Was there something she’d missed? Had the construction company done a bad job? Had the ceiling in the room shown signs of water damage?
She’d find out soon enough and then they could get the leak fixed and move on. Burkhart seemed concerned but not DEFCON 5 concerned. And they had a good occupancy rate for this time of spring, and the wedding schedule was booked up.
Burkhart had done a great job of getting the inn established and making sure the restaurant had a fantastic chef and a kitchen lined with awards, but Katy had revitalized the wedding business. She’d learned to market the hall better and work with other vendors in the town to offer great rates to anyone who wanted to have a lovely medium-sized reception in a beautiful backdrop that family didn’t have to travel halfway across the globe to get to.
Once this wedding was over, she’d send a little email to Burkhart, talking about the bottom line. The profit from a wedding with a guest list over a hundred people was always a good profit for the inn. It should more than make up for any leak.
She could give Burkhart all the assurances in the world, but money was the only thing that would make him feel better.
She was able to push most of her problems—Nathan, the leak, the wedding—out of her mind for the next few hours as she tried to stay in her office but unsurprisingly ended up being pulled away multiple times.
The call that brought her back to reality was the one she didn’t answer. Her cell phone rang and she expected to see the construction company, Burkhart, or one of the numerous vendors she dealt with that day. But it was Victoria, her sister-in-law. The sister-in-law she loved. One of the few people who actually knew about her history with Nathan.
Katy slid the slider over to Ignore. She loved Victoria, but until she knew what was going on with Nathan, she didn’t think she was capable of explaining the situation to anyone else.
The downtown section of Bath was...quaint. Nathan didn’t know of any other way to describe it. It was just past eight p.m. and most of the stores were closed. The only buildings with lights on were the restaurants and one or two bars. But not bars like he was used to. Not bars that had lines of people waiting to get in and bouncers guarding the front door.
He found the coffee shop easy enough. Like Katy had said, it was the only one there. Inside, there were a few tables taken up by kids with laptops or couples sitting together. Probably wasn’t much to do around here once everything else closed, he supposed. There was no line, so he ordered himself and Katy some decaf sugar-filled caramel lattes. He wasn’t sure what she liked, but he wanted to have something waiting for her when she walked in. She could always say no. She’d made it clear she didn’t have a problem with the word.
Except for that one time. Nathan clenched his jaw as he remembered the kiss. Fuck, he hadn’t been expecting that. He’d known there was still something between them. He’d hoped like hell that she would feel it too. But the actual feeling of her lips against his. Of the tentative way she’d returned the kiss as it had started to spiral out of control...
He’d been with so many women over the past eight years that it had become almost...routine: Corner them. Impress them with something flashy. Go in for the kiss. Then get them alone as soon as possible until he could get between their legs.
No wonder he’d been disenchanted with Carla. If he’d known it would be as electric as it was with Katy, he never would’ve given her the time of day. But she’d had the same combination of thirst for life while being passionless as Nathan did. It seemed as if they were the perfect match, at least until Katy proved that he still had a spark or two left in him.
He had just found a reasonably private booth to sit down at when the bell rang, signaling someone had entered the coffee shop. Katy stepped in hesitantly and glanced around. He waved a hand to get her attention and he could see the look of trepidation that crossed her face as she saw him.
“You were right. It is the only coffee shop,” he said as she approached.
Katy set her bag down on the booth before she slid in. “There’s a big chain in town too, but they’re on the other side by some of the big-box stores. The city council has worked very hard to preserve the historical integrity of the downtown.”
Her words were clinical facts. She was trying to separate herself from the situation. Nathan decided not to push her right away. “I’m not sure what you like, but I grabbed you a caramel latte. Decaf, though.”
Katy tentatively reached out to take the cup from him. “Thanks. You probably could’ve gotten me caffeine. I think I drink so much coffee that I’m immune to it.”
“You should try energy drinks. Those will wake you right up.”
“Aren’t those supposed to be really bad for you?”
Nathan shrugged. “Better than me falling asleep in the middle of an international meeting.”
“You got me there. I don’t conduct a lot of international meetings,” she said with a half grin as she started to pop the lid off the latte. Once it was off, she used the straw like a spoon to bring the whipped cream to her mouth.
Don’t stare at her mouth, he warned himself. “What are you doing?”
“If I don’t get the whipped cream right away, it’s going to melt into the drink and then I won’t taste it. So it’s all extra calories for nothing. This way I can enjoy it.” She took another scoop.
Nathan let out a laugh and finally gave in to the urge to stare. This was what he came here for. For Katy.
“So have you managed to keep yourself entertained?” she asked.
He ripped his gaze from her lips that had just wrapped around the straw again, but he belatedly realized she wasn’t calling him out on his staring. This was small talk. Nathan could spot small talk from a mile away, and as happy as he was that she wasn’t outright avoiding him anymore, he didn’t come here for small talk. “Katy, I want you.”
She stopped mid bite of whipped cream and slowly removed the straw from her mouth. “Nathan, I—”
“If you’re going to give me some excuse for why we can’t be together, it had better be a damn good one. And it had better not be that you’re dating that dipshit from earlier.”
“I’m not dating Levi,” she said with a half-smile.
“Thank God.” If they were together, he’d have to second-guess everything he knew about human nature.
“But we still can’t be together.”
“Why not?”
“We had our chance, Nathan. It was a small, brief chance and you chose which path you wanted. That path wasn’t me.”
“That path was always you. Do you want to know the only reason I stayed away in the first place?”
Katy shrugged nonchalantly, but her eyes were glued to her latte as she refused to look up.
“I stayed away because Victoria came to my work and said if I ever came around you again, she’d make sure we both paid.”
That got her attention as her eyes snapped back to his. “Victoria did what?”
“She warned me away from you. Intensely. And I never would’ve listened to her if I didn’t believe her. You were way too smart for me. You had too much going for you, and I was just going to fuck that up.”
“So are you saying I’m not too smart for you anymore?”
“I’m saying that I’m smart enough to not let a good thing go. I’m no longer going to sit back and wonder why everything in my life is fucked up when I know that I’ve brought it on myself.”
“No, no. Let’s go back. When exactly did Victoria talk to you?”
“It was the day after our...what we wanted to be our first date.”
“What? She didn’t have the right! She was barely dating Dean back then. For her to confront you and order you to stay away... That was supposed to be my job.”
“Is that what you wanted? For me to stay away?” It was years ago, but he could remember the pain in her voice so clearly. It had been something he’d been trying to forget ever since.
It was so stupid. He’d done so many shitty thin
gs in his lifetime, but that one betrayal of a sixteen-year-old girl was too much for his conscience. “You stayed away from me because you thought you were betraying your best friend. Now when’s the last time you’ve talked to Becky?”
Katy tightened her lips. “The summer after graduation.”
“And I’m not seeing anyone now. So what do you say we turn this coffee into an honest-to-goodness date?”
Katy tilted her head and considered him. “I don’t get it, Nathan. You can have anything. Anyone. What we had was so small and so long ago. Why drudge up the past now?”
“Because it’s not the past for me. I’ve never forgotten. What happened between us...I feel it every day. Every day, I think of the what-if.”
Katy shook her head. “Nathan, I’m sorry. I don’t know what sort of pedestal you have me on, but I’m not the answer to your problems. I’m not some perfect girl you let get away. We just missed our chance.”
“We didn’t miss a damn thing. I let us go and now I’m going to get us back. Maybe I have you on a pedestal. Maybe you’re not perfect. But sitting here, right now, looking at you, I’m having a hard time seeing anything but perfection. Let me find out if you’re a horrible person on my own. You still haven’t given me one damn good reason to go back to the city.”
Katy’s chest rose and fell as she took a few deep breaths. Then she was pushing herself up and out of the booth and half ran to the door.
“Shit.” Nathan followed her, leaving their mostly full drinks on the table. The night air had a bite to it as the wind had picked up. He looked each direction but didn’t see Katy. He went around the corner the coffee shop was on and saw her immediately. She was leaning against the brick building, her head falling back as she stared up at the sky. “You didn’t think I would let you go, did you?”
She didn’t look at him. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
He slowly approached because he didn’t want to spook her again. Once he was within reach, he brushed his fingers against hers, and when he locked their hands together, she didn’t protest. Then he took things further as he fully stood in front of her, looking down at her beautiful face, wishing he could take all that stress away. If she gave him a chance, he knew he could make whatever was bothering her better.
Her head came forward and he met it, pressing his forehead against hers, their lips so fucking close he could barely keep himself from kissing her again. “I’m still waiting for that reason. One reason why you don’t want to try. And I swear to God, if you say you’re too busy, I’m going to punch my fist right through this wall.”
But instead of telling him another half-assed excuse, she lifted her hand up and set it in the middle of his chest. He wondered whether she could feel his heart beating like crazy through the woven fabric of his sweater. Hopefully she knew it was all for her. That was just what she did to him.
Then the shrill sound of a cell phone ringing cut through the night. Nathan winced as he cursed himself for not acting sooner. For not beating the damn phone.
Katy was the first to move away. Because she was right between him and the wall, there was nowhere to actually go, but she leaned her head away from him as she pulled her hand out of his to dig in her purse for the phone. “I should probably—”
Nathan stepped back and ran a hand over his eyes and through his hair.
“Hey, Joel. What’s— Are you serious?” Her tone rapidly changed from casual to frantic. “When did this happen? How did this happen? Right, fine. I’m coming there right now.”
Nathan stared at her as she put her phone back with shaking hands, as though he could somehow determine what happened. “Katy, what do you need?”
“I, um, I need to get back to the inn. And I need to call the sheriff.”
“Wait, you need the cops?”
“My car... I parked in the back lot.” She started to head for the back of the coffee shop, leaving Nathan no choice but to follow.
“I’ll drive you,” he said as he caught up.
“No. This is inn business. I can’t bring a date. I need to fix this before Burkhart finds out and when he finds out... Oh my God...”
“Katy.” He moved to stand in front of her, trying to get a straight answer. “What happened?”
She took a few deep breaths before she finally looked up to meet his eyes. “It’s the Carriage House, where we have our weddings. Someone broke in, and now everything set up for tomorrow’s wedding is ruined. It means I’m ruined.”
Katy didn’t let Nathan drive. She'd gone right for the driver's side while he'd gone to the front seat without objection. For one, she wasn’t going to be one of those people who fell apart at a crisis. She wasn’t going to hyperventilate. She was going to fix the problem.
The other reason she drove herself was that the inn was only a few miles away. She could keep it together for a few miles. However, when she was halfway there and she realized that Nathan had probably driven to town and had left his car back there, she had second thoughts about how together she really was.
She didn’t say anything to Nathan during the ride. Instead, she focused on clearing her mind. There was no use freaking out. Maybe Joel had been overreacting when he’d called her in a panic. Maybe it was just an easy fix and she could laugh it off tomorrow.
But as she got closer and closer to the inn, she couldn’t stop the churning in her stomach. She took the back road behind the inn so she could pull up right to the Carriage House. Even though they called it a carriage house, it had never been used for carriages of any sort. It had been built solely for parties to be thrown on site. The building was a long rectangle. The two walls were completely lined with large ornate windows that stretched up nine feet tall at the top of the curved arch shaping each window.
The lights were off so she couldn’t see through the windows. Joel must’ve turned off the lights so the guests couldn’t see in. That wasn’t a good sign.
Katy dug in her purse for the keys, but she didn’t need them. The door to the Carriage House was splintered and broken, as though it had been slammed inward. She slowly pushed the door open and stepped just over the threshold, feeling along the wall until she found the light switches. She flicked them up one by one, and it didn’t take long for the damage to become evident.
“Oh my God,” she breathed as she held a hand over her mouth.
“Shit.” Nathan moved to stand beside her.
Katy stumbled forward as she turned in a circle to take in the full extent of the damage. “This is horrible.” Someone had taken red spray paint and gone crazy. Every surface in the room seemed to have red on it: the rental chairs, the linens that had been brought in, the non-floral parts of the centerpieces that had been set up already.
Her mind started to tick off what she could do. Who she could call.
Nathan seemed to be doing the same thing. “This shouldn’t be too bad,” he said, causing her to glare at him. “I mean, get a few people to work overnight. A lot of the paint can just be washed off.”
“Washed off?” Katy pointed to the chairs. “It’s not coming out of the fabric. I don’t own these chairs, Nathan. They’re not just going to wash out. And call who? This is a small business. Overnight, we just have the bare minimum staff. No one can just leave their position to work hard labor all night. And it’s Friday night. Who do you think is going to be home right now?”
He held up two hands. “Hey. We’ll figure this out, okay? All we have to do is—”
“I don’t have millions of dollars in my savings account to figure this out! Those chairs? I’m going to have to explain to the owner why we have to pay for them. The linens? I’m going to have to explain to the owner why we have to pay for them. This needs to be fixed by tomorrow and I have no idea how it’s going to happen. Just...go back to your room, Nathan. I don’t have time to deal with whatever this is.”
He started to say more, but just then Sheriff Dan poked his head in through the door. “Oh, boy. I thought Joel was exaggerating.” The
sheriff was well-suited to the small town. He was smart enough to get the job done and could regulate his personality to deal with any of the people who crossed his path. But when he was with people he was comfortable with, including her, he reverted back to his normal self. He spoke with a slow, almost Southern, twang. As far as she knew, he’d lived in Maine his entire life. But on his days off, he liked to sit on his fishing boat in one of the local coves and not move for eight hours straight. So he probably wasn’t excited to come out to Seal Cove Inn at this time of night on a Friday.
“Hey, Dan,” she called as she grabbed Nathan’s arm and started to lead him toward the door. If he’d wanted to, she was sure he could’ve stayed in place, but he probably didn’t want to make a scene in front of the sheriff. “I’ll talk to you later, Nathan,” she said politely as she not-so-politely pushed him out the door.
Dan raised a brow. “Who was that?”
“He’s a guest who wandered in when he saw the lights on,” she lied.
“Think he was here to look at his handiwork?” asked Dan.
Great. Her lie was already biting her in the ass. “No. He didn’t just wander in. We were having coffee together when I got the call about this. We came back together.”
Dan nodded but didn’t say anything at first. The small-town sheriff had seen his fair share of gossip; Katy was willing to bet that most people would be more than willing to fill that awkward silence with all sorts of sordid details, but she wasn’t that easy. Finally, he took out a little notebook and pen and glanced around. “So do you have any idea who would do this?”
“No idea. As far as I know, everyone loves us here. We don’t have any enemies.”
“No employees who have been let go?”
“I haven’t fired anyone in two years, and even then, it was mutual. It was one of our teen employees and they moved out of Bath right around then. I can’t see them holding a grudge for two years and then coming back to do this.”
Dan nodded as he wrote down a few scribbles. “This is all set up for a wedding, right?”
Relentless (Fractured Farrells: A Damaged Billionaire Series Book 5) Page 4
