Up to Me (Shore Secrets)

by Christi Barth

  Although she didn’t run the hotel, Ella did know every inch of it. Knew the rhythms and the schedules right down to what order the maids used to clean and restock a room in the shortest time. Her parents had encoded it in her DNA every bit as much as her green eyes and brown hair. Ella didn’t even need to consult the clock hanging above the desk. She could tell check-in had begun from the increased lobby sounds: the clatter of luggage carts over the threshold, an uptick in elevator dings, and a cheerful din from the gathering guests.

  “Sorry about the delay. I can have a bellhop come and meet you here. He can retrieve your luggage from your car.” Ella lifted the phone, ready to expedite the process.

  Gray shook his head, locked his midnight gaze onto Ella, then put a hand on top of hers and lowered the phone back to the desk. “I’m in no hurry.”

  In her estimation, that slid the scales back over to full-on flirt. Now what? “Would you like to see our list of services?” Not exactly a come-on. But she was out of practice. And there was still a chance she could’ve read him wrong. Better to err on the side of caution.

  He shrugged. “Not sure. I’ve never had a massage.”

  “Never?” Ella gasped. It seemed impossible. She remembered forming back-rub chains back in high school choir. Whether through friends, family or professionals, she couldn’t imagine someone going their whole life without getting so much as a neck rub.

  “Not even once. I always thought just lying down while someone poked at me was a waste of time.”

  She couldn’t let him continue to wander through the wilderness of ignorance. He had to learn that massage wasn’t a luxury. It was a necessity, as helpful and healing as prescription meds. “But massage is so good for you. It stimulates lymph flow, which enhances the immune system. Increases flexibility, lessens depression, improves circulation, releases endorphins and of course, eases sore muscles.”

  “Amazing I didn’t keel over long ago without it,” he said, tongue in cheek.

  Brooke tsked her tongue against her teeth. “You can get off your soapbox now, Ella. This is your chance to convert him. Don’t blow it by talking him to death.”

  Whoops. Her love for massage unfortunately flipped her into lecture mode all too often. “Sorry. You’re right.” Ella smiled—hopefully disarmingly—at Gray. “How about I give you a five-minute chair massage? For free?”

  “So you can get me hooked, and then charge me through the roof?”

  “America is a capitalistic society. I won’t apologize for our rates.” Whoops. She had one foot on the soapbox, about to hop back on again. People didn’t realize all the hidden costs to massage. The insane amount of laundry generated by using a minimum of four towels and a set of sheets on every single client. Candles and aromatherapy oils and scrubs and lotions. The expense of heating all the individual rooms and the beds and the sauna/steam rooms and—

  Ella smiled again. This time, more in an attempt to calm herself than to calm Gray. “I will guarantee you’ll get your money’s worth, and walk out of here feeling relaxed and happy.”

  “You guarantee happiness?” Gray looked her up and down. “Who in their right mind would turn that down?”

  She might’ve oversold a bit. The happiness came with an hour-long massage, not a five-minute neck rub in a chair. But it was too late to back down. “Come with me.”

  They kept a massage chair in the prep room for just this purpose. To lure and engage the wary and nervous types. Ella led him into the room of deep, mint green walls and shelves stocked with towels the paler shade of ripe chardonnay grapes. The Finger Lakes was most famous for their wine. Just about every business around Seneca Lake played up that connection. Mayhew Manor even put out their own line of red, white and sparkling wines. Of course here in the spa, they only served cucumber water and herbal teas.

  “Before we begin, let’s cool you off.” Reaching into a cooler, she retrieved a small, wet towel from a bed of ice cubes. “I can tell from the red in your cheeks that you’re still overheated from your run. This has been soaked in peppermint oil. It’ll lower your temperature and refresh you.”

  She hesitated for a second. If he was any other client, she’d wipe him down herself. But he wasn’t a full-fledged client. Not yet. They weren’t in a treatment room, he wasn’t lying down, and if he hadn’t just finished a run, he’d still be fully clothed. Right now, he was just a guy whose bedroom eyes flip-flopped her tummy. And simple physical attraction could be, with a little concentration, simply ignored. Ella handed over the towel. “Here you go.”

  Shaking it out of its tidy roll, Gray vigorously rubbed it over his chest, neck and forehead. She’d scrubbed at shower scum with less force than he used. “I smell like a candy cane,” he complained.

  Oh. God. The vision of licking him, sucking on him, streaked through her mind. Any more thoughts like that and she’d need to dab at her own flushed cheeks with the icy towel. No way could she ignore this visceral attraction. So it had to stop. She’d give him the five-minute rub and that would be the end of it. If he signed up for a full massage, Ella would get one of the other therapists to do it. Everything about Gray poked holes in her professional detachment.

  “Don’t worry. It won’t last.” Ella handed him a bath towel to dry off. Then she waved him into the chair with its padded face cradle. While he straddled it and settled his arms, she dimmed the lights and punched up her favorite babbling brook disc on the player. Just a guess, but Gray didn’t seem the type to appreciate Native American flute music or Tibetan crystal bowls.

  She stood at the front of the chair and began by running her fingers lightly through his thick, dark hair. A soft, slow scrape with just the tips of her nails against his scalp. Ella drew a pattern of alternating circles from side to side.

  “You’re wearing pink Converse.”

  He must be looking through the hole of the face cradle. “Yes. My job requires me to stand all day. So I wear comfortable shoes.”

  “But they’re pink.” Gray’s voice conveyed the utter disdain of a man viewing a polka dot football jersey, or paisley chaps on a cowpoke. Hmm. Not liking her Converse was a definite flaw. Sure, he might have the physical perfection of a Greek statue. But noting the obvious flaw in his fashion sense meant Ella still had her wits about her. It grounded her a bit.

  “Yep. I’ve got them in every color. Converse lets me design them. Plaid. Leopard print. Stars. Polka dots. Stripes.”

  “Leopard print? Only certain items of clothing should be leopard print. And they’re not shoes.” His voice lowered suggestively on the last few words.

  Aha! She hadn’t misread anything. A man who hinted at discussing lingerie definitely had his flirt mode engaged. Ella happened to own a leopard-print bra and panty set. But she couldn’t admit it to him. Instead, she poured her favorite relaxing blend of oils into her palm; cedarwood, orange and ylang-ylang. Not too girly, but still potent enough to ease his mind.

  Her hand hovered at his nape. Ridiculous. She touched fully naked men all day, every day. What about Gray was so different? That made the mere thought of stroking the cords along his neck full of heightened anticipation? No. She was a professional, damn it. Gray deserved five minutes of bliss, and she was the one to give it to him.

  Ella planted her thumbs on either side of his spine and pushed upward along his bronzed neck. She tried to think of banal small talk. “You’ve got quite a tan for this time of year.”

  “Thanks for noticing.” He sounded smug. Like he knew she’d been checking him out earlier. Here she’d hoped that the sunlight had kept him from actually seeing her and Brooke staring at him, all but drooling on the window.

  “Well, it’s noticeable up here where spring doesn’t really hit until, well, now. We’re practically in Canada, you know. The cherry and apple trees just started blooming this week.” The weather. The ultimate go-to for meaningless chitchat.
Not an ounce of flirtation in it.

  “I spent the last three weeks in Miami. Practically in Mexico,” he teased.

  Funny. Sexy and funny and charming. This guy was celibacy Kryptonite. Not that Ella specifically chose to be celibate for three years. More that she didn’t choose not to be. “Were you on vacation then?”

  The barest hesitation hung in the air before he answered. “I’m on vacation now. Work then.”

  She dug her elbow into the hollow of his neck. He groaned. Ella had spent much time cataloging and translating a litany of client groans. Some were a verbal expulsion of stress. Some teetered on the edge of begging her to stop. To her practiced ear, Gray’s groan was a compliment, and an expression of pleasure.

  “I can think of worse places to be stuck working than Miami.”

  “Yeah? It’s hot. Constant shirt-stuck-to-the-small-of-your-back hot.” His body relaxed, stopped fighting her. He slumped lower on the chest pad. “Traffic sucks. Everyone’s so busy staring at the topless girls and guys in banana hammocks they ignore green lights. The ocean’s bathwater warm. Not exactly refreshing. And every time I went for a run, some damn rollerblader almost took me out. Every time!”

  “Perhaps you should ask for a hazardous workplace bonus.”

  “Funny.”

  “Don’t knock the sun and sand.” Ella dug her fingers deeper into the ridges along the top of his shoulders. Muscled, yes, but also knotted beyond belief. She added another dollop of oil and waved her palm beneath his face so he’d breathe in the stress-reducing aromatherapy. Not that it could turn him around to a Zen-like state of peace in only five minutes.

  “By April Fool’s Day, we’re all having waking hallucinations of a tropical paradise up here. While we shovel out from a late-season snow. It gives us something to focus on as we scrape half an inch of ice off the car windows, wrapped in scarves, gloves and hats.” Geez. She really needed to quit with the weather commentary.

  “I can think of worse places to be stuck working than a lakeshore.”

  Ella bit back a laugh. Gray was good at turning her words around to suit him. Made it harder to think of him as just a well-put-together collection of tanned muscles.

  “You’ve got a big-ass lake—”

  She cut him off. “Thirty-eight miles from top to bottom.”

  “Like I said. Big. Sparkling. Surrounded by trees that come right down to the shoreline. And from what I can tell after running along it for an hour, you’ve got a winery every ten feet. Not bad working conditions. Unless you’re on the wagon. Then it would be torture.”

  “We’ve got thirty-two wineries here on Seneca Lake alone, and almost two hundred in the Finger Lakes region.”

  “What gives?”

  Ella cupped her hands around his shoulders to do a little quick work on his amazing biceps. “Well, because the lakes are so deep, they provide a lake-weather effect that protects grapevines from early and late frost.”

  “What the hell?” He snorted. “I meant, do you have a second job with the tourist board?”

  “No. But I’ve lived here all my life. I guess I’ve picked up a few facts over the years.” More like they’d been drummed into her by her third-generation hotelier parents. Tourists always had questions. Especially about wine. After all, wineries were responsible for a crazy high percentage of their guests. According to the Mayhews, Ella needed to be prepared for any guest eventuality, which meant knowing the answer to every possible question, and knowing how to solve any potential problem.

  “I want to learn about you.”

  Oh. Blunt. And sweet. Caught off guard, she stilled her hands for a moment. Gray, on the other hand, forged ahead.

  “Not the meteorological averages of Geneva, not the depth of Seneca Lake, but you, Ella. Do you think we could finish the conversation without you spouting off any more statistics?”

  “Maybe. No promises.” He craned his head up to glare at her. With a rueful laugh, she pushed his head back onto the cushion. “I’ll try.”

  “Good.”

  “Why me?” If he got to be blunt, so did she. “Why not Brooke?”

  “Are you fishing?”

  “No. Just surprised. Confused that you’d overlook the obvious.” She racked her brain for a sports term. “That you’d pass on a slam dunk in order to risk sinking a three-pointer from the line.”

  “Are you a basketball fan?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “Well, I appreciate the effort. You got the lingo right.”

  Basketball ran on three plasma screens in the lounge every night. All weekend. In March it felt like basketball played twenty-four hours a day. “I pick things up. No matter how I try to avoid it.”

  “How about we switch to business, instead? The higher the risk, the higher the reward.”

  “You think I’m risky?” Odd, when she was the one fighting this ridiculously over-the-top attraction. Something she clearly needed to backpedal on. Ella barely knew him. Definitely didn’t know him enough to ascertain if she just wanted the feel of his skin against hers, or if she actually wanted Gray the man.

  “The way you look at me with those mermaid eyes? Full of secrets and shadows? Absolutely.”

  Ella dragged her fingers from the top of his head, down his spine, all the way to his shorts. “We’re finished.”

  “I hope not.”

  His words shimmered with promise. Ella had absolutely no idea how to respond. So she fell back on the habitual, safe litany of her daily work. “How do you feel?”

  Gray sat up. He cracked his neck on one side, then the other, and rolled his shoulders. “Actually, I feel good. Really good.”

  “Told ya so.” She handed him another towel to wipe off the residual oil, and saw Brooke gesturing from the doorway. “I’ll be right back.”

  As soon as she crossed the threshold, Brooke grabbed her arm and dragged her down the hall into the nearest treatment room. “You should ask him out.”

  Whoa. That was not what she expected to hear from her friend. And not something she’d ever contemplate. “No. Absolutely not. No way. I’ve never asked a guy out. I’m too old to start.”

  Brooke rolled her eyes. “You’re twenty-seven.”

  “Exactly.” Since it was there, Ella washed the residual oil off her hands in the small copper sink. “If I wasn’t brave enough in my fearless college years, I’m definitely not brave enough now.”

  “You left the door open. I heard you two talking. He’s totally into you.”

  The thought made her smile. It was always nice to want somebody, and be wanted back. “If that’s true, then Gray can ask me out.”

  “Why leave it up to chance?”

  “He’s the first man to interest me in a very long time.” She dried her hands. “That can be enough for now. Let’s take this one step at a time.”

  “I thought you might say that.” Brooke thrust her smartphone at Ella. “Which is why I texted a bunch of your friends and we took a vote. Read this.”

  Ella swapped her towel for the phone. Saw the long string of texts. The first in the line, Ella’s Finally Horny, made her wince, and immediately hand it back over. “Subtle as always, Brooke.”

  “I didn’t have time to be subtle.” Brooke blocked the doorway with her arm. “Opportunity is knocking at your door. Trouble is, you’ve got it locked up tighter than the U.S. Mint.”

  If they stood here arguing much longer, it would become a moot point. Gray would give up and leave. “Point taken. But as of today, I’d like to think I’ve drilled a peephole in the door. That’s progress.”

  “You’re scared.”

  Ella threw up her hands. “Of course I’m scared. I already admitted that.”

  “You think you’re scared he’ll say no. I think you’re really scared of what’ll happ
en if he says yes.”

  Hmm. It was the sort of comment her therapist used to make during their twice weekly chats. Insightful. Searching. Thought-provoking. No chance at all that it came from Brooke’s brain. Somebody on the email chain probably dropped that little nugget. “Potato, potahto.”

  “Okay, I couldn’t get a hold of a wide focus group with so little time, but three out of four concerned friends say you should go for it.”

  “Ha. I’ve got wiggle room if it wasn’t unanimous.”

  “Technically, yes.”

  Ella tickled Brooke’s ribs for the millisecond it took before the other woman folded in half, squealing. “Then I’m wiggling right out of here on that technicality.” She hurried down the hallway, spotting Gray already waiting back at the reception desk. That naked chest of his packed as big a punch as the first time she’d seen him, with just enough black hair sprinkled down the middle to make it interesting. Bronzed pecs that popped as he reached into his pocket for his phone, and abs so sharply defined you could grate cheese on them. Or eat cheese off of them, which would be much more fun. And now she had the tactile memory of all that warm, smooth skin to overlay on top of the visual. Ella wondered if he planned to run every day of his stay at the Manor, because she definitely wanted to watch him in motion again. Watching from afar wouldn’t be dangerous at all.

  When he saw her, those dark brows winged upwards. “I started to think you’d deserted me for someone who had the foresight to make an appointment.”

  “Not a chance.” There. Earnest, truthful, with just a dash of flirt. That’d show her friends—whichever ones were smart enough to realize the true fear holding her back. Because it had only taken an instant to realize they were right. It probably was time to move on, to start dating again. But the black hole of the unknown surrounded the whole concept.

  Ella was no longer the same person she’d been back when she dated with reckless abandon. Would she react the same way? How would a man react to her? How would Gray, for instance? She didn’t know what to expect from herself. Was it fair to drag a man into that exploration with her?