Wedding At the Riverview Inn

by Molly O'Keefe

  Alice was right, he realized as he told these women what they wanted to hear. It’s win-win until it all goes to crap.

  And it had definitely gone to crap.

  “Gabe.” Max stood at the door, his forehead creased with concern. “What’s wrong? Did you hear from Alice?”

  If only. If only he’d heard from her and this ache might leave, this boulder on his chest might be rolled away.

  “Did she say something? Are you going to Albany?”

  “No!” Gabe yelled, the boulder making him scream. Making him crazy. “She has not called. She’s gone. Let’s all get on with our lives, okay?”

  Max blinked at him, no doubt stunned by this sudden vehemence. “You’re doing a hell of job with that,” Max said. “Really moving on without her.”

  “Shut up,” Gabe yelled. He stood up from his desk, the chair spinning out behind him to smash into the wall. Gabe shoved his brother out of the door frame, and then gripped the door as hard as he could and hurled it shut. The walls shook from the force.

  Blood and anger pounded in his brain. And slamming doors wasn’t enough. He kicked the empty cardboard boxes in the corner.

  Still not enough.

  He picked up the jar of pens on his desk and smashed it against the wall. He swept the desk lamp off, his, the shattering of glass a sweet stroke to his rage.

  What is wrong with me?

  Why do they always leave?

  Why can’t I keep the people I love close to me?

  He was blind, reckless. Objects found their way against walls, under his feet. Destroyed by his hands. He didn’t feel cuts or blood or physical pain.

  He felt only grief—a bottomless pit of grief that could no longer be ignored.

  Patrick jumped back from the office door when it sounded as if a chair had been hurled into it.

  He and Max had been standing there for the better part of ten minutes and whatever was going on behind that door was not slowing down.

  “He’s really going for it,” Patrick said. “There can’t be much left of that chair.”

  Max nodded and took a sip from his coffee cup that was filled with scotch. Patrick had one, too. They were preparing themselves for what would happen when Gabe finally stopped destroying his office and opened the door.

  “What’s going on here?” Tim, the new chef—a nice guy having a really bad first day—asked. He set down the box of kitchen stuff he’d brought in from his car and flinched as Gabe howled from behind the door, sounding like a man who had lost everything.

  Which, Patrick supposed, he had.

  “Is everything okay?” Tim’s eyes were worried behind his dark oblong glasses. He pulled his shirt away from his belly and practically twitched from the tension in his kitchen.

  “My son’s just working a few things out,” Patrick answered over the strains of smashing glass.

  “Here,” Max said, grabbing a coffee cup from the counter and filling it from the bottle of scotch at his feet. “Welcome to the Riverview Inn.”

  Tim took the scotch and tossed it back. “I hope it gets better than this,” he muttered and they all laughed.

  Finally, abruptly the office door opened and his son, shattered and bleeding from a cut on his hand and another one above his eyes, stood there.

  Crying.

  “Come on, son,” Patrick said, feeling the bite of tears in his own eyes. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  “It hurts, Dad,” he whispered.

  “What does, son?”

  “Everything.”

  Gabe felt as if he’d been hit by a truck. As if he had no bones in his body. After his dad bandaged him up, Max herded all of them to the couches in the dining room. He tried to get all of them to have a drink—his kind of therapy. But Gabe didn’t have the taste for it.

  Tim, his new chef, sat next to him looking a little shell-shocked.

  “It’s not usually like this,” Gabe said, patting Tim’s bent knee.

  “Right. Usually there are raccoons running wild,” Max said into his own coffee mug.

  “Raccoons?” Tim asked.

  “He’s kidding.” Gabe assured him, then decided the truth from here on out would feel better. “Sort of.”

  Tim took another swig from his mug. And Gabe concentrated on breathing. On his sudden longing for canned tomato soup, Oreos and Alice.

  I want Alice.

  I just want her back.

  “Consider this an initiation, Tim,” Patrick said. “The Men’s Club of Broken Hearts, Eastern New York Division.”

  The pain, the guilt and confusion in Gabe’s chest coalesced and spun faster, growing bigger. He shifted in his seat, trying to make room for what was happening to him.

  Tim smiled, the dimple showing up in his cheek. “I’ve had a broken heart once or twice.”

  “The price of admission,” Patrick said and Tim laughed.

  Max simply watched Gabe from the other couch as if he saw right through him.

  “Welcome to the rest of your life,” Max said and toasted Gabe.

  And just like that Gabe was on his feet. The hurricane in his chest taking over his body. He didn’t want this for the rest of his life.

  He wanted Alice. Good or bad. Because sadly, there was no good without her anymore.

  Maybe she was right. Maybe they were different. Older. Wiser. He just had to trust that, trust what they had.

  “I gotta go,” he said.

  “Where?” Patrick asked.

  “Albany.”

  Armed with canned tomato soup and roses—two dozen of them, pink and lush and nearly overblown, just the way she liked them—he arrived at the house on Pape. It was nearly ten o’clock and he was relieved to see the lights still on on the bottom floor.

  The truck was barely parked before he’d leaped out, roses and cans of soup in hand. It had been a little over two weeks, surely her feelings for him couldn’t have changed. She’d be mad, sure, angry that it took him so long to get his head out of the sand, but in the end, after he groveled, after he told her all the dreams he’d had for those children who had died, all the dreams he had for the children they now would have, by whatever means, she’d be happy.

  He’d talk about his mother, about how he still felt like that kid sitting at the kitchen table waiting for his mom to come home.

  He’d tell her that nothing was worth having if she wasn’t there to share it. He’d tell her anything she wanted to hear.

  It would work, eventually.

  It had to—his life depended on it.

  But his palms were still sweating and his heart still thudded and he hoped he wouldn’t be forced to use the key under the frog.

  Surprisingly, the door opened under his light knock and he poked his head into the hallway.

  “Charlie?” Alice’s voice came from the living room in the back of the house. “Come on in! I’m starved.”

  He stepped in and walked down the hallway hoping her reaction would be a good one. Surprise, sure. Joy, if he was lucky.

  Please let me be lucky.

  “I hope you remembered the vinegar because I hate—”

  “Ketchup on your fries,” he finished her sentence as he stepped into the living room.

  She was camped out on the couch, Felix in her lap. The two of them surrounded by magazines, water glasses and McDonald’s French fry containers.

  And the look on her face was not joy. It was horror, quickly being replaced by rage.

  Horror and rage. Not at all what he’d expected.

  Felix leaped off her lap to curl around his ankles.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, plucking at the collar of the ratty David Hasselhoff T-shirt she wore when she felt sick and in need of comfort.

  “Seeing the patient?” he tried to joke. “The Hoff and French fries—you must not be feeling very good.”

  “I feel fine. Did Max send you here?”

  He laughed. “In a way.”

  Alice huffed through her nose like a bull about
to stampede and hiked herself up farther on the pillows. “Great, and now you’re here to do the right thing.”

  “Well, I think so. I mean. It’s—Why are you angry?”

  Felix, no doubt sensing the volatile atmosphere, took off.

  “Why? Because your being here because you have to be isn’t the way I want you. I want you here of your own free will, because you want me. Because life without me sucks.”

  “It does.” He shook his head. “I’m missing something here.”

  “Yeah, right. Your shot at a family. I get it.” She put her feet on the floor and began to stand and Gabe pushed her back against the couch.

  “I’m here because I don’t want to be like Max. I’m here because my life is terrible without you. Food tastes like dirt. Success feels hollow and the Riverview Inn is empty without you in the kitchen. And yes, I want a family. I thought that was the point.”

  Alice started to cry, staring at the ceiling as tears rolled down her face. She wiped at them with her T-shirt.

  “Alice.” He set down the roses and got down on his knees in front of her to touch her, offer whatever comfort he could. She pushed him away. Smacked his hands until he finally sat back. “What am I missing?”

  “What happens if something goes wrong, remember? That’s what you said. So what if I lose this baby and you’re here and you hate—”

  “This baby?” he asked, slowly because his brain was imploding.

  Finally she looked at him, stared right into his lost soul. “You don’t know.”

  “What don’t I know? Exactly.”

  “You’re here on your own? You’re here—”

  “Because I love you. I’m in love with you and always will be. Now tell me what’s going on.” He gripped her hands, hard, an anchor in this sudden void he’d been dropped in.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “You’re—” He fell back on his butt. “What?”

  “Seven weeks,” she said, looking like a princess, regal and above touch. “I’m seven weeks’ pregnant.”

  He was sweating. Buckets. It rolled down his back, flooded his eyes. “Are you…okay?”

  “Dr. Johnson says yes. He says I need to rest whenever possible—” She gestured to the couch behind her.

  He swallowed. “Are you…happy? I mean to be pregnant again.”

  “Yes,” she said fiercely.

  “Are you happy to be pregnant with my baby?” he asked, poised on the edge of a knife.

  “I’m not sure yet,” she whispered. “You’re kind of a jerk.”

  He bit back the sudden bark of laughter. She needed some groveling and rightfully so.

  “Al. You are my life. Baby or no. Family or no. Nothing is good without you. My life is empty. My inn is empty. My dream, our dream, is a shell without you. And I will spend the rest of my life trying to fill your life as you have mine.”

  “And—”

  He laughed, but the sound rattled with tears and emotion. “And I will spend the rest of my life apologizing for being a jerk. Now, before I die of a heart attack, are you happy to be pregnant with my baby?”

  She lurched forward, tears magnifying her stunning black eyes, and grabbed his face. “I am so happy to be pregnant with your baby. No matter what happens.”

  He gripped her hands on his face, holding tight to her, looking right back at her, seeing all their flaws collectively and separately and still wanting to make it work. “You weren’t going to tell me?”

  “Not until I knew I was out of the woods.” She stroked his face carefully, with just her thumb. Tentative. “I didn’t want you to be obligated to me. I wanted you to love me.”

  “I do. Oh, you have no idea how much I love you.” He pulled her into his arms, across his lap, held her as close as he could, tried to soak her into his skin, through his bones and muscle so they would never be apart.

  He pressed his lips to her head, tears fell into her hair and he couldn’t stop laughing.

  “So, you’re happy?” she asked against his neck, her arms locked around his back. “I mean, you’re not mad?”

  “Well, you have to explain why Max knew before me but—” he shook his head, stroking her hair away from her beloved face “—no. I’m not mad. I’m nervous. I’m worried. I’m so happy I think I might throw up.”

  “I’ve been doing enough of that for both of us,” she said, making a face. “I guess we have a lot to talk about, huh?”

  “I want you back at the inn,” he said. “You won’t have to lift a finger. I’ll be your personal French fry slave.”

  “Hmm, sounds good,” she said and kissed him.

  Her lush familiar beautiful lips pressed to his, her body, changing right under his hands, the future spreading out before them with endless possibility.

  They still had things to deal with—but they could handle it. No matter what came their way.

  “Sounds like heaven,” he said.

  * * *

  Want More of THE RIVERVIEW INN? Learn Max’s secrets in SECRETS OF THE RIVERVIEW INN. Keep reading for an exclusive excerpt….

  * * *

  CHAPTER ONE

  Max Mitchell slid the two-by-four over the sawhorses and brushed the snow off his hand tools, but more fat flakes fell to replace what he’d moved.

  It was only nine in the morning, and the forecast had called for squalls all day.

  Winter. Nothing good about it.

  Of course, spending every minute of the season outside was a surefire way to cultivate his dislike of the cold. But lately, walls no matter how far away—and ceilings—no matter how high—felt too close. Like coffins.

  The thick brown gloves didn’t keep out the chill so he clapped his hands together, scaring blackbirds from the tree line a few feet behind him.

  Even the skeleton structure he’d spent the past few months constructing seemed to shiver and quake in the cold December morning.

  He eyed his building and for about the hundredth time he wondered what it was going to be.

  It wasn’t one of the cottages that he’d spent last spring and summer building for his brother’s Riverview Inn.

  Too small for that. Too plain for his brother, Gabe, the owner of the luxury lodge in the wilderness of the Catskills.

  Max told everyone it was going to be an equipment shed, because they needed one. But it was so far away from the buildings that needed maintaining and the lawns that needed mowing, he knew it would be a pain in the butt hauling equipment back and forth.

  Still, he called it a shed because he didn’t know what else to call it.

  Besides, the construction kept his hands busy, his head empty. And busy hands and an empty head stymied the worst of the memories.

  The skin on the back of his neck grew knees and crawled for his hairline and he whirled, one hand at his hip as if his gun would be where it had been for ten years. But of course his hip was empty and, behind him, watching him silently beneath a snow-covered Douglas fir, was a little girl.

  “Hi,” he said.

  She waved.

  “You by yourself?” He scanned the treeline for a parent.

  She nodded.

  Talkative little thing.

  “Where’d you come from?” Max asked.

  The girl jerked her thumb toward the inn that was back down the trail about thirty feet through the forest.

  “Are you a guest?” he asked, although it was Monday and most guests checked in on Sunday. “At the inn?”

  She shrugged.

  “You…ah…lost?” Max asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Can you talk?”

  She nodded.

  “Are you gonna?”

  She shook her head and smiled.

  His heart, despite the hours in the cold, warmed his chest.

  “Do you think maybe someone is worried about you?”

  At that the girl stopped smiling and glanced behind her at the buildings barely visible through the pines.

  “Should we head back?�
� he asked, stepping away from his project in forgetting. At his movement she darted left, away from the trail, under the heavy branches of trees and he stopped.

  She was a deer ready to run. And since beyond him there was a whole lot of nothing, he figured he’d best keep her here until someone came looking for her.

  “All right,” he said. “We don’t have to go anywhere.”

  Amongst the trees, her pink coat partially hidden in shadows, he saw her pink-gloved finger point at the building behind him.

  “It’s a house,” he said.

  She laughed, the bright tinkle filling his silent clearing.

  “You think it’s too small?” he asked, and her head nodded vigorously.

  “Well, it’s for a very small family—” he eased slightly closer to her where she hid “—of racoons.”

  Something crunched under his foot and she zipped deeper into the shadows and now he couldn’t see her face. He stopped.

  Two years off the force and he’d lost his touch.

  “Want to play a game?” he asked, and when she didn’t answer and didn’t run he took it for a yes. “I’m going to guess how old you are and if I guess right, we go inside, because it’s too cold.” He shivered dramatically.

  Again, no sound, no movement.

  “All right.” He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. “It’s coming to me. I can see a number and you are…forty-two.”

  She laughed. But when he took a step, the laughter stopped, as if it had been cut off by a knife. He stilled. “What am I—too low? Are you older?”

  Her gloved hand reached out between tree limbs and her thumb pointed down. “You’re younger?” He pretended to be amazed. “Okay, let me try…eight?”

  No laughter and no hand.

  For one delightful summer of his misspent youth, Max had been an age and weight guesser on Coney Island. He had a ridiculous intuition for such things and that summer it had gotten him laid more times than he could count.

  Ah. Misspent youth.

  “Am I right?” he asked.

  She stepped out from underneath the tree, her face still, her eyes wary.

  “Are you scared? Of going back?”

  She shook her head and looked at the end of her bright orange and pink scarf, playing with the tassels.