Chapter 2 #2
She came out from behind the desk, leading us around the living wall into the space beyond.
The large room had a long, weathered driftwood bar along one side, with intimate cocktail tables in the center of the space and clusters of overstuffed armchairs along the wall of windows overlooking the ocean.
A baby grand piano sat gleaming in one corner.
To my dismay, Erik was busily wiping down the bar and tables, occasionally sneaking unsubtle glances at us—I hoped they were at us, anyway, but feared they were mostly at only me.
Mary Alice led us to a table near the windows.
“So, as you’ve seen,” she started as we sat, “the inn is built onto the bluff here. We’re on the top level right now; there’s one guest suite on this level—that’s our two-bedroom unit—and two more levels of rooms below us.
We have seven guest rooms altogether, each with a balcony like yours.
Did Erik mention the hot tub to you? Every room has one, out on its balcony.
Those are a fairly recent addition—in fact, we were recently able to make quite a few upgrades. ”
I nodded my appreciation for Erik’s adherence to his mother’s script. “How long have you been in operation?”
“Well, my parents opened the inn when I was very young. I inherited it when my father passed away four years ago, though of course I’d already been helping him run it for many years before that.
The spa is a relatively recent addition, in the last three years.
That part of the building used to house a kitchen and dining room and library, but those required a level of staffing I couldn’t justify anymore, and there’s a very good bistro next door anyway that I couldn’t compete with.
I don’t run the spa; I lease the space to them, with an agreement that my guests have access to spa services. ”
“Is it only you and Erik running things here?”
She laughed ruefully. “Mostly. I have a housekeeper, though I help with that, too, and a couple of local girls who do shifts on the desk, but that’s about it.
There isn’t a huge workforce out here. And, of course, I’ll have a challenge when Erik goes back to school in the fall, but summer is our busiest season anyway. ”
“You mentioned that we were the only guests checking in today—”
“Yes, well, that’s because all of my other rooms were booked starting yesterday through the next few days. We do have a fairly full house. We have a happy hour here in the lounge every evening, which might be a good time to get some pictures in here, although …”
Her pause lasted so long that I was beginning to wonder if she would ever resume what she had been saying.
An internal debate played out over her face for a second before she continued, “Well, I suppose I should warn you that most of my other guests right now are actually relatives of mine. They’re all very nice, that’s nothing to worry about, but the conversation might be a little insular.
I have an aunt who lives nearby, and all of her children and one of their cousins are in town to celebrate her birthday.
So you’re more than welcome—everybody has been hanging out in here in the evenings, having a great time—but be warned that they all already know each other. ”
“Ah, I see,” I said. The idea of horning in on a family gathering sounded distinctly unappealing, but we did need some pictures, and a family group might make for better interactions in the photos than a bunch of strangers trying to pretend to have a good time.
“As long as you think nobody would mind having their picture taken—we have releases they’d have to sign—we probably will at least stop by for a minute to do that. ”
“I’m sure everyone would be thrilled,” she assured us. “Here, let me show you the spa.”
We followed Mary Alice back through the lobby, through a discreet frosted-glass door into a pastel-bathed waiting room, enhanced by the usual soundtrack of a burbling tabletop fountain and softly tinkling New Age music.
She introduced us to Letitia, the manager of the spa, a wiry, cheerful woman in her sixties with bleached hair pulled back into a ponytail and her bony frame clad in black Lycra.
“I got you guys on the books for a couples massage tomorrow,” she said with apparent surprise. “You know that means you’ll be in the same room and everything, right? It’s kind of a lovers’ package sort of thing. I can change it so you’re in separate rooms if you want.”
“All part of the assignment,” Ricky said smoothly as I felt my face burn scarlet. “I’m sure we’ll manage.”
“Suit yourself,” she said with an affable shrug.
Mary Alice led us through the spa’s main entrance out to the parking lot.
“I wanted to show you the trail down to the beach,” she said, walking beyond the inn toward the bluff.
“It’s right over here. It’s kind of a long way down, and if you’re afraid of heights it might not be the best for you, but it’s perfectly safe. ”
The path wound down through the trees in a series of switchbacks for a while before reaching a set of stone stairs carved into the bluff heading down below the lower levels of the inn. Further down, the crystalline blue-green water of the shallow inlet lapped onto a small, rocky, deserted beach.
Mary Alice excused herself, leaving us to take in the view. Ricky leaned into me, whispering, “Are you afraid of heights?”
“No,” I whispered back. “Are you?”
“No. It actually looks kind of fun. We should go down there, but tomorrow. Don’t we have a reservation at that bistro soon?”
I glanced at my watch. “Yeah, in half an hour. We should get ready.”
“Okay, but are you sure you wouldn’t rather take Erik than me? Why make him jealous thinking you’re going on a date with me, when you could take him instead and assure him that I’m not your boyfriend.”
I playfully glared daggers at Ricky. “It’s a working dinner, not a date. And if you keep up these cracks, you never will be my boyfriend.”
He raised his hands in surrender. “I take it back! Don’t push me off the cliff! Give me another chance, please. And maybe”—he shot me a shy look I hadn’t seen on him before—“maybe it could be kind of, like, partly a date?”
I gave him a small smile and a curious look as I turned to head back into the inn. He had started off joking, but had ended sounding oddly genuine, like he was really asking me out.
I wasn’t exactly in a romantic frame of mind about our dinner at the bistro up the road from the inn while we were busy talking with the owner and the chef, taking notes about the food, and taking photos.
But in between bursts of productivity, when Ricky and I were alone, sitting across a small table from each other, exchanging bites of our desserts and talking in low tones about nothing and everything, I caught a glimpse of a date.
And I realized that, if that’s what a date was like, it looked a lot like the fun and the conversations and the flirtatious sparring Ricky and I had done when we were working together in the past. Which, in a sense, made it seem like we’d been getting paid to go on free dates with each other, which struck me as a good deal.
As we walked back down the darkened road to the inn in companionable silence, I wondered what to do next.
Ricky and I had set off agreeing to have fun together on this trip, and then I’d spent the last couple of days being sleepy and edgy and avoidant.
Ricky was being patient, but I was tired of the awkwardness, and irritated with myself for being the cause of it.
We were headed back to the room that we were sharing, where we’d be alone together, more or less off the clock.
I resolved to put my nerves behind me and keep the momentum from dinner going.
Back to our room, I mused. Alone. Hadn’t Mary Alice said something about sending down a bottle of wine? I didn’t drink, but I wasn’t above giving Ricky some to keep him mellow and flirtatious. …
“So, what do we do next?” Ricky said, reading my mind as we rounded the last bend in the road leading to the inn, coming into view of the small parking lot, which was now full.
“Looks like the other guests are back. Maybe we should pop in and see about getting some pictures of that happy hour in the lounge.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, with only a mild edge of dismay in my voice. Our room would still be there in twenty minutes, I reminded myself.
There was a low hum of voices and a tinkling tune from the piano drifting out from the lounge when we entered the lobby.
I followed Ricky into the lounge, where, rather than being the boisterous family gathering we’d been promised, the party, such as it was, seemed to have broken up into a few low-energy clusters.
A handsome, sandy-haired man of about forty played the piano softly, while an elderly woman sat on the bench next to him, her eyes closed, her face tired and drawn but her body swaying slightly in time with the music.
Mary Alice sat with two other women, one slightly older, the other perhaps a decade younger, at a nearby table.
The younger woman was fiddling nervously with a straw stuck into a can of Sprite and speaking a little too loudly about something someone had said while she was cutting their hair, while Mary Alice tried to look politely interested.
The other woman made no effort to look interested at all, instead staring intently at the door over the rim of her wineglass as Ricky and I came in, and looking annoyed that we weren’t someone else.
Erik was again stationed behind the bar, talking animatedly to two red-haired teenage girls and failing to conceal the fact that he, too, was keeping us locked in his peripheral vision from the moment we entered.
“Ricky,” I hissed out of the corner of my mouth, grabbing his elbow to hang back near the entryway, “this doesn’t look like a very happy crowd. Maybe we should try another time.”