Chapter 24
CHAPTER 24
T wenty-five minutes later, Riley stood outside in the parking lot with all the inn’s guests and employees while she and Lucas spoke to the firemen. The smoke alarms had automatically sent a call to the fire department, and even though Riley called them while Lucas was attempting to shut off the alarm and she’d assured them that everything was fine, they still drove over.
This was what she got for living in a small town where nothing of importance had caught on fire for years. Sometimes the fire department just wanted to take the truck out for a spin.
The guests and employees shouldn’t have had to go outside. Riley had promised them—again as Lucas was trying to turn off the alarm—that there wasn’t any sort of fire, but the firemen had pulled up in their truck and ordered everybody out anyway.
Maybe the firemen’s insistence was because resetting the alarm had taken Lucas and Riley way too long. Its frantic wailing had gone on and on, so the firemen decided to believe its version of the story rather than Riley and Lucas’s.
The men searched the inn, perhaps expecting to see an undetected electrical fire humming along in one of the rooms. They found nothing but a small pile of ashes on Riley’s plate.
“So you were burning a letter, but not in the fireplace?” the fireman asked Riley.
Lucas did have a fireplace in his living room, which was a more sensible place to burn things—if one was going for sensible actions and not grand gestures.
“Yes.” Riley had told them this before. “I didn’t realize the alarm would be so sensitive.”
The firemen had already announced that people could return to the inn, but everybody stayed outside, bundled up in their coats, chatting happily. The college girls were taking selfies with the truck.
This wasn’t going to look good on social media.
Riley turned to the group and raised her voice. “You can all go back to your rooms now!” When none of them moved, she waved to get Sara’s attention. “Can you usher people inside? It’s cold out here.”
“Ma’am,” the fireman said. All of his focus was on her, even though Lucas stood next to her, his hands shoved in his coat pockets in a resigned manner. “Ma’am, do you realize how dangerous it is to purposely burn paper over a table? Your tablecloth could’ve caught on fire, and then,” his hands made an explosive motion, “this whole building could’ve gone up.”
Probably not, since a fire extinguisher hung in Lucas’s kitchen, but she wasn’t going to argue the point.
“Sorry,” she said. Again.
Man, the fire department knew how to ruin a romantic mood.
When the flame had grown large—quicker than Riley had anticipated—she’d dropped the envelope onto her plate where it had been perfectly contained. Time would tell if burn marks came off the china.
The fireman finally turned his attention to Lucas. “Carson would have your hide if you burned down his inn.”
“Don’t I know it,” Lucas said.
Oh, so the fireman was on a first-name basis with Lucas too. They probably all knew him. And now she could add embarrassing him in front of his peers to the things she’d done wrong in the last twenty-five minutes.
Riley checked on Sara. Far from gathering people to go inside, she was flirting with one of the firemen.
Figured.
People were going to catch colds from standing out here. Riley put her hand to her mouth in a cupping position. “Everyone can return to the inn! The lobby has warm drinks!”
Hot chocolate couldn’t compete with hot firemen. No one moved. Mrs. Nickle, the writer, seemed to be interviewing one of them.
Maybe when Riley went back inside, people would follow her.
She turned to the fireman who’d been talking to them and held up her hand as though making a pledge. “From here on out, I promise not to burn anything else except for the candle at both ends. Also, occasionally some rubber when I leave work. Maybe a few bridges. Sometimes that can’t be helped. Can I go now?”
“Yes,” the fireman said.
As she headed toward the walkway, he spoke to Lucas, his formal, chastising tone gone. “Bro, are you planning on any more calls today? Because maybe we should just stay out here instead of waiting for the next one.”
“No more calls,” Lucas said firmly. “Also, do me a favor and don’t tell my mother about this.”
Riley didn’t hear the rest.
Once she reached the lobby, she realized she didn’t know what to do there. She was off the clock. She was about to text Lucas and ask if their dinner was still on when he strode inside and joined her.
She tried to read how upset he was from his expression but couldn’t tell. He looked—not angry exactly, just determined.
“I’m sorry about this.” She fiddled with her necklace, sliding the pendant back and forth on the chain. “Before I burned that letter, I should’ve thought about the fire alarms. Also, I should’ve known how to turn them off. The assistant manager shouldn’t have to flip through three binders to find that information or call Mr. Ross in Florida and ask him.” Her ex-boss had been less than happy to get that call. “It’s just that the alarms have never gone off before while I was at work.” She was babbling and couldn’t stop. “But I’d like to point out that none of the doors were locked, so your firemen friends couldn’t yell at us about that.”
“Riley.” Lucas put his hands on her shoulders to cut through her torrent of words. His eyes found hers. There was softness in them as well as determination. “I love you,” he said.
“What?” Those weren’t the words she’d been expecting at this moment.
“That was the third thing on my list that I was going to tell you if you fell for me. I know it was supposed to be two truths and a lie, but I’m never going to lie to you again. You told me that you loved me right before the fire alarm went off, and I didn’t have a chance to say it back to you. So I’m telling you now. I love you.”
A sound, half laugh, half cry, escaped her lips. All the stress of the evening drained away from her. “I love you too. I guess I already said that.”
He gathered her in his arms, and she leaned into him. This feeling of pressing her cheek into his chest made everything feel better. “I’m never going to get tired of hearing you say that,” she murmured. “In fact, I need to hear you say it every day.”
“We’ll make that part of our kissing terms.”
She pulled away from him enough to look up at his eyes. Such beautiful blue eyes. She wanted to spend the rest of her life just staring into them. “Is it weird that the best day of my life also involves visits from both the police and fire departments?”
He chuckled and shook his head. “This isn’t going to be the best day of your life. Not even close.”
He lowered his head and kissed her. His lips felt so right against hers, like coming home. One hand pressed into the small of her back, holding her to him. The other made a trail up her spine. Her whole body hummed with happiness. Lucas was her boyfriend again. He loved her.
When his mouth made a trail to her ear, she whispered, “Other days are going to have a hard time competing with this one. Just saying.”
“Not even close,” he said, his lips nuzzling into her neck. “The one where we’re walking down the aisle will knock this one out of the park.”
Her inward gasp was only partly because the feel of his mouth on her neck was gasp-worthy. He was talking aisle-walks. “You’re right. That one will be my favorite day.”
“Good.” He returned his lips to hers. They probably would’ve stayed that way, wrapped up in each other and oblivious to everything else, but they were interrupted by a round of applause.
Riley broke away from Lucas to see that the wayward guests and employees had finally returned, en masse, to the lobby.
She knew she was blushing but didn’t care.
Lucas took hold of Riley’s hand. “Let’s finish our dinner,” he said and led her to the stairs. “We still have terms to discuss.”