. It was a pot holder. Not good, of course—she got that. But not a catastrophe, either.

Men got bent out of shape about this kind of stuff. Some protective male gene kicked in and turned them into assholes because they worried and didn’t know how else to express it.

But he was more than bent out of shape. He was furious.

“Why are you mad at me?”

“I’m not.”

“Carson, you
are
. It was an accident. I’m sorry I burned the pot holder, but jeez, don’t you think you might be overreacting? Just a little?”

He stalked away from her toward the window and braced his hands on the frame. “This house is a catastrophe. You’ve got 150-year-old wiring that’s going to short out in the middle of the night and start a fire, and you’re going to burn up in bed when the alarm doesn’t go off because you don’t have the sense to check and make sure it’s working.”

“The wiring is okay.”

“That’s not the point.”

“What’s the point?”

“You don’t prepare for anything. You just go along thinking life is wonderful and safe, and it’s not safe, Julia. It’s not safe by a long shot.”

“You’re the one who’s running off to Dubai.”

“Not until I check all your wiring and change the batteries in your fucking smoke detectors.”

“The wiring is
fine
. I had it looked at. I couldn’t have opened the bed-and-breakfast if it wasn’t safe.”

“Yeah, well, I’m going to look at it again.” He walked away from her, heading toward the basement steps.

Her heart lurched. It always did when he walked away from her. She hated it when he walked away.

“Carson,” she called, and he whirled around in the doorway.

His mouth had flattened into a white line. His face got so serious and severe when he wasn’t smiling, and even more so now with his brows drawn together, throwing deep shadows over his eyes.

She wanted to put him at ease. To placate him. But everything about him was so precious to her, so dangerously precious, and she worried she couldn’t do this much longer.

“I wish you’d make up your mind,” she said.

He stared at her while the kitchen clock ticked out second after interminable second.

And then he turned and clomped down the stairs to the basement without a word.

Chapter Eleven

Carson opened his father’s refrigerator. Stocked. Danya had come over three times now, and Dad agreed she could keep coming. There was a casserole in the fridge, some fruit, a bowl of green beans with almonds wrapped in a tight casing of Saran Wrap.

“It’s a mistake,” Martin said.

Two days before Christmas, and the temperature had dived again. Julie’s house was full of strangers whose presence he didn’t resent as much as he’d expected.

She’d introduced him as her “partner.”

The guests came from all over the place, though quite a few were from New York City, looking to add a bit of quiet, rural nostalgia to their Christmas celebrations. Carson kept finding himself pulled into conversations—at breakfast, while passing through a room on his way to one place or another. Most of these people had interesting jobs or lived interesting places. It was a cosmopolitan crowd.

His father liked them. He’d approached breakfast at Julie’s as a trial to be endured, but at the table, he’d slowly come to life, asking questions, passing butter and muffins, fetching things from the kitchen as though he belonged in the Comstock mansion and always had.

Carson was happy for him. Happy for Julie. But he didn’t belong in that house, playing Julie’s partner.

He didn’t belong in Potter Falls.

His dad’s place once again looked as it had when his mother was alive. The sun streamed in the picture window by the bird feeders. His father was showered and dressed, his leg well on the way to recovered.

There was no reason for Carson to stay.

“I’ll be back in a few months,” he said.

“You’re a fool.”

“Just keep going to Julie’s for breakfast, all right? She can use the help.”

“Got it all figured out, do you?”

He’d made up his mind, just like Julie asked him to. It would never work. He couldn’t stay.

“It’s my job.”

“You’ll pop in to visit, is that it?”

“Sure.”

“Brighten my day.”

His father’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

“You’re pissed off at me for leaving.”

“It’s almost Christmas.”

“They don’t celebrate Christmas in Dubai. They need me on the job.”

“Right. Because nobody else can babysit a construction site. Nobody but the legendary Carson Vance.”

His father picked up his pen and bent his head over his puzzle book, dismissing him.

He wasn’t ready to be dismissed. He walked up to the table and flattened his hands on it directly across from his father. “I never said I was moving back here. I don’t know why you thought I would.”

“I didn’t.”

“Why don’t you just admit it? You’re disappointed in me. You think I’m a failure. You’ve always thought that, and now I’m proving it to you one more time.”

The dark feeling curled tighter and tighter in his chest. He wanted to get away from it, but it was inside him.

Only here. It wouldn’t follow him when he left.

His father’s eyes burned with a steady anger. “You never commit to anything.”