by Gina Wilkins
“Are you interested in history, Dan?” Bonnie asked, looking up from her preparations.
“Yes. I took a lot of history classes in college. They’ve come in handy in some of my articles.”
“Have you ever considered writing fiction?”
He hesitated a moment before answering. Usually he brushed off similar questions and quickly changed the subject. The story that had been germinating in his imagination, growing increasingly demanding of his attention during the past months, was something he’d kept to himself, with only very few exceptions. He wasn’t sure why he was so reluctant to admit he had started a novel. Because it seemed like such a private goal, perhaps? Out of concern that he would never actually finish the book, leaving others skeptical about his level of commitment? Or—he shifted uncomfortably in his seat—was a fear of failure, of the type of doubt and disapproval he’d sensed so often from his parents, always at the back of his mind when it came to his own dreams?
“As a matter of fact, yes,” he said, almost surprising himself. He wasn’t sure whether it was because Bonnie had a way of drawing others into conversation, or because Kinley was so obviously paying close attention, but he felt the need to answer candidly with them, rather than prevaricating. “I have a book idea I’ve been playing with for the past few months.”
He saw Kinley shoot a look at him from the chopping board, her eyebrows lifted with interest. She wasn’t contributing much to the conversation, but he knew she wasn’t missing a word of it as she chopped tomatoes and piled them into the salad.
“Oh, that’s exciting.” Delicious aromas wafted from the large platter Bonnie carried to the already set table. “Where did you go to college?”
“Bama,” he said, using the popular nickname for the University of Alabama. “Roll, Tide.”
Logan made a sound similar to his dog’s rumble-growl.
Dan chuckled and glanced at the other man, remembering where Kinley had said she and her siblings had grown up. “Let me guess, University of Tennessee?”
“Go, Vols,” Logan said in confirmation.
“No sports rivalry at my dinner table,” Bonnie ordered, lighting two white tapers in milk-glass holders. Though she’d tried to sound stern, her smile gave her away. “Do you still live in Alabama, Dan? The magazine is headquartered in Hoover, right?”
“It is. I keep a small apartment in Hoover, not that I’m there much.”
“Is that where you grew up?”
“Yeah, we lived in the suburban Birmingham area.” And he had always chafed to get away from there, dreaming of someday living in L.A. or New York or even Europe—anywhere but Alabama. Anywhere but under his parents’ thumbs. His plans hadn’t worked out that way, but he had compromised by taking the travel job offered by his cousin, an ambitious and determined woman almost twenty years his senior who’d founded her own modestly successful magazine at a time when magazines were generally expected to fail.
“Do you still have family in Birm—”
Bonnie’s polite question was cut off by a cry of pain from Kinley.
Reacting swiftly, Dan reached Kinley’s side at the same time as her siblings. She had dropped the knife and grabbed a kitchen towel, which she’d wrapped around her left hand. Most of the tomato was already in the salad bowl, but one small section sat partially chopped on the cutting board, surrounded by several bright red drops of blood.
“How bad is it?” Logan demanded, reaching for his sister’s hand.
Holding her towel-bundled hand out of his reach, Kinley looked chagrined when she met Dan’s eyes. “It’s fine. I just need to stick a bandage on it. I didn’t get any blood in the salad.”
“We can see that,” he assured her. “Why don’t you let your brother look at your cut?”
Bonnie dashed across the room. “I’ll bring the first-aid kit,” she called back over her shoulder.
Noticing Kinley looked a little pale, Dan motioned toward the table. “Sit down. I’ll get you a glass of water.”
“You might need stitches, Kinley,” Logan ordered. “Let me check your hand.”
Setting a glass of water on the table beside her, Dan could tell she hated having this attention focused on her because of a mistake on her part. Once again, self-confessed perfectionist Kinley was not in full charge of the situation, and she didn’t like that. While he was sure her determination was an asset when it came to work, both in getting the inn off the ground and in her supplemental real-estate career, this was a woman who needed to learn to relax occasionally.
“It doesn’t need stitches,” Kinley insisted. “It’s only a nick.”
“It’s a little more than a nick,” Logan corrected, carefully examining the still-bleeding cut on her left index finger. “But I think you’re right that you can skip the stitches. You can probably get by with a bandage for a few days.”
“Here’s the kit.” Bonnie set a white plastic box marked with a red cross on the table. “There’s ointment in the box along with adhesive bandages, or gauze and tape if that would be better.”
“It’ll be fine,” Kinley muttered. “I’m sorry I caused such a fuss.”
Dan quietly cleaned up the kitchen counter while Logan tended to his sister. He scrubbed a couple drops of blood from the counter and floor, then handed the plastic cutting board to Bonnie, who rinsed it with hot water then placed it in the dishwasher. Kinley had reacted quickly by wrapping her hand with the towel, so she hadn’t made much of a mess.
“Thanks, everyone,” Kinley said when Logan closed the first-aid box. “Now if I haven’t ruined everyone’s appetite, could we just eat and forget about this?”
Dan grinned as he took the seat Bonnie indicated for him. “Very little spoils my appetite. Especially when the food looks and smells as good as this.”
Bonnie smiled. “It’s just a pot roast and vegetables I cooked in the slow cooker. I made peach cobbler for dessert.”
“Bonnie bakes the yeast rolls herself, too,” Kinley pointed out, visibly relieved to change the subject from her accident. “She makes a lot of them at a time and stores them in the freezer.”
“It all looks delicious. Even the salad,” he added with a wink at Kinley that earned him an automatic nose wrinkle.
“Have you enjoyed your first day with us, Dan?” Bonnie asked as they passed the food family-style.
“Very much. Kinley answered a lot of questions for me this morning, and I was able to see some of the area this afternoon. Oh, and we had an excellent lunch at the cafe, where I met Mary, who seemed very friendly.”
Bonnie laughed. “Mary’s a hoot. She always has something funny to say.”
Maybe he just wanted to see Kinley’s reaction when he said lightly to her siblings, “Mary told me about the ghost of Bride Mountain. That was the first I’d heard of the legend.”
Right on cue, that little frown appeared between Kinley’s brows. Logan made a sound somewhere between a snort and a scoff, making his opinion of the legend clear enough. Only Bonnie smiled in response to the mention.
“It is a rather obscure story,” she admitted. “Not a lot of people have heard of it. Maybe we wouldn’t have, either, if Uncle Leo and Aunt Helen hadn’t seen her and told us about her.”
Dan cocked his head at her and spoke without judgment, merely open curiosity. “So you really believe your uncle saw a ghost bride on the night he proposed to his future wife?”
Frowning at her groaning siblings, Bonnie nodded firmly. “I do. I can’t explain exactly what they saw, of course, and I’m not saying definitively that I believe in ghosts, but they both spotted something that looked to them like a smiling woman in white. It was a profound experience for both of them, and they were happily married until they were parted by Aunt Helen’s death.”
“And what about you two?” he asked, including both Kinley and Logan in the question. “No doubt at all on your parts that they were mistaken in what they thought they saw?”
Bonnie answered for them. “Logan thinks it’s
all malarkey, and Kinley has no whimsy.”
Dan was the only one who laughed.
“Where could I learn more about the bride?” he asked. “Do you know of any other couples still living who claim to have seen her?”
Kinley set down her fork abruptly with a slight clatter. “You said you weren’t going to write about the bride,” she accused him. “You said you’re doing a story about wedding venues, not old ghost stories.”
“I said I would mention it only within the context of the article I’ve been employed to write,” he replied steadily. “Not a ghost story, but a profile of the historic inn as a Southern wedding venue with its own legends and history attached. But I am curious, naturally, and I’m not ruling out that it could be a topic of a future article I might write.”
They frowned at each other for a moment in a silent battle of wills that Bonnie quickly interrupted. “I do know someone you can talk to,” she said to Dan, giving her sister a quick, seemingly uncharacteristically defiant glance. “Her name is Mamie Sawyer and she says she and her late husband saw the ghost. Several people we know claim to have seen her, but Mamie is the only one I would consider really credible. Neither Logan nor Kinley would say a word against her integrity, even if they don’t believe in the ghost bride.”
Logan chewed on a bite of roast beef, his silence an implicit agreement.
Kinley cleared her throat. “Okay, Mamie would be considered a reliable witness in any court case,” she conceded. “That doesn’t mean she wasn’t mistaken in what she thought she saw forty some-odd years ago.”
“I’m sure she’d be happy to visit with you, if you’d like me to set it up, Dan. She’s very sociable.”
Dan nodded in response to Bonnie’s offer, even though he could almost feel the waves of disapproval coming from Kinley. “I’d like that. Thanks.”
“I’ll let you know after I talk to her. Now, who wants peach cobbler?”
* * *
Kinley was rather relieved to make it through dinner without spilling anything on herself, stabbing herself or anyone else with a fork or having her chair collapse beneath her. Considering the way her day had gone thus far, none of the above would have particularly surprised her.
Fortunately, she completed the meal without incident, though she had to excuse herself twice to take business phone calls. The home buyers had made a final offer, which the sellers eventually asked to consider overnight.
Logan hadn’t said much during dinner, but he’d been polite enough to their guest to satisfy both her and Bonnie. Their brother wasn’t usually rude, he was simply reserved. When the conversation during dessert centered around future plans for the grounds, including the construction of the Meditation Garden and the possibility of purchasing a few adjoining acres for honeymoon cottages, he contributed his share to the subject, outlining plans, discussing options, wryly shooting down what he considered over-the-top suggestions from his enthusiastic and ambitious sisters. Saying he had some computer work to do that evening, he excused himself and left almost immediately after finishing his cobbler.
Dan insisted on helping with cleanup after the meal. He wouldn’t allow Kinley to do much more than carry a couple of dishes, telling her he wanted to make sure she kept her bandage dry at least until there was no more risk of bleeding. She was still embarrassed that she’d been so careless. True enough, she didn’t have her sister’s culinary talents, but she could usually chop a tomato for a salad, for Pete’s sake! She should have paid more attention to her task than to Dan’s conversation with her sister.
“I’m going to do some prep work for tomorrow’s breakfast, then join the guests in the parlor for an hour or so,” Bonnie said when the kitchen was spotless again. “I’m sure there will be some games if the two of you would like to participate.”
“It sounds like fun,” Dan said, “and I do want to visit with the other guests this evening. But first I think I’ll take a walk in the garden.”
Surreptitiously flexing her sore hand, Kinley considered whether she should stay for a while longer that evening and discreetly ensure Dan saw the social hour at its best. But because she was confident Bonnie would take care of that, she said, instead, “I’m going to pass on the games tonight. I have a little more work to do this evening. I’ll see you tomorrow, Bon. Thanks for dinner, it was great. Sorry I almost ruined the salad.”
Laughing, Bonnie gave her a quick hug. “You didn’t ruin the salad, just a quarter of a tomato. We got by without it. Take care of that cut.”
“I will. Good night.”
She and Dan walked outside together. The air had cooled a little as the sun set. She pulled her three-quarter-sleeve cardigan a bit closer around her.
“Are you too cold?” Dan asked, noting the gesture.
She shook her head. “No. It’s nice out, isn’t it?”
“Very. Will you walk with me for a little while?”
Thinking of the list of things she had to do before bedtime, she hesitated only a moment before shrugging lightly. “I can take a few more minutes.”
He looked pleased when he motioned toward the garden path.
Despite the nip in the air, it really was a pleasant evening for a walk. The moon was almost full, glowing softly in the darkening sky. Stars blinked into sight around it. Having spent a fair amount of time in bigger cities, Kinley appreciated being able to see stars here on the mountain. The lighting in the gardens was muted, illuminating the pathways but not so bright as to be intrusive. She and her siblings had put a lot of discussion into the balance between safety and aesthetics, and she hoped they’d reached a satisfactory compromise.
She walked often in the gardens at night, enjoying the sounds of frogs and insects and the occasional hoot of an owl from the woods, underscored by the steady, musical splashing of the central fountain. Bonnie had wanted to install wind chimes, but Logan had vehemently vetoed that request. He hated wind chimes. It was not at all uncommon to cross paths with several guests of the inn enjoying a nighttime stroll, but no one else seemed to be out at the moment, giving a sense of privacy to her walk with Dan. Light spilled from the windows of the inn, both upstairs and down, but few sounds escaped into the quiet night.
Dan kept his voice low, perhaps to avoid disturbing the peaceful ambiance. “Do you ever host nighttime weddings here?”
“Oh, yes, especially in the fall when it starts getting darker earlier but it’s still warm enough for comfort. We string fairy lights and use torches and lanterns for illumination. A couple of my favorite weddings here have been after dark.”
“Whose idea was it to focus on weddings? The inn was more of a vacation retreat when your great-aunt and great-uncle ran it, wasn’t it?”
“It was, though even then quite a few weddings were held here. It was actually my idea to coordinate with other local businesses and specialize in turnkey wedding services,” she admitted. “I met with several local florists and caterers and wedding planners and arranged for a couple of magistrates to be on tap if the couples didn’t have a specific officiate in mind. Together we came up with the various packages we offer. So far, it’s worked out quite well.”
“It’s got to be a challenge coordinating with all those subcontractors.”
She nodded. “As I’ve mentioned, I enjoy a challenge. And I’m very careful about who I do business with.”
He murmured something that sounded like, “No surprise.” Maybe he was getting to know her a bit. And maybe, she thought with a slight wince, that would make him less likely to keep flirting with her.
He wouldn’t be the first man turned away by what they perceived as her overly controlling nature. She acknowledged that she liked things to be just so, that she thought it her duty to make sure her clients got the best service she could provide for them, that she didn’t like being seen as less than competent and efficient—but she hoped secretly that she wasn’t quite as pushy and bossy as Eva Sossaman. Like the discussions about safety and beauty with the lighting, she was aware that
balance made all the difference.
“Do you have plans for tomorrow?” she asked politely.
“Just hanging out. Checking out the scenery. Taking a few pictures. I could pretty much complete the article tonight, except for the photos from the wedding Saturday.”
Was that just the faintest hint of ennui she heard in his voice? Was he somewhat bored by the prospect of writing another fluffy travel profile?
“How long have you been writing for the magazine?” she asked. She knew he was the one who was supposed to be asking the questions, but she was growing increasingly curious about him.
“A little over two years now. Writing for the magazine has given me a chance to travel all over the South, in addition to pursuing some independent projects. I’ve enjoyed it.”
She was pretty sure she heard more than a hint of past tense in that phrasing. Perhaps he was considering a career change soon. Perhaps that book he’d mentioned to Bonnie. “You said you attended the University of Alabama. Did you major in history?”
“No, journalism. History was my minor.”
“Have you been writing since?”
“For the most part. I did a four-year hitch in the marines, worked as a foreign correspondent for a couple years in the Middle East, spent some time in London and New York, then let my cousin talk me into working for her. Her magazine was in a state of transition and she thought I could help out. It’s worked out pretty well for both of us so far.”
Except for the latter part, everything he’d just told her was a complete surprise to her. “You were a marine?”
He nodded, speaking self-deprecatingly. “I spent a lot of time sitting at a desk writing communiques and press releases from Riyadh. I saw more action as an AP correspondent than I did in the service.”
Kinley’s mental image of Dan had undergone so many changes that day that she felt a little dizzy now. Expecting a bow-tied older fellow, she’d been startled enough to see a good-looking man in his early thirties with longish hair and a killer smile. Then she’d decided he was a bit of a slacker, a compulsive flirt who seemed to have his job because of his family connections. Now there was this new information that didn’t align with any of her preconceptions. Just who was he, anyway?
