Honeymoon Hotel

by Bretton, Barbara

  "I'm already doing wonders with it." Her lovely eyes narrowed. "How do you know about the secret passageways?"

  He'd never seen such towering outrage on someone so angelic looking in his life. A laugh threatened to break through, but he was afraid she'd belt him if he let it out. "Your passageways connect to my barn. You should know that."

  "If I know you, you'll end up covering them with purple plush carpeting."

  "Lighten up, Ms. Douglass. We're talking honeymoon hotels, not Buckingham Palace."

  "I don't care if we're talking bordello-chic, Tyler. Bad taste is bad taste. If you want to live with Jacuzzis shaped like champagne glasses and mirrored ceilings in the bathroom, that's your business."

  "We're not talking about decorating the home of your dreams. We're talking fantasy." He couldn't hold back a grin. "You do know about fantasies, don't you?"

  "Yes," she said evenly, "and I'm enjoying one right now that has to do with Chicken Kiev."

  "Having second thoughts about heroism?"

  "You might say that."

  "Too late," he said, grinning. "I'm hale and hearty."

  "Terrific," she mumbled.

  It was terrific. "You know what this means, don't you? The larger ramifications?"

  She shook her head.

  "When you saved my life, you joined our fates forever."

  "Great," she snapped. "You're in my debt. Just give me a million dollar reward, and we'll call it even."

  So she did have a sense of humor. He'd begun to wonder.

  "It doesn't work that way," he said. "You gave me a second chance. Now I'm your responsibility."

  "He's right, Maggie," Frank piped up. "It's an old Chinese tradition."

  John reminded himself to take some ads in Frank's paper.

  "I'm not old, and I'm not Chinese," said Maggie. "Therefore I'm off the hook."

  "You're treating this lightly," John said, fascinated that a woman with such wildly exotic looks could have the prim and proper soul of a Puritan. "You can't believe you can snatch a man from the jaws of death and not bear some responsibility for his life."

  She mumbled something about another order of chicken, but he decided to ignore it.

  "I made you cough up a piece of poultry," she said as they heard sirens wailing in the distance. "If I didn't help you, someone else would have."

  "Someone else didn't. You did."

  The sirens came closer.

  "Look, just because you haven't mastered solid food yet is no reason for us to become lifelong friends. You thanked me. I acknowledged your thanks. Case closed."

  Damn it. It sounded like a fleet of ambulances was racing up the circular drive to the Bronze Penguin.

  "Have dinner with me tonight, Maggie Douglass."

  She looked down at the overturned table, the upended chair and the mess of chicken and butter on the floor. "Sorry. Dinner with you might be too much of an adventure for me."

  "Humor me. I want to thank you properly."

  The doors to the restaurant crashed open, and a squad of emergency technicians with CPR on their minds flooded the place.

  "A million dollars," said Maggie, with a heart-crunching smile as two burly techs started slapping electrodes on his exposed chest. "Send it in care of The White Elephant."

  She was gone before he had a chance to tell the technicians that the change in his heartbeat didn't have anything to do with his health.

  It had to do with the woman he was going to marry.

  Chapter Three

  Hideaway Haven, with its patented Love Cottages, was situated atop Mount Ryan, snuggled in between two natural lakes and a view of the countryside so beautiful it could be declared a natural wonder.

  Not that John noticed any of it that afternoon as he drove back from the Bronze Penguin.

  He didn't notice the purple-blue gentian blazing in the late summer sun or the fading bluets or the Dutchman's-breeches with their ridiculous white flowers that looked like knickers on a clothesline.

  Pine trees raced towering oaks for a piece of the clear Pennsylvania sky that could have been the skyline of beautiful downtown Burbank for all John noticed.

  It took all his concentration to keep his mind on his driving because his imagination was running riot. All he could think of was the way Maggie Douglass had felt as she straddled him. With very breath he took, he smelled the sweet scent of her skin, heard her husky voice murmuring the romantic words, "Chicken Kiev" in his ear.

  None of this was a surprise.

  John Adams Tyler was a dyed-in-the-wool romantic, one of a long line of romantics that had begun with his ancestor, John Adams, who had loved Abigail for all time.

  The men in his family were famous for falling victim to love at first sight, and although a few of them had gone astray, most of the Adams/Tyler men had been lucky enough to form little dynasties of their own.

  All of them, that was, except John.

  While his brothers had managed to carry on the tradition of happily-ever-after, John resolutely remained isngle.

  He liked women, really liked them. He respected their intelligence, enjoyed their wit, savored their beauty. Twice he'd come close to marriage, but each time, the woman in question had been smarter than he and recognized his fatal flaw.

  John Adams Tyler wanted it all.

  He wanted passion and romance. He wanted a best friend and a lover and a companion to travel through life with.

  He wanted what Adams after Adams after Adams had sought throughout the years: He wanted a wife.

  Hell, he wanted to be a husband.

  Of course, it had taken him a while to realize it.

  His family had teased him and worried over him and tried to fix him up with every beautiful single woman they could find whose IQ was larger than her bra size. He'd done a fair amount of searching on his own, and while he'd formed friendships with a number of the ladies, he'd never found the one he could imagine growing old beside.

  Until today.

  Who would have thought he'd meet the woman of his dreams while he was lying on the floor of the Bronze Penguin?

  Just last weekend his terminal bachelor status had been the topic of heated debate. He and his brothers had thrown a golden wedding anniversary party for their parents. It had all been there, right in front of him, three generations of dreams and hopes and glory, from the remarkable Grandma Rose right down to the newborn Michael.

  For the first time in his life, he'd wondered if he'd made a mistake. Maybe he'd waited too long, been too optimistic, let his intrepid belief in romantic destiny turn him into a ninety-seven-year-old fool whose tombstone would read Still Looking.

  And it had all changed today in the blink of an eye.

  He eased his Jaguar past honeymooners on horseback, honeymooners on bicycles, honeymooners on their – well, maybe some things were better left to the imagination. He beeped his horn in salute as two newlyweds dived for cover behind a welcoming pine tree.

  There wasn't anywhere you could look on that entire sprawling piece of Pennsylvania prime property that you didn't see men and women in love. It was as inescapable as the sunrise each morning, the star rise each night.

  Where better to conduct a courtship than right there in the middle of all this bucolic, romantic splendor?

  He couldn't miss.

  But first he had to get her attention.

  #

  "I don't think Maggie's happy," Holland said, three antique shops after the Bronze Penguin lunch. "Did you notice how quiet she was this afternoon?"

  "Of course she was quiet," said Alistair as they backed out of the parking lot of The Ink-Stained Wretch, a used bookstore at the edge of town. "You didn't give her a chance to speak, Holland."

  Leave it to a man to completely miss the important things in life. "There were many opportunities, darling. She chose not to take them."

  "She has a great deal on her mind."

  "She has nothing on her mind except that ridiculous inn."

  He gave
her the patented blue-eyed look that had been turning her emotions inside out from the day they first met in the lobby of the Carillon. "If memory serves, she was rather vehement on the subject of things romantic."

  "Oh, she's just tired of her mother-in-law's matchmaking." She sidestepped with a casual wave of her hand. "I must say, however, that I noticed a definite change of mood when I came back from the ladies' room. She seemed rather pensive."

  "It was your strawberry tart," he said, easing the Rolls to a stop at a traffic light. "She'd been contemplating taking it under house arrest."

  "Good try." Holland tapped a Gauloise out of the packet resting on the console between them. "If you hadn't looked so serious when I sat down, I might believe you." Over the past two years, she'd become quite adept at noticing the unusual as it pertained to Alistair Chambers.

  He pressed in the lighter, then held it to the tip of her cigarette. She nodded her thanks and drew in deeply of the pungent foreign blend.

  How easy it was to grow accustomed to the finer things. Imported cigarettes. Rolls-Royces and Mercedes-Benzes with leather upholstery softer than a baby's behind. Impromptu trips to Bermuda where a yacht awaited milady's pleasure.

  But, more than that – oh, God, so much more – how easy, how terrifyingly easy it was to grow accustomed to love. This man with his wit and charm and intelligence had managed to somehow get beneath her veneer of sophistication and find the heart she'd thought immune to such things.

  When they'd first met, Holland had been prepared for a brief, but wonderful, interlude with a charming, urbane Englishman.

  She hadn't been prepared for the many riddles and contradictions that were part and parcel of that charming, urbane Englishman.

  Or for the surprise of falling in love.

  The light changed to green, and Alistair turned onto the twisting mountain road that led back to Hideaway Haven. The silence in the car pressed against her chest and, with apologies to the surgeon general, she wondered how nonsmokers filled awkward moments such as this.

  The Actor's Studio had long ago taught Holland one hundred and seventeen bits of business guaranteed to help an actor turn smoking into a social statement.

  She was using at least three of them at the moment but, unfortunately, none of them seemed to be working. Maybe blunt talk would.

  "My self-confidence isn't that shaky, darling," she said as they inched their way up the hill toward Hideaway Haven. "Sarah's name doesn't strike fear into my heart."

  "May I ask what brought on that rather remarkable statement?"

  She tilted her chin slightly and took a protracted drag on the Gauloise. "I would think it's perfectly obvious."

  He laughed for the first time since they had left the Bronze Penguin. "My love, with you nothing on earth is perfectly obvious."

  You fool, she thought. Don't you see my heart on my sleeve? "Sarah was your wife. She was Maggie's aunt. It's perfectly normal to speak about her from time to time." And perfectly normal for me to feel threatened.

  He slowed the Rolls down and eased it into a particularly nasty curve. "And that's what you believe we were talking about this afternoon?"

  Her shoulders lifted in a shrug as she flicked her cigarette. Even the ashtrays in a Rolls were first-class. "What else could it be?" She'd only seen that vulnerable look on his face when Sarah McBride Chambers's name had been mentioned.

  "I apologize if we made you uncomfortable. It wasn't my intention."

  "I know." She wished she'd never started this whole miserable conversation. For two years now, she'd been finding herself up against one locked door after another. Not even her best friend, Joanna, who had married Alistair's protégé, Ryder O'Neal, was able to shed any light on this man she loved. "I know you have a past, Alistair. I wouldn't wish otherwise." A pause, well-timed and sharpened after years of practice. "Certainly I have one of my own."

  Alistair, however, didn't rise to the bait. He merely switched on the stereo, but not even the beautiful strains of Mozart could hide the ugly truth.

  Grow up, woman, she thought as she watched the stands of pine roll past her window. Understand what's going on here.

  She didn't need a man to make her life complete. Once she'd believed she would give up her career for the love of a man.

  That, of course, was before she had a career to speak of.

  Alistair kept huge parts of his life excruciatingly private. Even in their most intimate moments, she felt as if she touched only a fraction of the man he really was. That maddening British reserve kept him safely out of reach.

  She'd managed to make many of her own dreams come true without fairy godmothers or sugar daddies or pacts with the devil.

  She was a fiercely independent, forty-four-year-old woman who'd gotten along without Alistair Chambers and would get along just fine again when he was but a pleasant memory to warm her by a fire.

  She stubbed out the half-smoked Gauloise and stared out the window at the acres of woodland whizzing by.

  I love you, she thought.

  But no one had ever said love was enough in a dangerous age. Maybe Maggie was right: steer clear of romantic entanglements, and concentrate only on the things you can control.

  And, God knew, she couldn't control Alistair Chambers. She couldn't even understand him. He said he was a financier, but financiers didn't disappear for weeks on end or vanish in the dark of night without explanation.

  "Take him on faith," Joanna had said. "Trust him. He'll never hurt you."

  Holland had been trying it now for two long years, and it was taking its toll on her.

  It had been wonderful, but the signs were unmistakable.

  She loved him, but she was going to make sure she was the first to say goodbye.

  Chapter Four

  There was definitely something to be said for being understaffed. Maggie thought as she proposed her feet up on the front porch railing and settled back to watch another Poconos sunset.

  Normally the sight of the indigo and violet streaks of color blossoming in the western sky triggered memories of sunsets from other times, other places.

  The soft night air of Caracas. The savage splendor of fjords near Stockholm. The old thrill of living day-to-day.

  Everything she'd tossed aside when she married Richard Douglass.

  When you were functioning as owner, manager, part-time chef and full-time social director, there wasn't much time left at the end of the day to spend mooning over anything beyond the next day's breakfast menu.

  Tonight, however, was different.

  Breakfast menus and Friday night's costume party were far from her mind. Even the amazing fact that she'd saved the life of one John Adams Tyler ran a poor second to the memory of how her entire body had flamed to life from the second she saw him walk into the Bronze Penguin.

  If it wasn't for the fact that she'd given key members of her staff the month of August off, Maggie might have stretched out on the porch, hours earlier, nursing a cold lemonade and a few steamy fantasies.

  Plain ordinary exhaustion made it hard to nurse fantasies any more exciting than the dream of ten hours of unbroken sleep and a No Vacancy sign twinkling merrily overhead.

  At least she could console herself with the fact that she had been doing everything in her power to make The White Elephant the success she and Rick had dreamed about.Two months ago she'd hocked a pair of gold hoop earrings – bought a lifetime ago when she was on assignment in Cairo – and plunked the money down on a full-color ad in Modern Bride calculated to lure hundreds of honeymooners to the one classy establishment west of the Delaware Water Gap.

  So much for class.

  August was limping toward September, and she had enough empty rooms to hold a Shriners convention.

  The White Elephant had been Rick's dream, his baby. In the beginning her involvement had been strictly out of loyalty: first, to help her husband; then to preserve his memory.

  But it was more than that to her now. She genuinely loved the hotel busi
ness, loved the challenge of turning something as down on its luck as The White Elephant into a rousing success.

  Perhaps that was why her work with PAX had never been as important to her as Alistair and Sarah would have liked.

  PAX was an elite organization that prided itself on excellence.

  It had to.

  On more occasions than Maggie sometimes liked to remember, the lives of millions of innocent people had hung in the balance, and only swift action on the part of PAX members had saved them.

  Being part of the organization had been heady stuff for a young girl barely out of school. The travel, the challenge, the danger had all been great fun for a while.

  Cryptography to Maggie was like working on a giant-sized crossword puzzle from The New York Times in ink. Only difference was, one wrong answer and a government could topple.

  She'd come by her gift for esoteric electronic wizardry naturally, a direct result of the McBride blood that flowed through her veins. When her parents had died during her senior year in high school, Sarah and Alistair had opened their doors and their hearts to her, and she'd fallen into the "family business" as easily as if that business had been dry cleaning or dressmaking.

  But the commitment hadn't been there. Instead she found herself bound by a combination of talent and loyalty, and it wasn't until love, in the form of Rick Douglass, came along that she realized the extraordinary life of an operative wasn't for her.

  PAX didn't need her but Rick Douglass did.

  Maggie had always championed the underdog, and there wasn't a bigger underdog in the world than The White Elephant.

  She reached for the lemonade resting by her chair and winced as drops of condensation landed on her bare legs.

  "Such pastoral splendor! It's enough to make a man rethink creature comforts like electricity." There on the top step stood her Uncle Alistair, nattily attired in white duck pants, starched shirt and blue blazer complete with crest. The only thing missing was the yacht, and that, if she remembered right, was moored at the moment in Bermuda.

  She motioned for him to pull up a chair. "So the city dweller discovers rural bliss. Better be careful, Alistair. Country living can be addictive."