By contrast, the shirt was too small, and she was braless. Which was the only reason she finally slipped her arms into the bright green windbreaker.
Unable to resist, she looked at herself in the full-length mirror and tried to see the humor in the situation, but at the moment, she didn’t feel like laughing. She looked like a scarecrow that had been left out one winter too many. Loads of her family lived here in Elk Crossing and she had friends here. She had her pride, and her mother’s pride in her to think of. They simply could not see her like this.
The only plan she had was to hit Wal-Mart the second it opened, grab something and scoot into the change room. If she could do that, her vanity would be partly spared.
She opened her door and slipped into the hallway, casting one last look at her clothes, neatly separated into wash and dry-clean piles. Naturally, she’d brought her best clothes with her for the interminable wedding breakfasts, lunches, rehearsal dinners, stagette night and whatever other events her inventive relatives could come up with. When someone in her family got married, they liked to drag the thing out at least a week.
She made her way to the restaurant and found about a dozen refugees from her part of the hotel standing around drinking coffee, looking like a convention of hobos. As she entered, the hairy guy who’d diagnosed the bedbug problem glanced up and took in her outfit with interest. Something about his regard made her conscious of her underwearless state, which made her snappish.
Especially as he’d somehow snagged an oversize navy sweater and jeans. Apart from the fact that his jeans didn’t go much closer to his ankles than her satin pants, he could pass for normally dressed. She poured herself coffee from an urn and turned to him. “How did you score clothes that actually fit?”
He snorted and lifted the huge sweater. Apart from noticing the same gorgeous abs she’d sighted earlier, she saw a widely gaping fly and, since he was also going commando, she got the impression that his chest wasn’t the only place he was impressively hairy.
“I do up this zipper, I’ll be singing soprano for the rest of my life,” he informed her, and then dropped the sweater back in place. “Did you get bitten?”
“No. You?”
He shook his head. “Far as I can tell, it’s only the two women with bites.”
“Are they going to be okay?”
He nodded. “They took both of them to the clinic to be looked at, one of them had some kind of reaction, but they should be fine.”
She shuddered.
A waitress came out of the kitchen bearing a tray of Danish and fruit.
As she helped herself to a Danish, Emily asked the waitress, “What time does the Wal-Mart open?”
“Seven.”
“It’s going to be a long hour,” she muttered.
The traveling salesman type, wearing faded blue track pants that said Dancer across the butt, a red soccer jersey with a bleach stain on the chest and his bare feet stuck into sneakers, suddenly bellowed, while indicating his new outfit, “Would you buy insurance from this man?”
His comment broke the ice and as they all laughed, the bedbug refugees began trading stories and lamenting the bad clothing, bonding over the disaster.
By five to seven, Emily was in the shopping center parking lot, as close as she could get to the Wal-Mart entrance. The minute the doors were unlocked, she put her head down and ran for the entrance. Once inside, she headed straight for the women’s clothing section.
She found a simple black skirt and flipped through a rack of silky tank tops, almost weeping when she thought of the suitcase of her good clothes that was currently at the local dry cleaner’s mercy.
Naturally, the underwear was in a different area of the store, but she found the intimate apparel at last and was flipping through the bras when a voice said, “Can I help you with anything?”
“No, thanks,” she said, not raising her head, hoping desperately the woman with the vaguely familiar voice would move on.
She felt the warm air stirring around her, almost as though the woman’s breath was surrounding her as she stood rooted to the spot.
“Emily Saunders, is that you?”
Oh, crap. Her worst nightmare had just been realized. She raised her head and thought that in a list of the top ten people she would have wanted to avoid at this moment, Ramona Hilcock would have made the top three.
“Ramona!” she cried with false delight.
“I almost didn’t recognize you,” the woman said, looking her up and down with barely disguised revulsion.
Ramona had been a friend of her younger cousin Leanne’s in high school. Emily remembered her as a gossip and president of the sewing club. She still sewed, and Emily was willing to bet, from the way the woman eyed her outfit as though storing every detail, still gossiped.
“You here for Leanne’s wedding?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Oh, good. I’m getting off shift early today, to attend the lunch. Of course, I only work here part-time so I can pay for the boys’ music and golf lessons. And it gets me out of the house.” Her gaze strayed to Emily’s outfit once more. “How about you? I think your mom said you have your own business? Things going okay?”
“Yes. Fine.”
She could tell Ramona about the bedbugs, which would explain the lost and found bin wardrobe, but then news would spread faster than an Internet rumor and she’d be staying on some distant relative’s couch by tonight. So she kept her mouth shut.
“You’re a masseuse, Leanne said.” Ramona uttered the word masseuse in a tone that suggested it was synonymous with rub and tug.
“Massage therapist,” Emily corrected. “I run a wellness clinic.” Before Ramona could say another word, she said, “Is there a place I can try these on?”
“Sure. Follow me.”
Thankfully, she retreated into the change room where she found everything fit. She paid and was released from Ramona’s clutches—until lunch.
Her clothes might not be up to her usual fashion standard, but they were bright and clean and, apart from the Wal-Mart, the local mall had an accessories store and a midrange shoe store. Necessity might be the mother of invention, but it wasn’t the mother of fashion. Still, she’d done her best, dressing up the black skirt with a bright scarf belt and hoping some cheap and cheerful costume jewelry would add enough pizzazz to the turquoise tank top.
And it was always nice to stock up on new bras and underwear at a good price, she reminded herself as she headed off to eat lunch and construct paper roses.
JONAH BETTS SLAMMED THE PUCK into the net, watching that baby fly home as if it had a homing device. The punch of puck against black net, the lighting up of the goal light were right up there with sex for truly sublime experiences.
He threw his gloved hand in the air, and his buddies skated over to congratulate him, their blades sawing the ice.
The Old-Timers Hockey League playoff week was one of the highlights of his year. He’d always had more than his share of energy and nothing challenged him more than hockey. He liked the scrape of steel blades on ice, the speed, the male camaraderie, the teamwork.
When the guys bashed him on the helmet, threw themselves at him, he laughed. So it was an exhibition game. Who cared? Tomorrow they’d be playing for real. And, as team captain of the defending champions, he planned to kick some ass.
After a pizza dinner and a couple of beers to celebrate the victory of the Portland Paters over the Georgetown Geezers he hauled his gym bag to his truck, tossed it into the back and headed back to his hotel. Bedbug Lodge. He didn’t think he’d been bitten and wondered idly how the two women who’d woken him so spectacularly at five this morning were doing now.
Since his gym bag had been in the truck, he hadn’t had to give it up to the fumigators. But he couldn’t leave it there tonight, not since he’d used the contents. He needed to take out his skate liners and let them dry, keep his equipment warm. He’d made a quick stop on the way to the rink to pick up some sweats, a new pair o
f jeans, a couple of T-shirts and socks and underwear, so he was all set. Good as new. He hoisted his bag over his shoulder, grabbed his stick and hiked inside.
“How’s it going?” he said to one of the two harried front desk clerks.
He got a pathetically grateful smile. “It’s been a busy day. Thank you for your patience, sir.” The reply suggested to him that everybody hadn’t been as easy to deal with.
“So long as you’ve got a bed for me, I’m easy. Jonah Betts.”
“Even our computers have been overloaded today. But I managed to get you a room.” She glanced up. “Number 318. It’s the last one, I’m afraid. We don’t normally rent it out, and I’ve been instructed to comp the room.” She sighed, and he suspected she’d done a lot of that in the past twelve hours or so. “We are very sorry.”
“Not your fault.” He took his key, picked up his bag. Then turned back. “Why don’t you rent it out?”
“There’s a small leak in the ceiling, sir. But otherwise the room is very comfortable. Two beds, ensuite.”
“So long as there’s one bed and a TV, I’m good.”
She laughed, in relief, he thought. “Oh, yes. TV. Movies. Everything.”
He nodded acceptance. “Have a good one.”
He hoped there was a fridge in room 318 to keep his beer cold. He should have asked. He followed the clerk’s directions to the third floor and strolled along the corridor to the last door.
He opened it with his key card and walked inside.
A woman screamed.
His day had started this way. He really didn’t need the bookend.
He dropped his bag with a thunk and regarded the woman who was doing the screaming. Well, more like a cry of alarm. She’d stopped pretty fast and was glaring at him instead.
It was the woman from this morning. The cute one from across the hall. She wore pajamas so new they still had the creases from the package. Blue and manly looking, which only accentuated her woman’s body.
He noticed a mane of sleek brown, big dark eyes and a mouth made to whisper dirty secrets.
“Hi,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“I think you’ve got the wrong room.”
He looked down at his key card. Of course, it had no number, but the little folder did. “Weird that the key worked. I’m in room 318.” He checked the number on the door. Yep, 318.
She shook her head. “Not possible. I’m in 318.”
He glanced around the room. It was nice enough. Cozy, he supposed was the word, with two queen-size beds and not a lot of space for anything else. There was a small desk with a lamp, a dormer window looking over the woods behind the lodge, a partially open door into a bathroom and, incongruously, where the fourth wall ought to have been, a curtain made of white tarpaulin.
He walked across the room and pulled back the curtain far enough to see the buckets. There were half a dozen twenty-gallon plastic tubs, the kind that store pickles and condiments for industrial kitchens. The wooden beams above showed extensive water damage. Not quite the small leak he’d been told to expect.
“The girl who checked me in said they don’t normally rent this room because of the leaky roof,” he said, thinking that a new roof for this old lodge was going to cost a fortune.
“That’s what the young man who checked me in said.” She turned back to what she’d been doing when he’d come in, cutting the tags off an assortment of new clothes. “You’d better go back to the front desk and get another room.”
But his mama hadn’t raised any fools. If you didn’t count his older brother Steven. “They told me this was the last room.”
“Well, I was here first.”
“I’ll call down and get them to send someone up.”
She glared at him. She could patent that glare, it was so good. “What is the point? This room is taken.”
He’d never been in the army, but he knew that once you retreated from disputed turf it was tough to fight your way back. So he gave her his best smile, and it was usually pretty effective with women. “I’m sure it’s a simple clerical error.” He picked up the room phone before she could argue any more and asked for the manager to come up.
Fortunately, they didn’t have long to wait. The woman continued cutting tags off clothes, using a small, curved pair of nail scissors that clicked with annoyance.
They stayed like that, she snipping tags and he standing by the phone until a soft knock was heard. When he answered, a corporate-looking type in his fifties stood there with a bland, practiced, everything-will-be-fine smile. “How can we help you, sir?”
The manager’s smile wilted like week-old lettuce when the woman stepped up and yanked the door wide. “You seem to have booked both of us into the same room. I think we have a problem.”
And she was right. The manager, two front desk clerks and the computer all confirmed what he’d known from the moment that woman screamed. He and the lady in blue pajamas were both booked into the very last room in the hotel.
“But that’s impossible,” Emily argued. Emily Saunders, that was her name; he’d found out as they went through the bookings. “I can’t share a room with a strange man.”
“I’m not that strange once you get to know me,” he assured her.
She sent him a glance that suggested she didn’t find this setup remotely funny.
“I am very sorry, Ms. Saunders. There are simply no more rooms.”
“But I booked a single room. In advance.”
“Me, too,” he interjected.
“Naturally, your money will be refunded in full,” he promised them smoothly, which didn’t exactly solve the problem.
“What about the lobby?” she cried. “Isn’t there a cot, or a sofa or something he could sleep on?”
“All the cots are in use. And, as you’ll recall, we only have wing chairs in the lobby.”
“A sleeping bag on the floor, then.”
Jonah was a pretty easygoing guy, but this was going too far. He had his team to think of. “I have an important day tomorrow,” he told her. “I need my sleep. You bed down on the lobby floor.”
She stalked right up to him, nose to his collarbone. Their lack of equality in the height department seemed to aggravate her even more. “I have an important day tomorrow, too.”
“I’m competing in a hockey tournament.”
“I’m a bridesmaid in a wedding.”
“My condolences.”
The way her eyes suddenly widened, he got the odd feeling she agreed with his assessment of being stuck in a wedding party. “But this is ridiculous. There must be somewhere else you could stay.”
He’d booked the hotel for a reason. He was too old to bunk in with a bunch of hockey players trading war stories and shooting the bull. Most of the others were too old for it, too, but it didn’t stop them. He thought with wives and kids at home, they needed the male bonding time a lot more than he did. At this point, he’d rather sleep on the floor of the Elk Crossing Lodge’s lobby than on the floor of a cabin with six guys, at least half of whom were bound to snore. But he’d much rather sleep in a nice comfortable bed right here in this room.
“There isn’t anybody else I can stay with. What about you? Can’t you stay with somebody else from the wedding?”
She blinked at him once, slowly, and then shook her head sharply. “Impossible.”
He shrugged. “It’s not ideal, but we’ll just have to share for a night or two. There are two beds. I don’t snore.”
She crossed her hands under her breasts and he tried not to notice. “It’s not your snoring that worries me.”
“I don’t have evil designs on your body, either,” he said, trying to reassure her of his integrity. She was a good-looking woman and if they’d both stumbled into this hotel room in passion it would be one thing, but that wasn’t the case.
If he could get her to see him as a platonic roommate, they’d be fine. “Look—” he indicated the hockey stick leaning against the wall “—I’m pla
ying two, three games a day. I’ll only be in the room to sleep, and too tired even to think about women.”
She raised one eyebrow as though finding that hard to believe, as indeed it was. He could probably be dead and still think about women. So he pulled his trump card. “You can trust me. I’m a cop.”
She seemed less than impressed by this display of trustworthiness. “What are you going to do? Arrest the bedbugs?”
“Thought I might shoot them.” For a second her mouth softened and she almost smiled, then caught herself.
She turned back to the doorway.
“Are you telling me there is absolutely no way you can force this man to leave my room?” she snapped at the three uniforms hovering nervously near the door.
The hotel manager took a deep breath. “The computer was malfunctioning and you were both given the same room. Unless one of you is willing to leave…” The manager glanced from one to the other, but they both held their ground. “I’m so sorry.”
“Can you at least tell me when I’ll have my clothes back?”
“As soon as possible. We’ve put a rush on everything.”
She turned back to him, her hair swinging in a silky curtain. “I carry mace. I’ll be sleeping with it under my pillow.”
“Hey, it’s got to be better to share a room with me than bedbugs.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
3
HAVING HER MINIMAL NEW wardrobe organized, Emily got out the nail polish. Tomorrow, the paper rose making continued, then, most of the out-of-town guests would have arrived so there was a big potluck dinner.
Even though Emily hadn’t grown up here, she’d spent a lot of time in Elk Crossing as a kid, because so much of her family still lived in the area. It was going to be quite the reunion.
It had been a weird day already, now she was supposed to share a room with a big, smelly hockey player?
She tried to ignore him as he schlepped his big, stupid hockey bag over to his side of the room. At least he was taking the bed beside the curtain, leaving her with the one closest to the door and the bathroom.
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