by Julia London
Good God. Surely she’d take a breath before long. He turned around to a board and lifted a key from one of the pegs.
“But you know how it is, you find a place and you really dig it. I have to say, I’m getting a great vibe from this inn. You must have, too, at some point, right? I mean, is that why you’re here?”
He handed her the key. “Room 215. Turn right at the end of the hall.” He pointed.
“Great! Thank you.” Jennifer Turner picked up her bags. She started in the direction he’d indicated, then paused and glanced back at him. “Is it too late to place an order with room service?”
“Room service?” he echoed incredulously. She could not possibly think he’d open the dining room for her, too.
Jennifer winced. “Do you think I could get something to eat? Maybe a sandwich? I’m starving. I’ve only had a bag of chips today.”
“The dining room is closed,” he said impassively as he glanced at his watch. Actually, a sandwich sounded quite good. Perhaps he’d make one for himself once she stopped talking, if that was even possible, and went on to her room.
“Ah. Okay.” She pressed a hand to her abdomen. “I’ll just…eat my shoe or something. I don’t know why I didn’t think to pick up an energy bar in case of an emergency. My friend Brooke always has one in her purse. She’s a runner,” she said, making quote marks in the air and rolling her eyes. “Which means she won’t go near a good burger. I don’t know what the point of running is if you can’t eat what you want. Give me yoga any day.”
Her stomach suddenly let out a wail of hunger. She blushed. “Sorry about that.”
Damn it all to bloody hell. Edan sighed. “Aye, then. I’ll make you a sandwich.”
She made a soft cry of delight. “Would you? And maybe some chips?”
Who was this creature who had appeared out of the night to torment him? “Anything else?”
She shrugged. She fidgeted with the strap of her yoga mat. “If you had a cake or a cookie, that would be great. Sugar is my go-to for stress eating.”
Well. Edan grudgingly had to respect a fellow stress-eater. “Kitchen is just through those doors,” he said, pointing in the opposite direction of her room. “Come at half past the hour.”
“Thank you!” She picked up her bag and yoga mat and started in the direction of her room. “We’re not dressing for dinner, are we?” She laughed at his expression and said, “Kidding!” and then disappeared.
Right. Well this was going to be an interesting pair of days from the look of things.
But a ham sandwich and crisps sounded like the perfect thing to soak up the whisky hangover that had melted over Edan’s brain. And frankly, he, too, wondered if there was any cake.
Two
Jenny closed the door of room 215 softly behind her, dropped her bag and her yoga mat…and then fell face down onto the bed, her arms splayed from end to end.
What. The. Hell?
Had she really just yapped her way into a room at a closed inn? She didn’t know whether to be appalled or proud. Of course she’d seen the sign that said the inn was closed. No one could miss that damn sign—all it lacked was a skull and crossbones. But the thought of spending the night on that bench or the side of the road had made her desperate. Or walking the five miles around the lake to East Beach.
This might possibly be the dumbest thing she had ever done. Not talking her way into the room—that had been genius, thank you. But taking off with Devin on this summer “trip.”
“You are one lucky idiot,” she muttered into the bedspread.
She pushed up to her elbows, swept her hair from her eyes and thought about the man behind the reception desk who looked like he’d just walked off the set of Outlander. How was it that someone that hot, wearing a kilt no less, could be tucked away in this old inn on the wrong side of the lake? He was awfully tight-lipped. But she could forgive his curtness because those lips made her blood rush hot and his eyes were so green and piercing.
He was the perfect person to meet after throwing her canteen at Devin.
Devin, Jesus. She was emotionally exhausted and furious with herself about that.
Jenny sat up, crossed her legs beneath her, and looked around. The room was tiny, and it smelled like fresh paint. She could see an oversize bathtub in the tiny bathroom—score—and it looked as if the pair of corner windows looked out over…
She shifted forward, straining to see out of the window.
Okay, well, the view was of a storage shed. But beyond the storage shed were the hills around Lake Haven. The setting was pretty, and the inn was charming in a gothic novel kind of way. Especially since it was tended by a mysterious man who rarely spoke, but when he did, it was with a deep and lilting Scottish brogue.
Why was it never she dated guys like Outlander? Why did she always hook up with the feckless Devins of the world?
Feckless. There were far more descriptive words to describe him. Not only had he proven himself entirely worthless—he couldn’t even pitch a tent—but he’d also proven himself to be a cheater. With Misty Pachenko, no less. The woman with the buzzed head and oversized denim shirts and excellent tent-pitching skills. Jenny supposed she ought to be grateful that someone had known how to do it.
Devin’s cheating aside, what really annoyed Jenny about the whole situation was herself. She certainly had not loved Devin, and let’s be honest, she couldn’t say how much she’d actually liked him after a few solid days in his company. Especially given that his performance between the sheets was vanilla at best. She was glad to be free of him.
But instead of thinking about all the reasons she had ended up with a guy like him and questioning what, exactly, she was doing with her life right now, she was thinking about the cute Outlander. She ought to be at least questioning why she’d needed to be in that horrible relationship with Devin, or why she always seemed to need to be in the sort of superficial relationships that were easy to escape. She clearly and desperately needed to examine her head, but she was tired and hungry, and she wanted to get on with the business of eating her feelings, because come on, Jen, that’s what you do so well.
With a moan, she fell onto her back to stare at the ceiling with a surprising and pretty plaster medallion.
Twelve minutes to sandwich.
Oh, but she could imagine what her friends would say if they were here right now. They’d be full of the told-you-sos and he’s-such-a-dicks. Vanessa and Brooke had warned her, had voiced their unfavorable opinions about her plans to hobo around with Devin this summer. “So irresponsible,” said Vanessa, who was supremely responsible.
“How is it that neither of you need a job right now?” asked Brooke, who often proudly reminded them that she’d been working since she was thirteen.
Jenny didn’t need a job—she had access to plenty of money. She wanted the right one. This camp-across-America trip with Devin and some of his musician friends had seemed like a very good way to think through her options. Just backpacks and tents, Devin had said. Camping in one place and then the next, like a pack of wanderers, playing gigs where they could get them. It had sounded kind of fun.
“It sounds insane,” Brooke had said. “I don’t get why you’re so keen to go. He never comes to see you, Jen. Half the time you can’t get him on the phone, he won’t answer your texts. And then you sent him five hundred dollars?”
Brooke had shrieked that part.
“It was a loan!” Jenny had shrieked back. Except that she’d known even as the words were flying out of her mouth that she would never get the money back. Well hang her from the highest tree, then—when someone told her they needed help, she helped. Devin was a free spirit, a musician without a muse, a man searching for his place in this world. In some ways, he’d reminded her of her—a liberal arts graduate who knew a whole lot about nothing that mattered, and nothing practical, who had devoted her entire life to taking care of her widowed dad who was a hoarder, and suffered from Parkinson’s disease, and needed her. She was all
her father had. Well. Until recently.
Ten minutes to sandwich.
The thing was, Jenny could never be as certain about anything as her friends were certain about everything. Maybe that’s why she’d always felt like the perpetual spare tire in their merry little band. A barnacle stuck on the boat of their friendship.
She’d gone with Devin because she’d desperately wanted out of Santa Monica. Away from her dad and his overstuffed house and his new girlfriend with the sixteen year-old son. And Jenny could afford to flit aimlessly around the East Coast with a loser like Devin if she wanted to because her father was insanely wealthy and even more insanely generous.
Not that she intended to live off her dad. Nope. She just didn’t know what yet. What she’d needed for a very long time was a place to belong. That idea had grown like a weedy vine in her over the last year, covering all her other thoughts and ambitions to do with working and settling down. She needed to be and work where she belonged. She needed some space away from Dad and friends and bad boyfriends to think about being suddenly single and having no firm plan for her life.
So now that the summer of Devin was officially a bust, Jenny had to figure these things out. She didn’t want to go back to California, to no job and a family home stuffed to the rafters with junk and new people. She didn’t want to teach anymore. She needed something creative. Something big, something complex, something she could sink her teeth into.
Whatever it was, she needed to work it out on her own.
But she couldn’t work it out on her own with her stomach growling like it was.
Six minutes to sandwich. An image of Outlander in his kilt making a sandwich flit through her mind’s eye.
Yeah, okay, six minutes was close enough. Jenny pushed herself off the bed and picked up her bag and rummaged around inside until she found some palazzo pants and a clean T-shirt, and took those into a bathroom so small she could lift her arms and touch both walls with her elbows.
But there was enough room to freshen up.
She took a look at herself in the mirror. She looked fine. She didn’t look lost or desperate or confused. See? This wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
Three
Jenny made her way down the hall, through the small reception area with the Oriental rug and the rack of brochures, and on through the doors Outlander had indicated earlier. That led to a large dining room. At the other end of the room, light spilled out of an open doorway, and she could hear the sound of a knife against a cutting board.
She moved across the room and peeked inside. It was a kitchen, and there was Outlander, still dressed in a kilt. He’d ditched the vest and had rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt. He’d donned an apron that said Good Eats Served Here and was busily slicing tomatoes on the kitchen island, where a variety of pots and pans hung over his head.
Jenny grabbed onto the doorframe and sort of swung into the room. “Hey,” she said, trying to sound breezy.
Outlander glanced up, his green-eyed gaze flicking over her. He pointed to a stool at the kitchen island.
She was going to take a wild guess that she was supposed to sit. She walked across the kitchen and slid on to her assigned stool and glanced around her—the kitchen was gleaming white, with black and white tile on the floor that matched the backsplash between the cabinets and kitchen counters. There was an industrial stove with more burners than Jenny could ever imagine uses for, and an enormous refrigerator with glass doors. “Nice kitchen,” she said.
He sliced into a block of cheese.
“You must like to cook.”
He looked at her strangely. “No’ really.”
But he was wearing an apron. People who possessed aprons generally liked to cook. She watched him get a loaf of bread from a bread drawer and lay it on a cutting board. The silence between them seemed to grow thicker.
“I really have to thank you again,” Jenny said, and absently twirled a thick strand of hair around her finger. “I know it’s a huge imposition, but you wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had.”
Outlander didn’t take the bait. He made a sound like a grunt and sawed into the bread.
“My name is Jenny, by the way,” she said.
“Aye, I checked you in.”
“Right,” she said, and giggled, not because it was funny, but because this couldn’t be more awkward. She did not do well with awkward. She had a tendency to take awkward situations and put them on blast with her words. “What’s your name? I mean, besides Mr. Mackenzie.”
He hesitated, as if debating whether he should tell her. “Edan,” he said quietly.
“That sounds totally Scottish. What do people call you? Ed?”
He paused, as if thinking about it. “I suppose most call me Mr. Mackenzie.” He resumed slicing the bread.
“They call me Mr. Tibbs,” Jenny responded in her best Sidney Portier voice.
Edan stopped sawing to look at her.
“It’s from a movie. An old movie. Too old, I guess.”
He glanced down.
Jenny flushed. So stuffy! “People call me Jenny. Except my friends. Guess what they call me?”
Edan Mackenzie did not stop slicing bread.
“They call me Turner Tots, or the Jennerator. They used to call me The Jenlanthropist, because I went through this period where I was giving away my worldly goods, which, I will confess, did not last long.” It had been one of those times she’d gotten a little frantic she was going to turn out to be a hoarder like her dad and started giving away everything in her cluttered apartment. Brooke had stopped her from giving away her laptop.
Edan Mackenzie gave her a look as if he couldn’t figure her out.
Jenny was generally pretty confident in her own skin, but there was something about his steady gaze that made her anxious. She twirled around on the stool to check out the awesome refrigerator. “How long have you worked for the Cassian Inn?” she asked, turning around again when she figured it was safe.
“I own it.”
“Own…the hotel?”
“Aye, the hotel. The grounds. The cottages.” He shrugged.
So “They-Call-Me-Mr. Mackenzie” owned this old mansion. Wouldn’t he make a great movie? Darkly brooding, handsome, and living in a mysterious mansion. A body in room 215...
He looked at her again, and Jenny got a squirmy, not-used-to-people vibe from him. Which was a little strange, because she’d guess that women would be lining up at his door.
Maybe the reason they weren’t was the lack of public transportation to his quaint establishment. It seemed a bit too far out of the way. But put this guy in Chicago or Santa Monica or New York, and sheesh, women would pitch their tents and camp out overnight, hold each others’ place in line so someone could dash off to Starbucks for a round of Frappuccinos—all to get a run at him.
“Do you live here by yourself?” First objective: establish his single/not-single status.
“You’re verra curious,” he said.
It was called making conversation, but okay, he didn’t want to talk about it. “I like your kilt,” she said. “I wish American men would wear them. They look really good and they seem practical to me.”
He began putting the sandwich together.
“I knew a girl once who fell in love while she was on vacation in Scotland,” Jenny said. “He told her kilts are for weddings and funerals.”
Edan Mackenzie arranged leaves of lettuce on the bread. He admired his handiwork.
He was going to make her work for every word. “Sooo…?” she asked, gesturing to his kilt. “Which was it for you?”
“Wedding.”
“I love weddings!”
He slapped some ham on top the lettuce, and then a slice of tomato. “Never knew a lass who didna love them.”
“That’s a gross generalization, sir. I’ve been a bridesmaid a few times and trust me, I didn’t love that. I had to wear a hideously pink dress once. The bride said it was champagne, but that thing was so sickly pink th
e only thing missing was the diabetes warning label. But yeah, okay, I will concede that most of us love weddings. I wouldn’t say I’m such a fan of marriage, however.” No sooner were the words out of her mouth that she lifted her hand. “Wait. That didn’t come out right. I’m not against marriage. I just don’t think you have to have a piece of paper to be committed.” Jesus, more words were leaping off her tongue before Jenny’s central control system could put her mouth on lockdown.
Outlander opened a bag of chips and shook a few out onto a plate. He clearly was not going to discuss his views on marriage with a total stranger because his central control system was working just fine and had sent everyone home and closed up shop for the night.
Jenny felt a terrible and wholly unnecessary need to clarify. She often felt this need. “I am for marriage. I just don’t think everyone has to do it. But weddings! Weddings are the best. It’s the one time entire families can come together and get dressed up, and be happy and just dance. What’s not to love? The last wedding I went to was one of my best friend’s. Bethany and Matt.”
Outlander was slicing the sandwich in half.
“I was a bridesmaid. But that was a beautiful dress.” Bethany would kill her if she ever said anything less about that teal-blue halter dress. Jenny hadn’t loved it. She suddenly laughed, recalling how she and Vanessa and Brooke had all had too much to drink. They sat at a table envying how happy and beautiful Bethany had looked and complaining about their dresses. Somehow, they’d gotten on the topic of relationships. “At that wedding, my friends and I had this ridiculous conversation about marriage and relationships. We decided we needed to have a list of non-negotiables. Do guys do that?”
“I donna know what you mean,” Outlander said.
