As the words tumble out of me in a jumbled mess, he closes the door behind him without turning around, locking the two of us in the tiny space.
“I realize you probably want to call the police, but I’ll lose my job and I swear we touched nothing.”
His eyes fall to the fake container of shaving cream and an eyebrow perks up.
“That? I swear, I nicked it with my elbow,” I rattle off, recreating the move as I talk. “And it jumped off the counter and opened. We did not think you were a spy.”
Graham shakes his head dangerously slow, but his lip twitches as if he’s fighting a smile. “I’m not a spy. I’m here helping a friend on a short-term contract.”
“Oh, well whatever this is, you don’t need to explain. It’s your own personal business and if anyone asks, I was never here. Obviously, there’s not a water leak.” The sooner I can get out of the room the better, him knowing me on a first name basis isn’t such a great thing anymore.
“Is this all you saw?” he asks moving a step closer in my direction as I take one to the left trying to evade. What? There’s more?
My head nods like I’ve had too many expressos. “I promise we didn’t even look at any of it.”
Graham appears less than convinced and I berate myself for finding his chiseled jaw hot even as we’re standing off against one another in his room and my future depends on his decision. His long thumb caresses the edge of his jaw, rubbing at the light stubble and making me wish it was my skin he was touching. Why am I such a hussy?
Get a grip on yourself, Tara. My word, woman, you could go to jail.
“I’ll tell you what,” he says leaning against the closed door, still blocking my escape from the room. “I won’t call the police on one condition.”
Hope soars. “Anything,” I agree before giving it a thought. Jail is jail. I’ve never been and I don’t plan to start now.
“You’ll go to dinner with me.”
I pause, not breathing. Everything in the room comes to a slow crawl.
“What?” I’m forced to ask because this man doesn’t make sense. Why would he want to go to dinner with me in exchange for not calling the police? I’ve clearly done something in his room. What if I compromised his spy business?
He nods, waiting for me to process the information. “I figure with your breaking and entering and now me blackmailing you, we’ll consider it one bad deed fixes another.”
There has to be more to what he’s asking. No one would let me out of the situation without wanting more than dinner. He could ask me for a month’s free hotel room stay or meals in the restaurant, but asking me to dinner? That doesn’t sound a good deal in his favor at all. I’d be the one winning.
“Okay,” I agree with his blackmail demands even though I’m not one hundred percent sure that dinner with me is the only thing I’ll have to pay. Sooner or later my agreement will end. Hot or not, I’m not that kind of girl.
He smiles, making my trepidation grow. It’s much too big for a man who caught me snooping through his room. Graham leans over, never taking his eyes off me, and picks up the picture, USB drive, and fake can of shaving cream from the floor slipping the smaller of the items in his pocket, twisting the bottom back on the can, and replacing it on the dresser. “And you forget you ever saw this and your friend, too?”
“I promise. I’ll make sure she tells no one.” If she hasn’t already told half the housekeeping staff already. “When are we doing this dinner?” Fingers crossed he says next year. Although it’s almost Christmas so next year isn’t as far away as I’d like.
“Now.”
My face pales over the time constraint, hoping this deadline isn’t part of his blackmail requirements. “There’s no way I can go now. I’m still on shift. I can’t leave the bed-and-breakfast.”
If I left to go with him now, I would lose my job because I left my posts. I can’t leave the facility unless there’s a fire or I hand the keys over to Dwight at the start of the night shift.
“Fine. We’ll eat in the dining room and talk. You can do that. Right?”
“Sure,” my agreement this time takes longer. At least he can’t kill me if we stay inside where people are. Right? It’s usually fairly empty in there when we’re not serving food, but there’s staff around somewhere. I’m sure I could scream loud enough to gather attention before he finished the deed, depending on how you learn to kill someone in secret agent school.
As expected, the dining room is empty when we walk into it, the blue wallpaper and carpets match the blue china. I lead Graham to a table in the middle of the room so we can be seen from every vantage point possible. No sulking in dark corners for us.
He looks around, realizing what I’ve done. “Smart choice.”
“Thank you.” His easy compliment fills me with a little more hope. You don’t compliment someone you’re about to kill. Would you? And also, I like the praise. It’s wrong on so many levels, but he’s just so cute. It’s a girl thing. When a cute guy compliments you, it’s thrilling. That and I need therapy.
The whole situation is so epically wrong.
The two of us stare at one another, neither speaking until I’m sure I’m going to go insane. How does someone sit at a table so quiet? If he is a secret government agent, that must be his superpower.
“So, tell me about yourself.”
Graham chuckles. “Contrary to popular rumors, I am not a spy. I’m here on a short-term assignment helping Ridge Jefferson,” he mentions the town’s leading security specialists. They have signs all over saying they’ll install your home security system, but most town residents are sure they’re a group of secret government operatives, so admitting this isn’t helping his defense of not a secret government like job.
“We’re not spies,” he deadpans. But a spy would most never admit to being one.
“Why only a short-term contract?” Pelican Bay is a small town and I’ve only been here about six months but the number of beefy hot guys wandering the streets is in a much higher proportion than what I would expect in a town this size. They are either putting something in the water or Pelican Bay Security has a lot of employees. Why would Graham only be here for a short time?
“Personal choice. I usually work more on the West Coast with a friend, but he recently met a woman and that part of the country gets too small with their lovey-dovey antics, so I branched out for a few months.”
“Do you have something against couples?” This does not bode well for me and the spy.
“No, not per se, but I don’t want to see people all kissy face either.”
I laugh, taken off guard by his comment. “I’m sorry,” I say trying to gain control of myself. “Is just that you’re so… manly, the words kissy face should never come from your mouth.”
Graham smiles shaking his head. “It’s the truth.”
“Where do you live when you’re on the West Coast?” I can’t help myself. Being nosy is part of my personality. A good manager should learn about the guest as part of running a hotel. Especially in a small town. All my teachers in high school told me I should become a journalist because I pester until I get the whole story. Ask enough questions and people eventually cave and tell you what you want to know. Right now, I want to know everything about the GQ spy.
“Hotels, bed-and-breakfast, whatever’s available.”
“You don’t have a place?” He seems like a guy who would live in a rustic old cabin in the woods somewhere. His mile-long driveway booby-trapped against intruders and James Bond type evil villains.
“No, I haven’t had one place I wanted to stay long enough.”
“Well, how did you become not a spy?”
His eyes close to a sliver, but he answers. “Just so you understand, I expect reciprocal questions for every one you’ve asked me and I am keeping count.”
Oh no.
“I joined the military right out of high school, and it has a way of giving men particular skill sets which comes in handy for differen
t professions post service.”
I run over his words in my head. “You said a lot of words without saying much at all.”
Graham smirks. “I know. Now tell me about you. Where did you come from? Why are you here? How long do you plan on staying?”
He reminds me of a child trying to get in all of his questions at one time, and I wait until he finishes before I answer them altogether as quick as possible.
“My family is from Southern California. They’re one of those families always up in your business. Like stop by for a pop-in once a day annoying. I needed space after college so I came to Pelican Bay to manage this place. I have no idea how long I’m staying. A while.” Once it’s August and I go back to eating dinner rolls again, those alone will be enough of a perk to keep me here.
“You needed room from your family, so you moved across the country?”
He caught on to that, did he? “I turned down a position in England, so when you think about it, I could be a lot further away.”
“Why aren’t you sure how long you’re staying?”
A question I can’t answer in one quick summary. “It’s cold here and my dream is to own my own bed-and-breakfast rather than manage one for someone else, but I haven’t figured out all the steps in between here and there yet.” But I plan to. People might think I’m running behind everyone else, having finished my bachelor’s degree at twenty-six. But it took me a while to decide what I wanted to do in life and with the cross-country move, I’m just getting started.
“Why do you have a picture of the bed-and-breakfast in the fake shaving cream can,” I whisper across the tables so no one else hears. Better to get the question out of the way now because there was no way we were going to have this no-food meal without me asking that question. It’s the important one.
“Who knows what story you and your friend concocted back in my room, but I promise the real truth isn’t as good. I would never stay somewhere I didn’t think safe, so I had to do recon before agreeing to make this my short-term residence.”
“And then you kept the picture in a can on your dresser?” Something about his story doesn’t quite add up to what it should. “And what could be unsafe about the Pelican Bay bed-and-breakfast?” There’s like four thousand people and the town logo is a pelican. This is not New York City here.
I’ve heard a few stories of things that have happened in this town, but they all seem way too crazy to be true. Car bombings don’t happen except in the movies. And there’s no way a dog rescued someone from a kidnapping.
Graham lifts his damn eyebrow. “Do you ever know your coworkers, Tara?”
The way he words his question and the particular way his eyes slide across my body as if he’s trying to look deeper inside my brain to read my answer is unnerving.
I’m about to make an excuse — pull a move from Cammie by fake hearing someone call my name — but the little white alarm at the main desk buzzes and I jump in my chair.
Too much time has passed sitting across the table from the blue-eyed GQ model fake secret agent. Now it’s time to prepare for the dinner rush.
“Is that Cinderella’s midnight timer?” Graham asks, his expression back to one of playfulness.
4
“This is crazy.” After Graham followed me out of the dining room after our blackmail date, he practically demanded I give him a real date.
And so, I agreed.
I didn’t even make a fight or pretend like I wasn’t interested. I still haven’t worked out if he is mysteriously hot or scary hot, and I think deep down inside I’m curious enough to find out. Will he wine and dine me or lock me in a kidnapper van with shag carpeting and no windows?
Cammie sighs as she tugs on my hair, her fingers flying through the strands as she braids it in some kind of elaborate design. She promised my medium brown color would make me look like a feisty Katniss when she finished. “It’s romantic.”
“How exactly is getting caught snooping in his room and then blackmailed into a date romantic?”
“It sounds like the opening to a romance novel. You and the hero have an unlikely first meeting, but over time the two of you fall in love and eventually he sweeps you off your feet and takes you home where he is the prince of a lavish country. Then you’re the ruler with a house full of jewels and servants.”
She tells the story so effortlessly I have to wonder how many times she’s dreamed this scenario. “Something tells me the man with the fake shaving cream bottle in his hotel room probably isn’t a prince in a faraway country.”
“That’s okay,” Cammie ties off my hair and flops it over my shoulder. “You can let him be your king, anyway.”
“Wow, that was ridiculously corny.” She might not have the Prince Charming thing down, but she has an eye for hair. The mirror in the employee lounge is screwed to the wall, so I’m forced to distort my body into weird angles trying to see the back of it, but the delicate complicated fishtail braid is stunning.
It’s like something I always asked my mother to give me when I was a child, but we didn’t have YouTube tutorials back then and she always fumbled through, making up her own versions as she went along.
“Wow, Cammie, this looks gorgeous. Thank you.”
“Fit for a princess and future queen.”
I roll my eyes, turning away from the mirror. That’s her version of happiness not mine. “I’m pretty sure you didn’t read the blurb for this book. It’s a women’s fiction, one where the heroine works hard her entire twenties and saves up enough money to buy her own hotel by thirty-five. Then the place ends up haunted.”
Cammie laughs. “But, Tara, you can’t have a fairy tale unless you have a hero.”
“Okay then he’ll show up at her bed-and-breakfast asking for a room one dark and rainy night with his hot Scottish accent and sweep her off her thirty-six-year-old feet.”
“And then you’ll be on the way back to Scotland where you find out he’s the clan leader who traveled forward in time to find you just to make you a queen.”
I nod enthusiastically, ready with my next part of the plot. “And then the book turns into a horror because the Scottish clans were all the slaughtered in the eighteenth century.”
Cammie shakes her head pushing me on the shoulder lightly. “You are such the skeptic.”
“And you read too many romance novels.” Besides, I wouldn’t want to be a future queen, anyway. Nobody notices the constant barrage of reporters on Kate Middleton. The poor girl can’t look sideways without somebody saying she’s pregnant with twins! It has to do horrible things for a woman’s self-esteem. She probably hasn’t had a carb since the nineties.
“Well, would you settle for a man who shows up at a bed-and-breakfast you don’t own when you’re twenty-six? He doesn’t have a Scottish accent, but he does have a fake can of shaving cream.”
Cammie turns me around to face the door at the employee break room as Graham walks by. I laugh, one of those stupid cheerleaders laughs that fell out of favor senior year of high school. It’s a nervous habit and one that quite frankly should not be held against me.
“Are you ready?” Graham asks, holding his hand out.
I breathe a sigh of relief taking in his outfit. For a moment I had visions he’d show up in a tux or some other princely attire and then I would look horribly out of place in my light pink knit sweater. When he told me to dress warmly, I didn’t think any of my knee-length dresses with a pair of tights fit the description in Pelican Bay in December.
The lights from the blue-and-white Christmas trees set up in the lobby twinkle as I wave goodbye to Cammie and follow the not-a-spy, or a prince, or a time-traveling Scottish clan leader, and hopefully not a serial killer out of the bed-and-breakfast.
Cold air slaps my face as soon as the door closes. A healthy gust whips down Main Street, bringing flakes of snow and a few moldy leaves with it. Even the air smells dead as the inside of my nose freezes with each breath. I huddle deeper into my coat as we walk down the step
s of the front porch.
“Where are you going?” a deep voice asks, drawing my attention from the snow-covered ground. Dwight blocks our path. Graham tries to walk right on by him but I stop to give the night manager an answer. “I have someplace I need to go.” Not an uncommon occurrence around here. “I left all the paperwork on the counter and everything set up for you. Cammie is in charge.”
“Wonderful,” Dwight scoffs. “Lucky the place didn’t burn down. And where are you going?”
“Have we met?” Graham leans back, holding his hand out for Dwight to shake, which he does with a little hesitation.
“The night manager and future owner of the bed-and-breakfast. It’s my responsibility to make sure the employees take good care of the place.” Dwight puffs out his chest but still comes across as an angry teenager.
Graham beams, his perfect white teeth exposed in a big a smile. Even though it’s wide and bright, it looks fake and a little scary. One point for a serial killer. “Then you must be extremely happy with Tara’s performance. The place is amazing.”
Dwight grunts, nodding his head in my direction. “Just make sure you’re here in the morning ready to take over.”
I resist the urge to salute him as a commanding officer and make a sarcastic comment. “See you then.”
I wait a second and watch his retreating back as he walks up the steps of the bed-and-breakfast.
“He’s a fun fellow, huh?” Graham asks when the two of us pick up our pace again.
“He’s something.” What, I haven’t quite figured out yet.
Dwight did have a good point. Graham never answered me about where we are going. We walked out the front doors and turned onto the main sidewalk in front of the bed-and-breakfast, away from the parking lot for guests. It can’t be too far because without a car we’ll freeze.
I shove my hands deep into my pockets doing everything possible to keep my fingertips warm. “It’s not far is it?”
Sweetest Obsessions - Anthology Page 290
