9. Chapter 9
nine
Eleven days to the wedding
Chris stared at the ceiling as he lay awake on the plush bed and replayed his argument with Rowan Kelly last night. He’d started that conversation hoping to clear the air, instead a little spark had ignited a whole forest fire. Her eyes had resembled blue flames. He could almost feel them singe him.
Before he could calm her, Rowan had stormed out of the room and firmly shut the door behind her. He’d let that raging blaze lose fuel overnight before he tried to approach her again.
After a quick shower, he’d dropped into bed and fallen asleep in minutes. He must’ve been more tired than he’d thought. To tell the truth, he had done little manual work in years, but it’d felt good working outside. The air had been so clean.
Chris reached for his phone on the nightstand and checked the time. Though the sun had been up for a while, the clock showed it was only six. Kicking off the cover, Chris padded his way naked to the bathroom and got ready for the day.
Might as well assess what I’ve gotten myself into.
He left his room after a quick tidying up the bed. He wanted Rowan not to treat him like a guest, so he wouldn’t expect guest service.
Chris was going to go down the stairs they’d taken last night when he spotted discreet, narrow stairs at the end of the hall. He loved discovering the hidden nooks and crannies in big old houses. He had fond childhood memories of frustrating his nanny when he’d hidden in one of those spots in his family’s house.
Indulging his curious inner child, he started down the narrow—must be service—stairs and wondered where they would lead. He cautiously tiptoed down the old staircase, amazed that he had heard no creaks despite being so conscious of the quiet house. Yet, he still barreled straight into something firm yet soft in the dark hallway. A scream filled the hallway and his ears.
“Son of a—” the curse flew out of his mouth as some flying limb smacked him at the side of his jaw, and another grabbed him and brought him down with them.
“Oh, shit!” He heard Rowan’s voice exclaim under her breath as she realized they were going to hit the floor.
Chris reacted fast. His left arm wrapped around Rowan’s back while he relied on his calisthenic-trained muscles to stop them from hitting the floor hard. His other arm slowed their crash at the last second, gave him a chance to roll, and he landed on his back with less momentum and cushioned Rowan’s body with his own.
The impact—of the fall or having Rowan splayed on top of him—stole the breath out of him. His heart was hammering at a thousand beats per second. His jaw stung. And his back might bruise a little. But suddenly, all that was forgotten when a hard pressure against his crotch forced a groan out of him.
“Shit!” There was panic in Rowan’s voice. “Are you hurt?”
Between quick breaths, Chris said, “Yeah. Get your leg…”
Not understanding what he meant, Rowan tried to scramble off him while her knee was on his junk. Acting on instinct for survival, Chris grabbed her thigh and pulled her entire leg out from under her, and she fell back on top of him. A bundle of hair fell around his face.
“Oof!” The short breath he managed to gasp rushed out of him again.
“Fucking hell! Why did you do that?” Rowan demanded as she pushed her body up by her arms, now pressing her crotch against his aching one.
“Fucking hell is right. Your knee was crushing my balls, woman!” Chris protested in pain as he looked up and caught the deer-in-the-headlights expression on Rowan’s face in the dim hallway. Her hair curtained all around it.
Chris quickly registered that it was his first time seeing her hair down. He couldn’t tell its color but could see its length and texture—long enough for the tips to tickle his face and with enough volume to add drama to her elfish face.
A subtle fragrance teased his nose.
What is that? Jasmine?
He hadn’t expected a prickly woman like Rowan to smell so exotic and sweet, reminding him of another island he frequently visited: Bali. A different type of awareness replaced the throbbing pain in his crotch as he took in the woman in his arms.
The hands still resting on her firm thighs registered the softness of her skin. And he couldn’t help to notice that his position gave him a great vantage point down her decolletage. His senses suddenly went into overdrive, putting him into another predicament as he felt his body responding to hers like any healthy red-blooded man would when a gorgeous, voluptuous woman pressed horizontally against him.
Rowan’s brain was at least still functioning. She pushed off Chris as if he was a hot iron she needed to avoid at all costs.
“Easy,” Chris warned as he lifted his hands off her. She rolled off him and folded herself to sit on her knees.
Staring at Chris, who stayed flat on the floor, Rowan asked, “Mr. Sullens, are you okay?”
“After what happened, don’t you think we should drop the formality?” Chris asked as he readjusted his shorts discreetly. He worked himself up to a sitting position. “I’ll be fine in time. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said shortly and quickly stood and picked up something off the floor.
It was the hat that was always on her head. She hadn’t taken it off even at dinner last night, which Chris found bizarre and rude, but it wasn’t his house.
“Where did you come from?” he asked and got to his feet. “And why is this hallway so dark?”
“The better question is, what are you doing in this hallway?” she asked, her usual annoyed tone returning. She flicked something by the wall, and a lamp on a console table near them turned on .
Chris blinked at the sudden light. Rowan stood before him in a white V-neck T-shirt, green khaki shorts, and Converse sneakers. She eyed him with her hands at her waist, her mouth twisted, and her hat back on her head.
Where the hell did all that hair go?
“This hallway isn’t open to guests. It leads to the back office, the kitchen, the pantry, supply rooms, and access to the basement, where we have our washers and dryers. I didn’t see you coming from the service stairs because I didn’t expect you to come down that way,” she finished, looking at him with an accusatory glare.
“I was exploring,” Chris defended himself.
“You always go exploring at six-thirty in the morning?” She turned around and started walking down the hallway.
Chris followed her at a slower pace, as walking was still uncomfortable. “I was awake. Might as well start the day. I didn’t get to look around the house beside the lobby and kitchen.”
“You’ll get your chance later this morning.” She turned to the right and walked past the supply room, a walk-in refrigerator and freezer, and the pantry before the hall opened to the kitchen.
Rowan turned on the counter lights but kept the overhead light off. The morning sunshine bathing the room through the windows was enough. She then ground some coffee beans and brewed a pot of coffee.
“Hey, can we talk about last night?” Chris asked and sat on one of the steel bar stools.
Aaah, cold steel. Perfect.
The kitchen was a hybrid of a commercial and country home kitchen, with two commercial ranges, large ovens, and stainless steel surfaces. But there was also a huge prep island with many slots underneath it for storage and spacious areas in between so workers could quickly move around. An L-bar wrapped around half of the core kitchen to create more prep area, or it could function as a regular kitchen bar when it wasn't meal service time.
“You were quite upset when you left last night,” Chris prompted.
When Rowan turned to him, the displeasure he’d seen last night was back in her eyes. There was also stubbornness in how she cocked her chin, ready to defend her father’s honor again as she’d done the night before.
Chris could understand Rowan’s loyalty. He, too, would stand with his father, though he would never declare him father of the year. He’d once looked up to George Sullens. He remembered how proud he’d been to shadow his father at work as a nine-year-old boy. Chris had wanted to be just like him. Because then, he’d been a good father to Chris—before everything changed.
Knowing he needed to smooth things over, he said, “Rowan, I’d like to apologize.”
Rowan didn’t expect an apology from Chris Sullens, especially after her behavior last night, then the accident just now. Could she act more embarrassingly? How could she ever be a suitable host if someone like him easily ruffled her? An inn proprietor should be gracious, even in the most unfortunate situation, and she hadn’t exhibited a bit of grace.
To be fair, what woman wouldn’t be flustered when she found herself sprawled on top of a man’s large, firmly muscled body first thing in the morning? Their thin T-shirts and shorts concealed little when she pressed against him, chest to groin.
When Chris had put his hand on her thighs, resulting in her toppling on top of him, she’d felt a burst of excitement. Her nipples had instantly puckered up, and she’d felt the urge to lean herself harder into him. She’d inhaled deep the lemony soap fragrance she knew well mixed in with his male essence, and wanted to burrow her nose even deeper into his neck.
Have I been without a proper man’s touch so long that I got a thrill from an accidental tumble with a man?
She should be the one apologizing for her abrupt exit last night and for causing this morning’s accident, of which he’d taken the brunt. But here he was, extending an olive branch to her.
“I didn’t mean to put you on the spot about this whole situation,” Chris continued, oblivious to where Rowan’s mind had gone. “Rae is my best friend’s wife and a dear friend to me. This situation is—as I’m sure you’re experiencing as well—difficult for her to process. And I get a tad protective of her because of that.”
Obviously, their earlier clumsy dance didn’t affect Chris much, Rowan noted. She forced herself to stop thinking about how delicious it felt to have his hard body rubbing against hers and focus on the current conversation.
“I can understand that,” she said.
“But as your father specified in his will, she couldn’t relinquish the inheritance if she wanted to, so we need to find a way for all three of you to coexist peacefully.”
Rowan nodded and took her time going back to the coffeemaker. She poured the dark brew into a couple of mugs. Though she wasn’t sure consuming caffeine with her heightened nerves was smart, she carried both mugs to where Chris was sitting and offered one to him.
“Thanks,” he said appreciatively.
They enjoyed the warmth of coffee for a few seconds before returning to the subject.
“I think there’s a reason my father passed this land to the three of us,” Rowan said after she felt more settled.
Chris looked at her with curiosity in his eyes. “And what’s that?”
“Atonement,” she answered. “Mr. Sullens, my father wasn’t perfect, but he was a good man. I still haven’t quite processed his confession of a past affair that resulted in a daughter he’d left behind. But I can tell you it cost him. He was just very good at shielding us from it. Now I know my father lived most of his life pretending.”
“What do you mean, pretending?”
Rowan drank her coffee before answering, “On the outside, he seemed to have lived a full life with a fulfilling career and a happy family. He was the poster boy of the great American life, except he wasn’t completely happy. Not inside, he wasn’t. But he’d never shown that part of himself to us—Kieran and me. We didn’t know he never loved our mother—not in the way we expected a husband to love his wife.
“And he’d only kept at the job he was so good at because he knew he had to provide for us. But with what I know now, I think he’d probably have been happier if he’d stayed with the job where he got to travel all over the world. Perhaps Rae got her love of travel from Dad,” Rowan mused .
Chris nodded, digesting her words. “Perhaps you’re right. But how is giving Rae a third of this property his atonement? Why didn’t he reach out to her while he was alive?”
“I don’t know the answer to that. What I know is my grandparents worked this land and built this inn. They’d inherited it from the generation before them. And they passed it down to my father, who unfortunately only showed interest in it once it was too late. But even he kept the land—as much of it as he could—in the family.
“As far as I know, this land has been in the Kelly family for more than a century. And now it’s ours, the next generation of the Kellys. And Rae is a Kelly, whether she bears the name or not. It’s her birthright because she came from our father. Kieran and I stand together on that.”
Chris’ eyes widened slightly with surprise at Rowan’s words.
“Okay.” He finally nodded, accepting the explanation. “I suppose now it’s a matter of finding how Rae can play her part for this place.”
“That is up to her. She can embrace this inheritance or dismiss it since she doesn’t have the emotional attachment to it like Kieran and I do. I think that’s her choice. We can’t make her feel responsible for a heritage our father denied her all her life. But that’s why we invited her to come. Maybe then we can figure it all out together.”
“She needs a little more time to take it all in. I’m here because I don’t have emotional baggage, and I can be a neutral observer. Perhaps I can help you all find common ground,” Chris suggested.
Rowan wasn’t sure how neutral Chris Sullens could be when one-third of the equation in this mess was his friend. But it wasn’t as if she and Kieran had any choice. Rae sent Chris to them, so she had to show Rae how special Bright Head was through Chris.
“All right, Mr. Sullens. You got a deal.” Rowan nodded her agreement.
“Good. Now, please call me Chris,” he pled.
“Okay, Chris.” Rowan smiled. “I’m sorry about earlier, by the way. How are your balls? Do you need ice?”
Chris burst into a laugh.