Up to Me (Shore Secrets)

by Christi Barth

  Definitely a local. Gray looked at him again, frowning. The guy was pure muscle, head to toe. Burly enough to make the statement confusing. “Led them? You look more like someone who’d hold the line than a quarterback.”

  “Not back then. I had the height, but not much else. Now, I spend my days hefting fifty-pound sacks of rye and barley. It bulks you up fast.”

  “You’re a farmer?” Gray guessed.

  Ward had leaned forward to check out the damage in the mirror, but at Gray’s question, he white-knuckled the edge of the sink. Clearly a story there. “Fuck, no. Not anymore, I mean. I own a distillery.”

  So cool. Who didn’t dream about blending their own whiskey or vodka? Gray walked out to the closet to grab a clean shirt. “That’s awesome. Seriously. I’d love to come watch you work your magic one afternoon.” Gray would make the time. Work could wait. Although practically speaking, it might end up yielding some interesting research for the project.

  “As long as you’re willing to pitch in, no problem. And you’ve proved that tonight already.”

  Back to the fight. This night was turning out to be way more interesting than the Knicks game. He tossed his rugby shirt onto the antiquely fragile-looking desk chair and pulled on a black-faded-to-gray long-sleeved tee from a long-ago Nickelback concert. Tastes changed. Gray seriously regretted the concert. But he loved the shirt, and the memory of the girl he’d kissed that night. Aileen? Alicia? Shit. He sometimes remembered the kissing more than the name. Just like every other man on the planet.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’d say you left high school in your wake almost ten years ago.”

  “Yeah. But not them. For Bruce, Mike and Chuck, high school was the best part of their lives. They still go to the SLHS games every Friday night. You ask them their favorite team, and they won’t mention one in the NFL or MBA. Small-town pride burns damn deep. And they think I screwed over the town.” Ward wrung out the now-pinkish towel and draped it across the faucets. “They’ve never moved on. Which means that as long as I live on Seneca Lake, I don’t get to, either.”

  Gray paused, one hand in his not-yet-unpacked suitcase. “Want to borrow a shirt?”

  “Nah.” Instead, he just buttoned the flannel over the worst of the stains on the tee below.

  “Want me to point you to the quickest way out of town?”

  Disappearing as fast as it came, a grin slid over Ward’s face. “Nah.”

  A sharp knock on the door spun them both around. Shit. It had to be the police. Ten minutes ago, he’d been prepared to march off to jail on a wave of victorious righteousness. Now, Gray just wanted to drown his aches in beer and get a fresh plate of nachos. Oh, and not have to call the company’s attorney and ask to be bailed out. Or explain to his boss how, after being in town for all of six hours, he’d blown his cover in a high-class bar, low-class brawl.

  Ward jammed his hands in his pockets. “Might as well get it over with.”

  “Yeah.” Now he wanted the soundtrack from Stars Wars to play—the creepy marching music of the Stormtroopers seemed about right. Resigned to his fate, Gray threw open the door, and felt his pulse skitter back into a normal rhythm.

  A pimply kid in a splotched dishwasher’s apron stood on the other side. His hands were hidden beneath a folded tablecloth. Ward hurried forward. “We didn’t call for room service, Brandon. What are you doing here?”

  “Dani sent me on a mission.” Self-importance practically pulsed from his clogged pores. “She entrusted me with—”

  A brusque wave of Ward’s hand cut him off. “Shut it, kid. Leave off the role-playing lingo and just tell us why you’re here.”

  The eagerness in his face melted into standard teenager sullenness. “You can come down in five minutes. Dani already put in an order for wings, nachos and loaded potato skins. They’ll be ready when you are.” He started to leave, then turned back. “Here. She didn’t want you to worry about it.” Gray’s iPad appeared from beneath the tablecloth.

  “Thank God.” He hadn’t given it a second thought when he raced off to help Ward. But now he realized what a clusterfuck it would’ve been if it got into the wrong hands. All the confidential project information was on there. Ward shut the door as Gray sat on the couch and brought the tablet out of hibernation. He needed to be sure nobody had been on, had seen anything—the pages of stats and crunched numbers on Mayhew Manor, the bullet points on the surrounding town of Geneva. Or worse, the designer’s sketches of what might be built in its place if he pulled the kill switch on it. Sure, the password protect would’ve kicked on the minute it hibernated, but he still had to double-check. Couldn’t be too careful in his line of work.

  With all the grace of a deployed missile, Ward dropped into a corner of the brocade sofa. The springs rolled in a wave formation beneath Gray in protest. Wood creaked. The old furniture looked right in the castle, but it had been built back when an average man clocked in at six inches less than his own lanky six feet.

  “Well?” Ward prompted. “Did Brandon Skype with China? Download porn? Or is it all fine?”

  Luckily, the only thing he’d left open was his personal email. And just then it pinged. A new message popped into view from the Elmhurst Federal Correctional Facility. Great. Just what he didn’t need anyone to see. Because who wanted to admit he got monthly emails from a prison? Gray powered down. “It looks to be untouched.”

  “So nobody stole your iPad, we kicked some ass, and now Dani the Tight-Fisted is buying us dinner? I’d call this a good night.” Ward leaned over, slapped him hard on the back.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “As long as you don’t ask to borrow money. Although if you’re staying in all this lavishness,” he waved his arm to encompass the two-room suite, from the elaborate plaster moldings to the velvet curtains, gilt-framed artwork and antique furniture, “I’d say the chances are better that I should be asking you for a loan.”

  “I’ve stayed in my share of zero-star, one-ply-toilet-paper dumps. This is better,” Gray acknowledged.

  “What’s your question?”

  “You said those guys have had it out for you since high school, right?”

  “Yeah. There was some shit that went down once I left for college. No skin off my nose to admit I screwed up, screwed some people over—at least in their minds.” Sighing, Ward scrubbed his hands through his hair. “I left for a while, but when I came back and tried to apologize, they wouldn’t hear it. Still had a bug up their collective butts. They seem to like hating me.”

  That hit home for Gray. Or rather, was the exact reason why he never went home any more. Because he’d grown up in a town even smaller than this one. A fucking armpit of a town. A place where memories might fade, but grudges never did. “Why come back? I’m guessing you knew you weren’t going to get a hero’s welcome?”

  Ward’s mouth twisted down. “Oh, yeah. No surprise there. But my dad died. Left me his farm. My ‘inheritance’.” He made air quotes with his fingers. “Millstone dragging me down was more like it.”

  He had it easy. A farm, you could sell. Gray’s own personal hometown millstone couldn’t be gotten rid of, no matter how hard he tried. “Then why stay? In a town where people won’t forgive and forget?”

  “Now I’ve got the distillery. Or at least, I’m making a go at it. Every town has an idiot or two—or three,” he corrected himself with a rueful grin, “to go around. There’s a lot of good people here, too. People who were willing to give me a second chance. Good friends.”

  “Ah. That explains it. The magic ingredient that’s missing from my hometown.” Because all his so-called friends had dropped him years before Gray managed to finally hightail it out of there. They certainly hadn’t been willing to give him a second chance. If he went back tomorrow, after almost fifteen years, Gray knew he’d still find every door barred t
o him. Every face and window shuttered.

  Ward pushed off the couch, gingerly tested his jaw. “‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.’”

  Surprise almost tripped him halfway to the door. Not what Gray expected from the small-town, flannel-wearing man with muscles that looked like he could bench press a dump truck. “Did you seriously start the night with a bar fight, and now you’re ending it by quoting Robert Frost?”

  “I’m a man of many sides.” Ward stroked his neat beard, a cartoonish impression of an ancient philosopher contemplating the human condition. Then he burst out laughing. “My friend Casey thinks I don’t read enough. She gave me a quote-a-day calendar for Christmas. That’s today’s. No clue if I’ll remember it by next week. Impressed you recognized it, though.”

  “In college, I used to memorize lines of poetry to impress women.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Often enough that I still remember most of them.”

  “Look, Seneca Lake is my home. For better or worse. Most of the time I can avoid Chuck and his clown posse.” He opened the door to the suite and led Gray down the hall to the main staircase. “With back-to-back games, I thought they’d be too drunk tonight to cause any trouble.”

  “You knew they’d be here, and came anyway? Knowing it could get ugly? Why?”

  “The cable’s out at my place.” Ward flashed a smile that would’ve been cocky, if it hadn’t reopened the cut on his lip. Blood beaded on his mustache. “And I don’t scare easy.”

  Chapter Three

  Ella had given up on sleep about two hours ago. Since then, she’d also given up on reading, television, pacing the round confines of her tower room, and decided that men were far more trouble than they were worth. Somewhere inside her, a switch had flicked this afternoon. A switch that let hormones sizzle and needs fizz all through her system. Now she couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t distract herself. Couldn’t do anything but think about Graydon Locke. The way his muscles rippled beneath all that tan skin.

  Wine would help. Here in the Finger Lakes, it was widely believed that wine helped everything. Of course, she’d also thought that about reading, television and pacing. More to the point, then, was that wine couldn’t hurt. Ella hurried down the stairs, pausing a moment at the bottom to look through the peephole. Seeing the coast was clear, she pulled open the door.

  A man’s body tumbled backwards onto her bare feet. One hand shot up into the air, clutching a wineglass. His other forearm thwacked loudly against the wooden step. Ella squealed, and instantly hated herself for it.

  “God almighty, haven’t I gotten enough bruises tonight?”

  Slumped with his head against her shins, Ella couldn’t see the man’s face. But she recognized the voice. Mostly because she’d been replaying it in her head all night. “Graydon?”

  He twisted, let his head flop to the floor to look up at her. “Just Ella?”

  Smart-ass. “That’s right.”

  “This night’s taking a turn for the better. Usually my insomnia doesn’t come with a beautiful prize.”

  Her heart, which had slowed its shocked overtime thumping, sped back up at his compliment. Since she hadn’t really been to sleep yet, her hair probably still looked decent, and she sported her new summer pj’s, pink-and-white-striped cotton pants with a matching tank. No makeup, but the muted backlight filtering down the stairs made that less of an issue. Ella sank to the step, hugging her knees.

  “I’m not accustomed to entertaining uninvited visitors at two in the morning.”

  “Well, I’m not accustomed to falling through walls.”

  Oh. “The door to my room is hidden within the paneling. You’re not supposed to know it’s there.”

  “Mission accomplished, trust me.” Gray rolled upright and propped himself against the side wall. “But if you’ve got a hidden door, shouldn’t you, oh, I don’t know, maybe knock to warn people you’re coming out?”

  “I’ve got a little peephole. But I couldn’t see you. Were you sitting on the floor?” He nodded. “Maybe you shouldn’t have been using my door as a backrest.”

  Gray held out his hand. “We’re both equally not to blame.”

  “Deal.” They shook. And then he continued to hold her hand. Not that Ella minded. It was oddly intimate, huddled on the stairs, with a wall of darkness beyond the door. Here she’d been obsessing all night about seeing Gray again. Now they were touching, her hand enfolded in his, her toes brushing his warm thigh. For just a second, Ella wondered if she had managed to fall asleep. Had slipped into a lovely dream. Of course, a dream wouldn’t include the pain in her tailbone from sitting on the step.

  He still said nothing. But now his thumb brushed slowly and rhythmically across the top of her hand. It sent tiny shivers, scurrying faster than nanites, through her bloodstream. Then she realized nanites were not a good conversation starter. Not unless he’d just watched the season seven DVD box set of Stargate SG-1 like she had.

  “What are you doing up at this ridiculous hour?” she asked.

  “Couldn’t sleep.”

  “Why not?”

  “Lots of reasons.” Gray pointed to the butterfly bandage at the end of his eyebrow. “Had kind of an exciting night. Got in a fight. This cut’s the only visible proof right now. I expect by morning I’ll have enough purple splotches on me to stand in as a Jackson Pollock painting.”

  “A fight? An actual fight with hitting?” Interesting. Surprising. It took bad-boy sandpaper to his so-far-smooth image.

  “Mostly. A little kicking and hairpulling, too. Bunch of pansies.” He took a swig of wine. “Ward’s term for them, not mine. Apparently he knows them well enough to judge.”

  “Ward?” Too coincidental, in a town this small, not to be her friend. “Ward Cantrell?”

  “The very same. Three guys tried to take him, over nothing. I stepped in to even the odds.”

  Ella thought back to the three screens of basketball she’d seen as she passed by the pub earlier. It wasn’t a huge leap to assume that Chuck, Bruce and Mike had come to watch the action. Why Ward would’ve come, knowing they’d be there and certain to hassle him, she couldn’t say. Why Gray would willingly put himself in danger to help a stranger, she also couldn’t say. “Ward’s one of my best friends. Thanks for helping him out.”

  “Seems like a good guy. I don’t regret it. But I’ve got bruises on top of bruises, which makes it hard to sleep. Figured I’d take advantage of the open wine bottles I saw in the...” He circled his hand a few times, pointing out the door to the large room beyond, swathed in darkness.

  “We call it the upstairs parlor.” A ridiculous name, seeing as how this wasn’t eighteenth-century London. Really, who used the word parlor anymore? Maybe she’d bring it up to Eugene tomorrow. Her hotel manager didn’t just welcome Ella’s input, he practically begged for it. Odd, since she had no official role in running the hotel. Still, Eugene insisted that since the hotel bore her name, Ella needed to stay involved. It kind of drove her nuts. But she loved him like a father and wanted to make him happy.

  So she’d mention changing parlor to a word that didn’t remind people of the bad old days when indoor plumbing equaled chamber pots. The Manor might look like a castle on the outside, but inside it, guests expected modern luxuries. Free Wi-Fi and iPod docking stations in the clock radios, at the very least.

  Gray took a long swig. Exhaled happily. “I call it genius. Free wine, day and night? Always out for the taking?”

  “Mayhew Manor sells their own line of wine, so it’s good exposure. But the real reason for the wine buffet is that a good hotel always gives more than you expect.” Amazing how those tenets driven home by her parents popped out at the oddest times. Like now, sitting next to a gorgeous man who had already expressed annoyance at her encyclopedic delivery of facts this
very afternoon.

  Ella did not want to scare him away. She’d hesitated before, and missed her chance with Gray. It had been easy to shrug it off in the moment. Easy to tell Brooke as they closed up the spa together that it obviously wasn’t meant to be. That noticing and wanting a man, those were big enough steps for today. Deep down, though, Ella knew better. Graydon Locke had occupied her thoughts nonstop since walking out of the spa. She wanted to gaze her fill of those strong forearms dusted with dark hair. She wanted to feel again. And she wanted another chance with Gray.

  It was a bad idea, of course. Unwise to get mixed up with a guest, period. One who’d check out before her next issue of Redbook arrived. About a mile past unwise. But it had been eighteen months of shattering grief, followed by another eighteen months of numbness. Ella deserved fifteen minutes of the spark in her eyes kindling a reciprocal ember in his.

  “I definitely didn’t expect it. But I do appreciate it.” Gray took a swig. “Especially after my first fight in probably twenty years.”

  “So...you’re celebrating?” she asked with a teasing grin.

  “Hardly.” He tried to flex his raw knuckles. It drew a hiss of pain out of him before he’d barely begun. “This isn’t Manhattan. I can’t run out in the middle of the night and get a Percocet for my headache. I remembered the wine, and thought I’d try to self-medicate.” Gray lifted his glass to her. “Would you like a sip? This Malbec I’m drinking is more than decent.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to let him know that it, indeed, was far more than decent. Had, in fact, won medals in competitions from one side of the country to the other. But Ella bit back the fact parade, just reached for the glass, making sure to touch his strong, warm fingers in the process. “I’d love some.”

  “Happy to share. Five minutes ago, I was sitting on the floor in the dark. Alone.” He gave a self-mocking laugh. “Thinking about how a thirty-one-year-old man should know better than to get in a fight. Or that maybe I should take up kickboxing.” A soft bump of his knee against hers. His leg stayed there, touching. Pressing. Searing through her thin, cotton pants. “Talking to you is better.”