Inn at Last Chance

by Hope Ramsay

  He flexed his foot, and the pain shot up his leg.

  Damn it all to hell and back again. His ankle felt like someone had branded it with a hot poker. He tried to stand up, but when he put weight on the joint, he almost collapsed again onto the icy drive.

  “You are hurt. Oh, dear,” Jenny Carpenter said. She stood there in one of those brown, puffy winter coats that looked like a cocoon. She had her brown hair piled up on top of her head in a messy bun, and her glasses made her look vaguely owl-like.

  And yet, for all she was trying to look like a plain Jane, she was anything but. Her face had a classic Greek quality to it, with a bow mouth and a long nose—not exactly the modern standard for beauty, but beautiful nevertheless. Her complexion was like fine bone china. And something almost ethereal emanated from her, like a warm fire on a cold day.

  How could a person like her starve a dog? But then the scariest monsters were the beautiful ones.

  He gestured toward his left ankle. “I think I’ve sprained it or something. I don’t think I can make it inside without some help.”

  “Oh.” An uncertain look crossed the woman’s face, as if she was still trying to decide if he was a scoundrel or something.

  “Will you come here? Please?” He was losing his patience—mostly with the hot pain radiating up his shin.

  “Oh.” She picked her way across the icy ground.

  “I’m going to have to use you like an old man uses a cane,” he said. Then he laid his hand on her tiny shoulder. It seemed impossible that a woman this small, this compact and thin, could hold him up. But she put her shoulder into it, and he draped his arm across her back. Together they limped across the ice, up the steps, and into the house.

  The house wasn’t much warmer than the outside. Off in the kitchen, a kettle was whistling briskly.

  “That’s my tea,” she said. “And I’m sorry it’s so cold in here. We don’t have any heat because the power’s off. I’ll build a fire and warm things up. For now, the only place I can put you is in the back bedroom. It’s down the—”

  “I know where it is,” he said.

  “Oh, of course you do.”

  “That was Luke’s room,” he said, and a frigid wariness slithered down his back. He didn’t want to visit Luke’s bedroom. When he’d come here yesterday looking for a room, he’d assumed he could have his old one back. His room had been upstairs with a view of the backyard and the river beyond.

  The woman paused a moment, as if she, too, was feeling the same uneasiness. “There are people in town who say that Luke haunts the house,” she said.

  “Do you believe in ghosts?” he asked.

  “No. But I imagine you do.”

  “No, actually, I don’t. I’ve never written a single story about a ghost. I think they’re trash. People can be evil enough without inventing ghosts.”

  “That’s a bright view of the world, isn’t it?”

  He said nothing in response as they made their way down the hall. Jenny Carpenter might be tiny, but she was warm and sturdy. She smelled like something floral and spring-like. She wasn’t a monster. No one could smell that good and be evil. It was impossible.

  The place felt strange. Something was off, and Gabe couldn’t put his finger on exactly what. The rooms were bare, the floor too shiny, the air cold. Bone-numbing cold.

  But when he arrived at the threshold of Luke’s room, the house seemed to change its mind about him. Warmth flooded through him. And not only because he became aware of Jenny’s body next to his. Stepping into Luke’s bedroom was like coming home.

  Luke’s iron bed was still there in the same place he’d left it. The room was empty of Luke’s things, of course. Still, there was something of Luke that haunted the place.

  He wanted the house back now more than ever. The fact that it came with these memories and a black dog made the need that much more urgent.

  The woman at his side helped him onto the bed, then she bustled off like a good innkeeper and came back with a blanket, a cup of tea, and a ziplock bag of ice for his rapidly swelling ankle.

  “I’ve called Doc Cooper. It’s going to be a while before I can take you to town for an X-ray.”

  “Why is that?”

  “You may have been crazy enough to come driving on icy roads but I’m not insane, Mr. Raintree. The sun is up, and the ice is melting. And you will survive. Would you like some ibuprofen for the pain?” She held out a bottle of pills.

  “Are you a nurse? You have nurse-like qualities.”

  She cocked her head and gave him the tiniest of unintentional smiles. She managed to look utterly adorable in a shabby-sweater, turtleneck-girl way. “Are you suggesting that I’m thinking about chopping you into little pieces like that nurse character did to the author in Misery?”

  “So you’re a fan of horror stories then?”

  “I read Misery because it was a book club selection one October a few years back. It was a hard book for me to finish. And no, I’m not a fan of horror or, quite frankly, any of your works.”

  “You belong to a book club?”

  “I do. Do you want these pills or not?”

  “No, I’m okay.”

  So she belonged to a book club. She gave all the appearances of one of those unmarried women who spent most of their free time with their noses poked in a book. People who rocked on the front porch while simultaneously visiting all kinds of places and lives. All vicariously.

  He loved readers.

  But this particular reader had possession of his house, and he wanted it back.

  “Miss Carpenter,” he said, “you can keep your pills. What I want is my house.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Raintree, but The Jonquil House is no longer yours, and it’s not for sale.”

  “I’m prepared to offer a lot of money to get it back.” He mentioned a sales price that was easily three times what The Jonquil House was worth.

  Her eyes widened. Clearly the number had shocked her. He was on his way to feeling smug when she shook her head. “I’m not selling the house. I’ve dreamed of opening a bed-and-breakfast for years and years. I’ve put all of my heart and soul into restoring this house, not to mention all of my life’s savings. I’ve come to love this place. And I’m not about to sell it back to the man who neglected it to the point that it was almost falling down.

  “No, Mr. Raintree, you cannot have it back. Not for any price.”

  Why on earth would Gabriel Raintree sell her a house and then try to buy it back at an inflated price?

  Her vivid imagination began to spin all kinds of scenarios. Was there treasure in the crawl space? Had Blackbeard’s pirates buried something out in the backyard where the jonquils grew? Was there a floorboard loose somewhere concealing a secret hidey-hole with a cache of jewels?

  She shook her head. What was she thinking? Obviously her imagination was running wild. There were no secret passages or pirate treasure or hidey-holes. Just the house. So his actions made no rational sense.

  She sliced up some of the ham that she’d intended to feed to the sewing circle. She put it on a paper plate and headed back to the front of the house, where she found the dog sitting right by the porch steps as if he were waiting on someone.

  He was one big puppy, and by the size of his paws he wasn’t fully grown yet. Once he’d put on weight, he would probably outweigh Jenny.

  Getting him into her tiny Ford Fiesta to take him to the vet was going to be a challenge. But then she’d been thinking that an innkeeper needed a bigger car for hauling groceries and whatnot. Maybe it was time to get herself something new. She’d had her Fiesta for twelve years, and it hadn’t been new when she bought it.

  “Here boy,” she said in her most soothing voice as she offered the ham to the dog. The dog stood up and lowered his head, as if he was uncertain about this relationship.

  So she spoke soothing words, and the dog inched forward. And with every inch, Jenny’s heart melted, just like the ice on the drive now that the sun had arriv
ed.

  The dog got close enough to sniff the ham and then took it gently from the paper plate. At least he had some manners.

  Jenny let herself laugh. “You are some lion, aren’t you? Pretty ferocious, huh? Maybe I’ll name you Aslan, like the lion in the C. S. Lewis story.” She scratched him behind his ears, and the dog’s eyes squinted in pleasure. “You’re what I’ve been hoping for,” she whispered as the dog sat down at her feet. “We’re going to be great friends, you and I.”

  Mr. Raintree chose that moment of bonding to make a further nuisance of himself. “Jeeennnnyyyyy!” His shout echoed all the way from the back of the house.

  The dog jumped and backed away, lowering his head again and then giving a few whiny-sounding barks.

  “Great,” Jenny muttered as she stood up. “What now?”

  She turned and headed back inside, but this time the dog followed her through the door. Before she could do anything to stop the beast, he’d bounded down the hallway and right into the back bedroom, where Mr. Raintree was hollering like a farmhand calling the pigs for dinner.

  Jenny hurried after the dog, arriving in the back room just as he rose up and put his filthy front paws on her brand-new mattress. The dog wagged his tail, and it looked like he was smiling at the idiot man occupying the only bed in the establishment.

  Despite his earlier aggression, Aslan didn’t look like he was in attack mode this time. And Mr. Raintree, who ought to have been frightened of the dog, seeing as Aslan had knocked him down, didn’t seem at all fazed by his appearance at the bedside.

  This was a positive development, wasn’t it? After all, if Mr. Raintree really wanted his house back, he could probably threaten to sue her for personal injury or something. She should feel relieved.

  But instead the scenario ticked her off. She didn’t want to lose the dog. She was always losing the ones she loved. And suddenly she was more than merely angry. She was a little bit scared that Mr. Raintree might find a way to take his house back, and he might take the dog, too.

  She swallowed back those silly fears and managed a small, insincere smile. “What do you need?” she asked.

  “Those pills you were talking about. And another cup of tea. It’s freezing in here.” Mr. Raintree’s words were more of a command than a request.

  “Right away,” she said with a bob of her head and a slow grinding of her teeth. She hurried to the kitchen and put together a tray with another cup of tea, a few cookies that had been intended for the sewing circle, and, of course, her bottle of ibuprofen.

  When she came back, the dog was up on the bed, cuddled up beside the man, with his big head resting in the guy’s lap. Her mattress was dirty, and she prayed that it wasn’t now flea-infested.

  Clearly, the dog had made his choice, and there wasn’t a darn thing Jenny could do about it. It was the story of her life. Maybe she should heed the warning of that dream she’d had last night. She might want a dog, but perhaps a cat was what she needed. With a cat, you didn’t expect much in the way of loyalty.

  She pasted another smile on her face, because that’s what she always did when stuff like this happened. But her smile must have looked phony because Mr. Raintree looked up at her and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll pay for a new mattress. And I’ll take the dog off your hands, too. You have no business having a dog if this is the way you take care of it.”

  She thought about correcting his misapprehension and decided that it wasn’t worth the breath it would take. She gave him his tray, then turned on her heel and headed out to the backyard, intent on finishing the chore that she’d started half an hour ago, before her heart had been broken by a stray dog with a fickle heart.

  She didn’t make it far across the backyard before Zeph Gibbs materialized from out of the big stand of rhododendrons. He was carrying a shotgun, and he sneaked up on her.

  “God almighty, Zeph, you just scared me half to death.”

  He nodded and brought his hand to the brim of his Atlanta Braves ball cap. “Ma’am.”

  Jenny wasn’t exactly happy to see Zeph. The man had been a pain in the neck for the last few months as her contractors had restored the house. Zeph often came to the work site and would stand in the yard and watch without moving. It was kind of creepy.

  At first she thought maybe he wanted a job. After all, Savannah said he’d done incredible work restoring The Kismet’s lobby. But when Jenny had offered him a position as a carpenter, he’d shaken his head and told her that resurrecting this house was a big, big mistake.

  And a few weeks ago, Zeph had even stopped her right outside the library on book club night and pleaded with her to find another place for an inn. He told her that she would regret opening an inn out in the swamp. Jenny still wasn’t sure if that was a warning or a threat. Zeph owned a shack of some kind deep in the woods not more than a quarter mile away. She was beginning to think that having Zeph as a neighbor was going to be a problem.

  Jenny clamped down further on the turmoil roiling inside her. “Mr. Gibbs,” she said in the voice she used when addressing the parents of troublemaking students, “I would be much obliged if you wouldn’t go sneaking up on people. Especially carrying a gun. You’re going to scare my customers just like you scared me. And that’s not good for business. Now, what can I do for you?”

  He cocked his head. “Ma’am, people coming out here are going to get scared no matter what I do. Is Mr. Gabe all right?”

  Well, that was just creepy. How did he know that Mr. Raintree was here and that he’d fallen on the ice? There was only one way: He’d been spying on her. Her stomach clenched. She had always regarded Zeph as an eccentric, but never as a person she might have to fear. All that changed in the blink of an eye. “Uh, no, he fell on the ice.”

  Zeph nodded as if he already knew. “He hurt his ankle?”

  Obviously he had been spying. “Yes, I think he may have broken something. It’s pretty swollen.” She kept her voice neutral, but her heart was pounding in her chest. What was he up to?

  “Have you called the doctor?”

  “Of course I have. But I can’t drive him to the clinic. My Fiesta doesn’t handle icy streets well. I need to wait until the roads improve.”

  “No need, Miz Jenny. I’ll bring around my truck. I’ll take him to town for you.”

  She hesitated a moment. Should she trust him with Mr. Raintree? “You used to work out here, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I remember Mr. Gabe when he was just a young ’un.”

  She was being silly and skittish. She needed to find her courage and buck up. Zeph wasn’t here to cause any trouble. He was merely lending a helping hand.

  “What you come out here for, boy?” Zeph asked in that voice that took Gabe back to his childhood. Zeph never minced words. Gabe had forgotten that. He’d also forgotten how much he’d wanted to please Zeph back when he’d been a little boy.

  Gabe carefully readjusted the position of his damaged foot. It hurt like a sonofabitch. He might have been more comfortable in the crew cab seat behind the driver, but the dog was occupying that space—all of it.

  “I came out here to buy the house back.”

  Zeph’s big hands tightened on the wheel. “Why you want to do that?”

  Gabe shrugged. He didn’t want to tell Zeph the true reason.

  “I’m waiting,” Zeph said.

  “Because I got homesick.”

  “Homesick? You haven’t been back in twenty-five years. Why now? After you already sold the house to Miz Jenny.”

  “Because I had second thoughts, okay?”

  “I reckon that’s a good reason. I sure do wish you hadn’t sold that house. It was best left the way it was.”

  That was a surprise. Gabe turned and studied Zeph. He’d gotten much older. His hair was the color and texture of cotton, and there were dark freckles on his cheeks that hadn’t been there before. But he looked fit.

  Zeph gave him a little glance and then spoke again as he trained his eyes on the road. �
�I just think The Jonquil House shouldn’t be turned into a bed-and-breakfast.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “It’s too far from town. And the swamp can get scary at night sometimes.”

  It could have been dialogue from one of Gabe’s novels. “Scary how?”

  This time Zeph shrugged. “Just scary.”

  “I’m an expert on scary. Are we talking swamp things that walk at night, or ghosts, or psychopathic murderers who use Hoodoo? I mean, scary comes in lots of flavors, Zeph.”

  The man pressed his lips together. “There are things scarier than the critters who live in the swamp. There are things that can get into a man’s head, you know? And make him do things he never would do. Things not of this world.”

  “So you believe in ghosts, then.”

  Zeph tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “Don’t you?”

  Gabe turned away to watch the scenery flashing by. The ice was melting, leaving behind endless fields of brown stubble where corn and soybeans had grown the season before. “There are far worldlier things to be frightened of.”

  Just then the dog poked his cold, wet nose into the corner of Gabe’s neck and gave him a sloppy kiss. The kiss made him laugh in a way that he hadn’t in a long, long time. “Hey, you big bear,” he said. “I think I’m going to keep you.” It was crazy, but the dog seemed to have filled up part of that cavernous hollow place inside him.

  “Bear is what Luke called his dog,” Zeph said.

  “And this dog looks exactly like Bear, doesn’t he? It’s kind of amazing, but I feel like he belongs to me.”

  “You took that dog from Miz Jenny. He’s her dog. And there will be consequences for what you’ve done.”

  “She didn’t take care of him very well. Look at him. He’s starving.”

  “Son, Miz Jenny didn’t set eyes on that dog until this morning, same time as you did. And the first thing she did was feed him some ham. When it comes to feeding people, Miz Jenny isn’t stingy.”