Inn at Last Chance

by Hope Ramsay

  “Gabe, you’re babbling. How’s it going, really? I need to have something to work with. You’ve already lost your slot for next September. That means you’re missing the Halloween season, which is ideal for your book releases. I’m worried about you. You know how it is, out of sight, out of mind. You haven’t had a new book in more than a year.”

  “I’m writing.” He didn’t elaborate. “And I’ll write better and faster if you leave me alone.”

  “Absolutely not. I’m staying right here, and I want to read all the pages you’ve written so far. We’ll work together as you write, and we’ll get it done in half the time. I can easily manage things with my other authors from here for a while. Gabe, you’re my star, and I’m not going to let you burn out.” She cupped his cheek in her cool hand then raised up on tiptoes to give him another kiss.

  He told himself that it was a good thing that she was here. She might actually help him salvage the ending of the book. She might also keep his mind off Jenny and help him convince his landlady that he was not the one for her. He felt nothing for Barb, except professional admiration. She could handle whatever the world dished out and not come away even slightly scratched. She was utterly heartless, infinitely shrewd, and wickedly smart. He didn’t worry at all about breaking her heart, or even ruining their professional relationship.

  So when Barb opened her mouth and added a little tongue to the kiss, he let her and tried to enjoy it. He also tried to feel not one iota of guilt when Jenny walked in carrying a stack of towels.

  But he failed.

  CHAPTER

  15

  Jenny didn’t know what to do about Gabe’s editor. It wasn’t exactly legal for Barbara Ianelli to be staying at the inn, since Jenny had not yet had the fire department out to inspect and approve the building.

  Not that she was out of compliance with fire codes. She had just installed smoke detectors and exit signs earlier that week. She had no doubt she’d pass inspection, but it wasn’t legal to allow paying guests without that inspection certificate, and if anything should happen without that certificate, her insurance would be null and void.

  She had spoken with Ross Gardiner, the fire chief, and was expecting his visit in a day or two. Now she’d have to talk with him about coming out sooner—like right now. And since Ross was the only paid member of the fire department, scheduling time might be difficult.

  She headed into town, and God decided to smile on her because she found Ross hanging out with Matt Jasper and his new K-9 dog in the firehouse. She made arrangements for Ross to come out a day earlier. Then she swung by the day care center and dropped off her tasteless bran muffins for Saturday’s bake sale. She didn’t think they would be big sellers, and she promised herself that she’d stop trying to please Gabe with her baking skills. It was hopeless.

  Her last stop was the BI-LO grocery store. If she was going to start taking in guests, she needed to stock up her pantry. And besides, in moments of high stress, cooking was Jenny’s main way of coping. Tomorrow she’d make a big breakfast. Maybe an egg-and-cheese casserole. Although she was pretty sure that Mr. Health would bypass the eggs, and Ms. Skinny From New York probably didn’t even eat breakfast.

  She should let them starve. But she was not capable of allowing that to happen.

  And besides, keeping busy was one way of stopping herself from throttling Mr. Raintree. The man seemed intent on taking over her life and her inn. She was tempted to tell him his furniture had to go, except that she actually liked his furniture more than she wanted to admit. And she kind of wanted to try out the piano.

  But if she took his furniture, she had to take his editor, too. They had sort of arrived at the same moment, and in her mind, they were most definitely connected in some way that she couldn’t quite explain.

  She wanted to drop-kick Barbara Ianelli and her black designer suit right onto a patch of slimy red clay. But that would be unladylike. And ungrateful. And Mother, bless her heart, would be so ashamed of her if she let her emotions out like that.

  But just for one moment, Jenny wanted to smash something up or let out a deep primal scream or otherwise express her pain.

  She’d walked in on them kissing. And they seemed to be thoroughly enjoying each other’s tonsils. She shouldn’t have been surprised. This should not have hurt. Gabe had made things perfectly clear. He’d been kind the night of the china cabinet debacle, but that was all it was. Just kindness. And Jenny knew better than to mistake kindness for love.

  Now she understood why he’d been keeping his distance. He was involved with someone else. And one look at Barbara and Jenny understood why. Why on earth would a man like Mr. Raintree look twice at a plain Jane like her when he could have someone like Barbara Ianelli?

  She was being silly about the entire thing. Hadn’t she decided that she was embracing the freedom of spinsterhood? In her liberated life, feeling jealous of another woman was a big waste of time and spirit.

  By the time she pulled into the BI-LO’s parking lot, she had brought her raging emotions under control. She was not going to be laughed at again. She was not going to be stupid again. She was going to be a self-sufficient innkeeper. That was her dream, and it was a good one.

  She left her car and snagged a grocery cart and got two steps inside the front door before she came face-to-face with Lillian Bray, the blue-haired chairwoman of the Episcopalian Ladies’ Auxiliary.

  Lillian and a group of several other churchwomen, including Maybelle Radford, who was a member of the First Methodist choir and had been one of Mother’s friends, had camped out right by the checkout counters. They were carrying hand-lettered oak-tag signs and having an argument with Floyd Eule, the store manager.

  “Miz Lillian, you can picket and hand out flyers in the parking lot until the cows come home, but you can’t do that inside the store.”

  “But it’s cold outside, Floyd. It’s February.”

  Floyd didn’t have the chance to respond because Maybelle interrupted. “Girls, look, it’s Jenny. She’s the one who can nip this in the bud right now.”

  Jenny suddenly found herself on the other end of Maybelle’s rudely pointed finger. And then, before she could say Jack Robinson, she was surrounded by six large-bosomed churchwomen who shoved their homemade signs right in her face.

  They all seemed to have the same message: “Good Christians!! Stop our library from leading our children into sin.”

  Lillian Bray pressed a black-and-white flyer into her hand. It had the same message in big type across the top with the subheading: “Boycott the Library fundraiser on February 15.”

  Below it was a badly reproduced image of Black Water’s cover and a photo of Mr. Raintree, obviously taken many years before, followed by a barely literate screed against the book and the devil worship it supposedly encouraged. The flyer concluded with a listing of Gabriel Raintree’s so-called misdeeds—the same list of violent incidents that Nita had told her about a week ago.

  “Jenny, that man you’ve opened your door to is a devil worshiper. You need to evict him.” Lillian’s double chins flapped as she shook her finger in Jenny’s face.

  Maybelle took up where Lillian left off. “Your mother would be so disappointed in you, reading those awful books and being a member of the Library Committee. Y’all can’t be serious about using that man to promote contributions to the library. If this is what Nita Wills wants our children to read, it’s just as well that the county wants to shut the library down.” Maybelle’s eyes gleamed with a feverish zeal that scared Jenny half to death.

  Maybelle used to be a nice, quiet, reasonable woman, but ever since her husband left her, she’d gotten deeply fundamental. When she’d started a nasty rumor about Wilma Riley’s sexual orientation, the entire sewing circle had voted to rescind her membership. Maybelle had become an ugly, troubled person.

  Jenny straightened her spine. She wasn’t about to kowtow to a bunch of zealots and hypocrites. “Mr. Raintree is not a devil worshiper. He’s a writer,” s
he said in as calm a voice as she could muster.

  “I haven’t seen him in church one time,” Maybelle said.

  “I don’t think he’s a Methodist.”

  “His family attended with us,” Lillian said. “But I haven’t seen him at our church either.”

  “I don’t think he’s a regular churchgoer. But that doesn’t mean—”

  “See, girls,” Maybelle interrupted. “Jenny, I know you’re a good Christian woman. But you’ve let that devil lead you astray. And if you want to know my thinking on this, there’s a reason your china cabinet fell over when Pastor Tim was there.”

  Jenny’s heart squeezed in her chest. Had the preacher said something to set this off? “Uh, Maybelle, the cabinet fell over because the floor was not level.”

  “Honey, I know your mother’s china cabinet, and that piece of furniture is too heavy to just topple over. Either it was pushed by someone or there is another explanation.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like Mr. Raintree wanted to keep a man of God out of that house where the two of you are living together without any chaperones.”

  “Uh, Maybelle, I’m thirty-six years old and a former schoolteacher. I am way beyond the need for a chaperone.”

  “You’re living with that man, and you’re not married to him.”

  “I’m an innkeeper. I’m going to be living with a lot of people.”

  “You should be married.”

  “Well, I’m not. Now, if you will excuse me, I have shopping to do.”

  “Maybe you would have a husband if you weren’t so all-fired opinionated about everything. Jenny, men want sweet, obedient wives.”

  Jenny refrained from pointing out that Maybelle had spent thirty-five years being a sweet, obedient wife and her husband had cheated on her with his twenty-something secretary. In truth, Jenny felt sorry for Maybelle. She had substituted a zealous love of Jesus for the things she was missing in her life. She supposed it was nice that Jesus could give her comfort, but she doubted that Jesus would approve of what she was doing right this minute.

  “I’m sorry, ladies. Gabriel Raintree is not a devil worshiper, or any such silly thing. Have you even read any of his books?”

  “We don’t have to,” Lillian said, pointing her nose in the air.

  There were times when living in a small town could be a royal pain in the backside. On at least half a dozen occasions during her teaching career at Davis High School, the good Christians of Allenberg County had tried to ban books, shut down sex education, and mess around with the science curricula. Thank Heaven, Davis High had a strong principled principal. And Jenny wasn’t about to back down either.

  “Ladies, you are mistaken. Mr. Raintree is a good, kind man. I’ve read a few of his books. They do have violence in them, but they all have optimistic endings. And his protagonists are all quite heroic. I think, perhaps, you should read Black Water before you judge it. Or if reading is too much for you, try watching the movie.”

  This speech did nothing to assuage the church ladies. They all started talking at the same time while Floyd tried to get them to leave the premises. Jenny attempted to wheel her cart around them, but the ladies continued to heckle her until Maybelle stepped over the line and took a swing at Jenny’s head with her sign.

  Luckily Maybelle missed, but the old lady lost her balance and fell down and injured herself. She started wailing like it was the end of the world. Jenny abandoned her cart and got down on her knees beside her mother’s oldest friend.

  “Maybelle, honey, where does it hurt?”

  “My leg. I think I broke it,” she sobbed, but she was moving the leg in question so Jenny relaxed a little bit. Maybelle had always been a drama queen.

  “Honey, just keep still now,” Jenny said as she looked up at Floyd, whose face had gone pale as a sheet. “Floyd’s calling nine-one-one.”

  He swallowed hard, pulled his cell from his pocket, and called in the EMTs. When he was done, he turned to the circle of ladies and started yelling at them. “Y’all are crazy. See what happens when you start acting ugly? I’ve read those books you want to ban, and they’re entertaining. There isn’t anything in there that would encourage anyone to practice devil worship.”

  He might have continued yelling, but the Allenberg County Sheriff arrived on the scene, apparently called earlier by one of the other shoppers, who knew that if there was any soul on earth capable of imposing order on chaos, it was Sheriff Stone Rhodes.

  Fifteen minutes later, Maybelle had been whisked off to the clinic with what appeared to be a contusion on her thigh and not much more. The rest of the protesting ladies had been threatened with jail time unless they took their protest out into the parking lot. That pretty much took the wind right out of their sails because it was now overcast outside, and it looked like it might rain.

  They departed, much chastened, and Jenny found herself alone with the sheriff.

  She handed him the flyer that Maybelle had given her. “Stone, I heard about some of this stuff from Nita, herself. She’s concerned. And now I am. Is there any truth to this stuff about Mr. Raintree being arrested?”

  He gazed down at the piece of paper. “I don’t know, but I can find out. Has he been giving you any problems?”

  She shook her head. “No, not at all. He’s…” She couldn’t finish the sentence because her eyes suddenly filled with tears.

  The sheriff gave her shoulder a little squeeze. “It’s all right, Jenny. What happened here was ugly, and I’m going to have a little chat with the pastors of the various churches in town. I don’t like stuff like this happening here, and I dislike the fact that this was probably drummed up by a few outsiders intent on stirring up trouble.”

  “Outsiders?”

  He nodded. “Dennis Hayden hired a political hack from up north to run his congressional campaign. And Dennis isn’t above trying to make Nita look bad for this library effort. Remember that Nita is Mayor LaFlore’s mother and Kamaria is thinking about running herself.”

  “That’s despicable.”

  “Well, I don’t know for certain. But I wouldn’t be surprised if what’s in this paper is a pack of lies designed to make Nita look bad, and by extension to smear Mayor LaFlore.”

  Jenny shook her head. “I’m really sorry to hear that. But I do hope that this stuff about Mr. Raintree isn’t true. He’s a good man. I mean, well, he’s quiet and kind of reclusive and… But he’s not evil, no matter what he writes about.”

  “I’m sure that’s the case. So don’t worry. I’ll get back to you.”

  Gabe left Barb in her room, swearing like a sailor about the lack of cell phone and WiFi connection. In the face of this lack of connectivity, she was planning to drive up to Orangeburg for a few hours. While she was there, she also planned to buy a printer so she could read his pages as they were written.

  He hoped the computer stores in Orangeburg were completely sold out of printers. And he thanked the swamp gods for making cell phone coverage so difficult. Barb wouldn’t last more than two days out here.

  Such was the beauty of living in the swamp, like Shrek.

  Unfortunately, Barb didn’t actually see the beauty of the swamp. She’d suggested no less than five times that Gabe would do better renting a room at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, where he could write to his heart’s content and email his pages on a daily basis, after which they could discuss them over dinner at a place that didn’t chicken-fry steaks.

  Barbara, it turned out, wasn’t a big fan of hush puppies, corn bread, or okra, either.

  But of course, Gabe couldn’t leave. He doubted that the ghost could travel with him to New York. And he definitely needed the ghost’s help with the book.

  He retreated to Luke’s bedroom, where it remained many degrees colder than any other spot in the house. He pulled on his sweatshirt, and a pair of fingerless gloves, and sat down at his laptop to read what the ghost had done to his pages today.

  But he had a hard time concentrating. J
enny had left the house in something of a huff. He ought to be happy about that. But he wasn’t. Whenever she left, the house felt empty, the air heavy and cold. He knew it was insane, but the house seemed to miss her when she was gone. Or maybe it was just Luke missing her.

  “Do you have a jones for her, too?” he asked aloud. But of course the ghost never spoke to him directly.

  Yeah, well, by the frigid air in this room, he had to believe that the ghost had a thing for Jenny. But neither one of them was going to pursue it. It didn’t matter how many bran muffins she baked for him. He was going to refuse them. And he wasn’t going to break down and tell her the reason. She didn’t need to know, because she was merely his landlady.

  Besides, he didn’t like baring his weaknesses to people because he hated being pitied. And he could almost imagine the pity on Jenny’s face when she discovered the truth. It was hard enough knowing that she was genuinely worried about him. He wasn’t used to that. And her concern was seductive as hell.

  He sat there in front of his computer screen brooding for more than an hour. Only the sound of Zeph opening the back door and heading off to the dining room pulled him out of his funk. Bear stood up from the place at his feet and crossed to the door. Zeph’s arrival meant it was time to take a break, let Bear out, and make a sandwich.

  After a short walk, he made himself a turkey sandwich and headed into the dining room, where Zeph was applying the final coat of varnish on the dining room table. It was amazing how he had managed to match the color of the undamaged wood.

  Gabe leaned his shoulder into the doorway. “I never knew you had a talent for carpentry,” he said, then took a bite of his lunch.

  “I reckon not.”

  “I only remember you taking us out hunting.” He spoke with his mouth half full.

  Zeph said nothing. Gabe took another bite, chewed, and swallowed.

  “I remember you weeding the garden. You were doing that the day Luke died.”

  Zeph quit applying the varnish and looked up at him. “I thought you didn’t remember anything about that day.”