The Cottages on Silver Beach

by RaeAnne Thayne

  And why on earth would the woman ask her powerful billionaire husband to help them?

  Before agreeing to the showing at the woman’s gallery, she had done her research and knew that Harry Lange was one of the wealthiest men in Colorado. He owned a ski resort, for crying out loud, and many other real-estate holdings around the state.

  “Harry, this is Megan Hamilton.”

  The man strode to her and held a large hand out. “It’s a pleasure.” His voice was brisk and firm, a man not used to having to explain himself.

  While Megan adored Mary Ella already, she decided to reserve judgment about whether she liked the woman’s husband.

  “Thank you in advance, then,” she said. “And thank you very much for dinner last night. I understand you covered our meal.”

  He waved off her thanks. “It was my pleasure. I’m only disappointed you didn’t bring Elliot Bailey with you today. There’s a man I’m sure is fascinating at dinner parties.”

  She didn’t know quite how to answer that. Elliot was a fascinating conversationalist, when he chose. He could also be remote and self-isolating.

  “I’m sorry he won’t be joining us, either,” she lied. “I’m afraid he had other business to attend to this morning.”

  Clearing her brother’s name. At least she could cling to that hope.

  Harry shrugged. “It’s all right. In truth, I wanted to come to the gallery this morning specifically to meet you.”

  “Harry.” The gallery owner’s tone was disapproving.

  Apparently her brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders this morning. She could blame Elliot for that, too.

  “To meet...me? Why?”

  Mary Ella glared at her husband. “I told him not to bother you. I told him specifically. We have work to do, and if he intends to distract you, he should stay home. Those were my exact words. Obviously, my husband usually does whatever he wants to do.”

  Despite the gallery owner’s glare, Megan could see deep affection between the two of them. It made her chest feel achy and tight.

  Harry Lange looked suitably chastened, though she couldn’t help thinking it was a show, mostly to please his wife.

  “You’re right, my dear. I apologize.” He inclined his head to Megan. “Your work is lovely. As usual, my wife’s taste is impeccable.”

  “I... Thank you.” She had no idea what else to say. What a curious man. He obviously had an agenda, some reason for coming to meet her, but she didn’t have the first idea what it might be.

  “Where should we start?” he asked Mary Ella.

  She sniffed, appearing not at all fooled by his contrite act. “You can start by grabbing some coffee for Megan while she and I discuss our plan of attack. After that, I might let you help us hang a few pictures, if you behave yourself.”

  “Certainly, treasure of my heart. Whatever you need.” After asking Megan how she liked her coffee, he headed for the workroom of the gallery, and Mary Ella gave her an apologetic look.

  “I’m sorry. He’s mostly harmless, though he does tend to stick his nose into things that aren’t his concern. We shall just ignore him. How was your evening? You had dinner at Brazen. I hope my daughter treated you well.”

  “It was an unforgettable night,” she said, aware Mary Ella could have no idea the scope of that particular understatement.

  They chatted about the meal and about her impressions of the town until Harry came back with coffees for all of them, then went to work discussing the placement of the photographic prints for maximum impact.

  After a few hours of work, they were about halfway done hanging them all. Some of Megan’s anxiety over the coming show had begun to give way to a certain pride at what she had created.

  Mary Ella left to take a phone call in the back room from a potential buyer of a sculpture she had on display in one of the other exhibits. As soon as she was out of earshot, Harry, who had been telling her some of the history of Hope’s Crossing, quickly turned the subject.

  “I understand you own the Inn at Haven Point. Tell me about it.”

  Though his words were casual, she sensed more than simply a passing interest, judging by the sudden intensity of his expression and his tone.

  “It’s a lovely place, set on the shore of Lake Haven. We had a fire a few years ago but have completely rebuilt it and now have twenty well-appointed en suite rooms.”

  “So more of a boutique hotel than a traditional B and B inn.”

  “Semantics. It’s always been called the Inn at Haven Point and we’ve stuck with the name.”

  “I understand you have a beach?”

  “Yes. Silver Beach. Back in the Victorian era, when the lake and the abundant mineral springs were a big tourist draw, an ancestor of mine brought in several tons of sand. It’s still there. In fact, I have five rental cottages along the beach that are filled all but a few weeks out of the year.”

  She didn’t add that she currently lived in one or that the mystifying enigma who was Elliot Bailey lived in another one.

  “What is your occupancy rate for the inn itself?”

  “We’re about ninety percent. Summers are almost always full, booked out weeks in advance. Winters are busy as well, with all the skiing and snowmobiling in the area. Spring and fall used to be our slow seasons, but now that Caine Tech has an active facility nearby, we are often full during those periods, too.”

  Harry asked a few more questions about the inn overhead and her employee turnover rate.

  “I can’t imagine you find all this interesting,” she finally said.

  “It is to me.” He paused. “I don’t see any reason to pull my punches. No doubt you’ve figured this out by now. I would like to buy your inn.”

  She stared, certain she heard him wrong. “Excuse me?”

  “I guess I ought to ask you first if you’re interested in selling, should the right buyer come along.”

  The inn had been in her mother’s family for five generations. Though running it had never been her dream, she had handled the day-to-day operations since she was twenty-one, when her grandmother was first diagnosed with cancer.

  Sell it. She could barely process the idea.

  “I...haven’t given it any thought.”

  “You should. Think about it, that is. From all my research, it’s clear Haven Point has all the hallmarks of an emerging destination, especially since Caine Tech has located a new facility there. You’ve got abundant natural recreation with the lake and the mountains—and now a vibrant tech company for a neighbor. All those things bode well for those of us in the hospitality industry, wouldn’t you say?”

  Megan couldn’t seem to gather the tangled threads of her brain together enough to answer him. Somehow she managed to nod. Or at least she thought she did, what with her face frozen and all.

  “It’s a hot location, and by happy coincidence, I’m looking for a new challenge,” he said quickly, then turned away with an air of feigned innocence, just as Mary Ella walked back into the room.

  The other woman wasn’t fooled. She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “You did it, though I expressly told you not to. You told her you want to buy her inn.”

  “We’re only having a conversation,” Harry said, looking unrepentant. “Haven Point would be an excellent fit for Lange Properties. Through extensive research, I’ve decided it would make more sense for me to buy an existing operation, rather than try to compete with something that’s already doing it right.”

  Doing it right? Most of the time, she felt as if she was barely keeping her head above water.

  “You’ve got a nice operation there. I had a couple of representatives check it out for me on the sly and everything they’ve told me confirms what I suspected, that this would be an excellent investment for my company.”

  He had sent people to stay at her inn to spy on her operat
ions? She didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.

  “I’ve shocked you, haven’t I?”

  Somehow Megan managed a raw-sounding laugh. “You could say that. I came here expecting to hang some photographic prints, not to field an offer to buy my family’s inn.”

  “Is your heart in it? Running the hotel, I mean?”

  Was it? She didn’t know how to answer that. Before the fire, she had hired Eliza Caine to run the inn for her. That was going to be her chance to gain a little freedom, to perhaps travel a little or spend more time with Bridger and Cassie. Then when the inn burned almost to the ground, everything had changed.

  She had swallowed her resentments for years, shoving them down with hard work and effort and the energy she had thrown into rebuilding the inn that provided employment to two dozen people who needed it for their livelihood.

  “I don’t know where my heart is,” she whispered now to Harry. “It’s what I’ve done since I was eleven, when my grandmother took me in after my mother died. It’s been my career since I graduated from college.”

  He gestured to the framed prints around them. “You’ve got a gift here. I don’t think anybody would blame you for wanting to pursue that gift.”

  To hear her own thoughts put into words so clearly almost made her cry. Megan had to choke back the tears burning in her throat.

  “I don’t hate running the inn.”

  “You don’t have to hate something to nurture a dream of doing something else,” Mary Ella said softly. “Please don’t worry about this right now. Let’s focus on the show opening. Then you can sit down with my stubborn husband and have an in-depth discussion about the particulars of his offer.”

  “I’m sorry I hit you with this out of nowhere,” Harry Lange said. His bold features somehow looked much kinder than she might have expected. “Give it some thought. For the record, I think you would find my offer more than acceptable.”

  He named a number that widened her eyes and had her reaching behind her to the ladder for support. “I... Wow. You’re joking.”

  It was enough to keep her comfortable for the rest of her life, enough that Luke, a quarter owner despite his protestations that he wasn’t even her grandmother’s true grandson, wouldn’t have to scratch and claw to make his contracting business a success.

  He could build houses to his heart’s content while she finally could follow her dreams.

  “At that price, it’s a steal.”

  “Now you’ve done it,” Mary Ella said to her husband with a chiding frown. “You’ve made my artist speechless. People around here are used to you and your blunt ways, but Megan has no reason to think you’re even serious.”

  “I am completely serious. Think about it. I’ll have my people work up an official offer. Then we can go from there.”

  Dazed, she turned back to hanging photographs, wondering how she was supposed to think about anything else now.

  Sell the Inn at Haven Point! She had never even considered it. Before the smoke even cleared on that horrible day the inn burned down, she knew she had to rebuild. It was a historic landmark, a relic from the time when Lake Haven drew people from the entire western United States to partake of the healing waters in the area.

  It had historic and cultural significance. More than that, the inn played a vital role in Haven Point.

  Every town needed at least one solid, respectable hotel for its visitors. Her neighbors and friends relied heavily on the tourism industry, from restaurant owners like the Serranos to bike rental places and downtown merchants.

  Those visitors would always be an integral part of the region’s economy, even now that Caine Tech had moved in—and they would always need a place to stay.

  But there was no reason she had to be the one running the inn that provided it.

  As she worked with Mary Ella to hang her remaining photographs, a thousand possibilities crowded through her mind.

  Her thoughts were in chaos and she had to take a moment to breathe, to focus on the task at hand. She needed to talk to someone about the offer, someone wise and introspective, someone who considered all angles before making any decision.

  Elliot.

  * * *

  “SON, I DON’T KNOW what in the hell you’re talking about.”

  Elliot stood on the front porch to the address he had finally found after the most frustrating of mornings, frowning at a thin scarecrow of a woman with black-dyed hair, bright red lipstick and a trio of yapping Chihuahuas at her feet.

  He wanted to pound his head against the door in frustration—not because of the dogs and their noise but because he was coming to realize this had been a mistake from the beginning.

  The morning had been a complete waste. First he’d had a flat tire in the rental car. Then the GPS had directed him twice up the wrong canyon fire road before he found this one.

  Now he was here and the woman was looking at him like he had just landed his flying saucer on her lawn next to what looked like an entire battalion of garden gnomes.

  “You’re not Peggy Burnett?”

  “You’ve got the right woman. I’m not denying that. But I got no idea why you’d think I might know anything about any missing woman from some Podunk town in Idaho. Why would I?”

  “I have a police report with the name Peggy Burnett on it and this address. It says here that you called in a tip to the Haven Point Police Department seven years ago, claiming you had information about a missing poster you saw at a truck stop outside of Boise.”

  The woman gazed at him for a moment, then guffawed loudly, as if he had just invited her to join him in that flying saucer.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? That explains everything. Come on in.”

  Elliot stood warily on the porch. He wanted to tell the strange woman he would rather have this conversation outside in the sunshine, where she had less chance of reaching for the pump-action shotgun he could see inside the door.

  On the other hand, she seemed harmless enough, if a little odd. He had come this far. Why stop now?

  The house wasn’t quite as run-down inside as the outside would have led him to expect. It was comfortable, even homey, with a leather sofa set and a flat-screen TV that was almost as big as the one he had at home.

  “Now, you say you’re with the FBI? Let me look at that badge again.”

  He had brought along his credentials, though technically he wasn’t supposed to use them while he was under investigation or while he was on unofficial business. Flouting yet one more rule, he showed her his ID again.

  “I am an FBI agent, but as I said, I’m working a personal case unconnected to the Bureau. I only showed you my credentials so you would know I’m a legitimate investigator.”

  “I would have guessed you were legit. The squeaky-clean haircut gave it away before I ever opened the door. I figured you were either with the FBI or a Mormon. Or maybe both.”

  He flushed. “Appearances can be deceiving,” he said stiffly. “You can’t always count on everyone with a shorter haircut to be honest.”

  “True enough. My first husband looked like Johnny Cash but he couldn’t play the guitar worth shit.”

  She brayed with laughter. “Sit down, FBI. What can I do you for? You say this is about some missing woman and you’re looking for information about a tip called in from a Boise truck stop?”

  “Yes. As I was combing through police files, your name popped up on a tip report as someone who reported you may have seen the woman at the truck stop around the time she disappeared. Does any of that ring a bell?”

  Peggy picked up a cigarette from the holder next to her and puffed on it. “Not with me. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  So why had she wasted his time by bringing him inside her house? He rose, intending to leave again, but she shook her head.

&nb
sp; “Hold on. Hold on. I may not know what you’re talking about, but it so happens I have a daughter named Peggy, too, only she goes by Peg. And for the record, I never wanted to name her after me but my husband at the time—the Johnny Cash look-alike—had a grandma with that name and loved it. So here we are. Anyways, she was driving long-haul truck up until about three years ago. I seem to recall she had a route that took her that way. If anybody knows anything about some missing woman, it probably would be her.”

  For the first time since he knocked on the door, he began to feel a glimmer of optimism that this whole thing hadn’t been a colossal waste of time. “Is there any chance I could speak with her?”

  “You sure could, if she were here, but she got married four, five years ago and moved to Rock Springs, Wyoming. Name’s Peg McGeary now. She got tired of being on the road, so now she drives the big machines at the mines down there. You ever seen those things? They got tires bigger than my whole house! I have no idea how a little girl like my Peg could handle something that big. I mean, this is a girl who was afraid to ride a bike without training wheels until she was nine years old.”

  “Is that right?”

  He didn’t really care about how old the woman might have been when she learned to ride a bike, but sometimes learning these sorts of details helped him assess the character of a possible witness.

  “You ought to see her now. Tough as leather. Can I get you a beer?”

  As it was just past 10:00 a.m. and he didn’t much like beer anyway, he shook his head. “No. But thank you. Would you be able to give me your daughter’s contact information, Ms. Burnett, so I can try to reach her and follow up on this?”

  Her brow furrowed as she considered. “I don’t see why that would be a problem. Let me just give her a call first, to make sure she doesn’t mind me handing out her personal information to every good-looking FBI agent who stops by the old place.”

  She seemed to find her own words hilarious because she broke out into that deep-throated guffaw again. This one ended in a raspy cough and she sipped at a glass beside her containing a clear liquid that appeared to be water, though he couldn’t be quite sure.