by Peggy Jaeger
One look at him and all my girly parts started to tingle, like when your foot is asleep and it’s beginning to get some circulation back and waking up. Little shots of nerve-ending sizzles and pops signaling something was going on. And the something going on was pure attraction, a sensation I hadn’t experienced in a lifetime.
I shrugged out of my coat and slung it over my forearm. “Did you get all checked in?”
He told me he had and then followed me down the marble stairs to the first basement. “I met your sister. She’s young to be running an inn all by herself.”
“Don’t let her age fool you. Maureen is an amazing businesswoman. She’s been written up in a half-dozen tourist magazines over the past two years with stellar, glowing reviews of the inn, her food, and her customer service.”
“I read a few of them online when I decided to take this job.”
At the bottom of the stairs, I reached out to open the door.
Frayne stretched an arm around me and beat me to it, wrapping his hand around mine on the knob. “Sorry. Old habits. My parents drilled in me from the womb that I should always open a door for a lady.” The tops of his cheeks went a little pink with his words. “And I hear how archaic I sound,” he said, “so let me apologize again.”
I had to smile as he pulled open the door and let me go through first.
The temperature in the basement was kept at a constant sixty-eight degrees, the subbasement under it two degrees warmer since it was placed farther underground.
I explained all this as we walked into a small anteroom strewn with a few computers on worktables. “You’ll need to log into the system with a protected password of your choosing,” I told him as I tossed my belongings on one of the extra tables.
He sat at a workspace and booted up the computer.
“If you follow the prompts,” I said, “they’ll guide you through the process.”
A few minutes later he was navigating through the system like a pro.
“I think you’ve done this before.”
“The Dickinson Museum uses the same archival system. What are these numbers after each entry?” He pointed to the screen.
“The first one indicates which level the document is housed on,” I said as I leaned in closer. “One indicates this floor; two, the subbasement. The next numbers tell you the row the artifact is placed in and the shelf number where it’s housed.” When I turned, our heads were even, our faces a mere whisper from one another.
Frayne’s gaze dropped down to my mouth and lingered for a moment before slowly sweeping back up to my eyes. Awareness bolted through my body, my spine shuddering from neck to thighs with the impact.
The urge to lean in and chase away the sadness in his eyes was surprising.
“For instance—” Good Lord. I sounded like I was in dire need of an inhaler.
I cleared my throat and pointed to the screen. “Those numbers, 2-62-9-10, means the document is in the subbasement, row sixty-two, shelf nine, space ten. If you want to see the document, you’ll find it there.”
“Do I have access to get my own research materials, or do I need to ask the docent to bring them to me?”
I shook my head and stepped away from the table—and him. Where my voice had sounded like I was having an asthma attack, his was composed and smooth, the pitch and tone clear and concise.
“You can get any item from this level by yourself or ask the docent to retrieve it for you. You’ll need to log anything out on the computer if you remove it from the storage room and then log it back in again when you return it to its place. Items in the subbasement, the private files, you need me to be here for. Oh, and I should tell you, although you must already know, you can’t remove anything from the museum. Every item has to remain here.”
“I figured that. Is there a copy machine available if I need it?”
I pointed to the far side of the room.
He stood and slipped his hands into his pockets. “I’d like to get started now.”
I glanced down at my watch. “Beverly Carlisle will be here at five. She’s got docent duty until seven. The museum closes then, so whatever work you do will need to be finished by then so she can lock up.”
“I should be. You said if I want to see anything in the private collection you need to be present, correct?”
“Yes. Do you want to start there?”
With his head cocked to one side again, he said, “Can I click around the files and see what’s listed first and then tell you? You don’t need to leave right now, do you?
I didn’t need to, no, but I wanted to. A nice glass of Merlot and some leftover meatloaf waited for me at home. “I’ve got some work with me I could do until Bev arrives.”
He sat back down and got to it. While he searched, I pulled my laptop from my briefcase to start on the wedding vows I needed to write for the weekend.
In addition to my work as a lawyer, in my justice of the peace role, I officiated at marriages, many of which my wedding-planner sister, Colleen, was in charge of. The three of us, Maureen, Colleen, and I were partners in a boutique wedding business. Colleen planned them, I officiated when called upon, and the receptions were often held at Inn Heaven.
Frayne moved up and down from his computer station several times and disappeared into the storage room. At one point, I found him standing and holding a county record book. From the weathered look of the leather cover, it was one of the older volumes, filled with handwritten accounts of area births and deaths.
He’d slipped on a pair of thick black reading glasses, making him look like a middle-aged Clark Kent in need of a haircut. They perched halfway down his nose, enabling him to look over the tops to see the distance clearly. He had the record book open and was engrossed in a page as he walked. I’d put his age at late thirties, but now up close and in person, he was a few years older, maybe early to mid-forties.
Footsteps clanged down the stairs.
“Oh, you’re here. Good.” Beverly Carlisle came through the connecting door. “Dabney said he’d thought he’d seen you two head down here.” She introduced herself to Frayne. “Anything I can help with, please don’t hesitate to ask. It’s what I’m here for.”
“Thank you.” Frayne turned his attention to me. As soon as I’d heard Bev approaching, I’d started packing up. While I slipped back into my coat, he asked, “You’re leaving?”
I nodded.
“What time can I get in here in the morning?”
“The museum opens at ten.”
“When will you be available in case I need something from the private collection?”
I blew out a breath and ran through my mental schedule. “Tomorrow is tough. I’ve got to take care of a family matter first thing, and then my afternoon is booked solid.”
“What about lunch? Do you take a break then?”
“Not a long one. I can stop by and see if you need anything, though.”
He reached down and pulled his cell phone from his briefcase. “Why don’t you give me your number, and I’ll text if I need you to be here. It’ll save you a trip if I don’t.”
“Good idea.” I tapped my number into his contact list. “If there’s nothing else, I really do need to get going.”
“Sure, sure. I don’t want to keep you from your family. Thanks for everything.”
“Good night. ’Night, Bev.”
“Give your darling George a hug from me,” she said, with a wink. “I miss seeing him on his walks.”
I laughed. “Will do.” With one last head bob for Frayne, I headed for home.
Chapter 3
It was full on dark by the time I pulled up to my house. Winters in Heaven could be brutal, with snow accumulations of up to forty inches a common occurrence and daily temperatures hovering just above zero most of the time. Luckily, my garage was attached to the main house, affording me the luxury of staying warm and not having to trudge through the cold. I unlocked the door leading into my huge kitchen and turned on the lights. I’d
been leaving the thermostat a little higher than usual to keep the house warm during the day even though I wasn’t home. The reason I did this came shuffling out from his usual spot under the kitchen table the moment the lights came up.
I squatted and patted my knees. “Hey, baby. Come to Mama.”
George, my fifteen-year-old black Labrador lumbered toward me, his cloudy, rheumy eyes squinting. The stiff, disjointed way he moved told me he’d spent the better part of the day curled up in his dog bed. I waited for him to reach me, silently cursing as his hips swayed rigidly side to side. His back was deeply bowed, his neck hanging from his shoulders like a rag doll’s—weak and limp.
I reached out a hand, which he head bumped, then he lifted his nose to nuzzle my fingers. When I slipped my arms around his neck, pulling him closer for a cuddle, George leaned his entire body against mine.
The vet had confirmed my baby was almost blind, certainly deaf, and was living on borrowed time. Arthritis and severe age-related joint atrophy had invaded his once healthy, strong body, leaving him muscle depleted and in continuous pain. Since every movement for him was torture, he spent the better part of his days still. When he did need to move, to eat or to go out, his poor joints screamed against the effort.
The humane thing, the vet advised me, would be to put my closest friend out of his misery. The selfish thing was to keep him alive, making him drag through every day, suffering.
Love, I’d found, made one selfish in ways too deep to fathom.
I sat on the tiled floor, stretched my legs out in front of me, and pulled him onto my lap. In his day, George had weighed in at an impressive hundred and twenty pounds, most of it solid muscle and brawn. When he’d been weighed at the vet’s last week, the scale topped at sixty-three.
I wrapped my arms around his once-powerful neck and gently squeezed. This dog had gotten me through some of the worst days I’d ever experienced. If George hadn’t been such an integral, important part of my life, I don’t know how I would have survived the horrible days after my husband’s and my younger sister’s deaths. Knowing I had George to come home to every night, to care for, walk, and feed, gave me a purpose to move through each day. Unconditional love met me every night when I walked through the door and greeted me every morning when I slid from my bed.
So, yes, I was guilty of being selfish. When I’d needed George, he’d been there for me, imparting comfort, love, and loyalty, without ever asking anything in return. Now it was my turn to give him the same.
A thick, throaty moan blew past his mouth followed by a coarse rumble deep in his chest. I’ve heard it said after many years together pets start resembling their owners. I looked nothing like George—or he me—but after all these years we did have our own private communication system.
“I’m hungry, too,” I told him and kissed his muzzle. “Aunt Maureen sent home some boiled chicken and rice for you. Give me a few minutes to heat it up.”
I lifted his head from my lap and with it cupped between my hands, rubbed his whiskers back from his face. I swear he smiled at me.
He stood when I did, his legs a little shaky and wobbly, but once he was up, he was sure footed—on all four of them—again.
In a stovetop pot, I reheated the food my sister had sent home for George when I’d stopped by the inn yesterday afternoon. Maureen had a heart bigger than anyone I knew. She understood completely why I wanted George with me for as long as possible and had researched foods that were helpful with nutrition and pain control for aging, infirm dogs. Believe it or not, chicken soup came up more than any other item. Knowing my dog would probably turn his nose up at soup, she’d instead revised her old and favored chicken and dumpling recipe to a chicken and rice one instead. As George gingerly lapped at the stew-like concoction filled with carrots, peas, leeks, and fresh spinach, in addition to brown rice and an entire boiled organic chicken, I sent up a prayer of thanks for having such a wonderful, caring, and nurturing baby sister.
Thinking of Maureen and her inn sparked McLachlan Frayne’s face into my head.
The man was intriguing for a variety of reasons from the thatch of thick, unruly hair my fingers had itched a few times to run through to the haunted look in his eyes I was sure had a tragic story behind them. I knew nothing about him other than he’d written an intense, detailed, and well-received biography of my favorite poet and now wanted to do the same for my town’s founder and first leader.
I pulled Maureen’s meatloaf from the fridge and placed the container in the microwave. She’d given me detailed instructions for heating the dinner in the oven, but I was too hungry and in too much of a rush to eat to waste time waiting for the oven to preheat and then rewarm the food. If my baby sister knew I was nuking her delicious meal, I’d get no further food presents for at least a month.
“What your Aunty Mo doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” I told George, “and will ensure we keep getting leftovers.”
I settled down at my kitchen table with a tall glass of Merlot, Maureen’s meatloaf, and George under the table, his body settled on my feet.
Another fun-filled, exciting evening in the Mulvaney household.
Three hours later, a cycle of laundry was completed, the kitchen was cleaned and cleared, and I’d finished writing my vows for the weekend ceremony. I settled George in his bed for the night since he wasn’t able to climb the stairs to my second-floor bedroom any longer and put a bowl of water next to it. Then, I crawled into bed with my e-reader.
My mind wouldn’t concentrate on the new mystery I’d uploaded, though. A thousand thoughts swirled and competed for attention ranging from what Nanny Fee’s mood would be in the morning, to my mental notes about my upcoming court cases, and then to a pair of pale eyes filled with secrets and sadness.
Finally, I gave up on the book, shut the bedside light, and snuggled down under the covers.
****
Even though I was five minutes early the next morning, Nanny was already waiting for me in the lobby of the nursing home. She was bundled up in a puffy coat skirting her ankles, a scarf I’d knitted for her last Christmas, a woolen hat and mittens courtesy of Colleen, and winter boots her tiny, dainty feet were lost in. I found her leaning across the check-in desk, blatantly flirting with the twenty-something rent-a-guard stationed there.
I knew she was flirting because the poor boy’s face was six different shades of beetroot red.
My ninety-three-year-old grandmother feels her age, social status with the community, and inherent charm (her description) give her the right to say aloud anything and everything that pops into her head whether it be considered appropriate or not. She doesn’t possess a self-censor or filter button, or if she does, I’d never known her to use it once in my thirty-nine years.
Her lyrical brogue rang through the lobby when she spotted me. “Ah, Number One. You’re right on time, lass. Good girl.”
“Actually, I’m five minutes early.”
“As long as you’re not late like the last time, you’re good.”
I wasn’t about to debate the two minutes I’d been held up by a school bus.
“Well, Jerald, dear boy”—she addressed the security guard—“it’s off to the doctor I am. With any luck, I’ll be back long before lunch is served.”
“Good luck, Mrs. Scaloppini.”
Was it my imagination or did he look relieved she was leaving?
Nanny gave him a mittened thumbs-up.
“How long have you been waiting?” I asked as I held her arm and guided her along the walkway.
“Long enough to advise Jerald on the perfect Valentine gift for his girlfriend.”
“Did he ask for your advice?”
Nanny’s eyes narrowed. She hated being called out on her nosiness. “Not in so many words, Number One. He told me he was plannin’ on askin’ the girl to marry him on Valentine’s Day. I had to set him straight about why ’twasn’t the best day of the year to do so.”
I knew I shouldn’t ask, but lifelong habits are
hard to break. “Why not? It’s literally the one day of the year devoted entirely to love. Asking someone to marry you on Valentine’s day seems like a good idea to me. It’s so romantic.”
“Well, since you’ve only been asked once in your life and if I remember correctly—and I always do—’twas New Year’s Eve when you were, you’d be wrong in your thinking.”
I’d left my car running to keep the interior warmed for Nanny. As soon as I was settled behind the steering wheel, she started speaking again.
“He didn’t think it through when he came up with his engagement scheme.”
Scheme?
“He never considered the lass might say no. Or even if she said yes, an’ then somethin’ happened to make them break up, Valentine’s Day would be ruined for the both of them forever more.”
“That’s a little dramatic, even for you, Nanny.”
She turned in her seat to face me. Well, eyeball me really, because only her eyes and the top bridge of her nose were visible. The rest was lost in the numerous folds of the scarf. “Dramatic am I, now?”
Uh-oh. Whenever that tone was released on me or my sisters—clipped and biting, precise and sharp—we knew it was time to be quiet.
Or run.
Since I was driving, escape wasn’t possible. I paid a great deal of attention to navigating the car onto the county road and merging.
Once I was in the appropriate lane, I flicked Nanny a side glance to find she was still laser focused on me and said, “Why don’t you explain why you feel the way you do so I can understand your point.”
Nanny’s sigh was loud and theatrical as it blew through the weave of her scarf. “A great deal like your father, you are,” she said, shaking her head.
No argument from me, there.
After a moment she said, “Think about it, Number One. Would ya be wantin’ to remember a broken engagement or being told no to a marriage proposal on the one day of the year—to quote you—dedicated to love? Wouldn’t it be better to pick an innocuous day, say August third, to make such a monumental request, instead? Then, when the date rolled ’round each year, ya wouldn’t be thinkin’ and rememberin’ a day of love as a day of pain instead.”
