Chapter 4
CHAPTER 4
T wo weeks later…
G eorgette swiped her finger across her phone, her tummy already doing a little somersault of anticipation. Before she could click on the message, she ran into a wall. Or maybe a wall ran into her? All she knew was that once again she teetered precariously close to the edge of the stairs, until strong arms wrapped around her, securing her. Unlike last time, they didn’t tumble to the ground. This time she was slammed mercilessly hard against the wall, the breath juddering out of her as her spine made contact.
“Seriously?” Burke said. Usually Georgette had trouble reading tone, but not this time. Now she received all of the exasperation he tried to convey, which was unfortunate for him because it immediately spiked her irritation and righteous indignation into the stratosphere.
“Are you kidding me?” She tried to shove at his chest and made no purchase, like shoving cement. “You broke in again and startled me?”
“You were on the phone on the stairs, again ,” he accused.
“Which wouldn’t have been a problem, if I hadn’t encountered you .” She put as much derision as she could into the word, which was a lot, considering how much she’d come to loathe him. The weekend of the conference had been a big one for her, since she hosted the same group for three nights, including meals. She’d spent weeks prepping for it, looking forward to it, and then it was ruined by the man now before her, the man who insisted she turn off her hearing aids every time she entered a room, the man who sent her back into silence. Some offenses were unforgiveable; this might be one. When the weekend finally ended, along with his strange, broody silences and disapproving stares, she’d never been happier to see the back of a guest. And here he was, unannounced and disapproving. Again. “Why are you here?”
Burke let her go and took a step back. “I need a place to stay.”
Georgette scowled, an action that felt unnatural on her usually smiling face, as she mentally scanned the inn’s calendar. She wanted to tell him she was filled up, wanted it desperately. Unfortunately it was a lie. The season was slow, and she needed the money. “For how long?”
He shrugged. “Indefinitely, I guess.”
“What?” Had she heard that wrong?
“I moved here.”
“You mean you moved to this town,” she clarified.
“No, I mean I moved here, to your inn.”
“You can’t move to my inn,” she blustered.
“Why not? I already familiarized myself with the escape routes.”
“That’s not…that’s the worst possible reason to move somewhere,” she said.
“No, the worst possible reason is because the people you’re hiding from found you and you have to relocate.”
She blinked, not certain if he was trying to make a joke. Somehow she thought he was not. “Regardless, you can’t move in here.”
“Why not?”
She tried to toss up her hands in exasperation, but he was still too close. “Because I’m running a business.”
“One where you rent rooms to people. I’m people.”
“You can’t rent a room from me every night,” she said.
“Why not?” he returned in the same bored tone.
“You can’t afford it, for one. I charge more than a hundred dollars a night.” She announced this as if it were a shameful secret, and also the deciding factor.
“That’s three thousand a month, not so far off what I was paying in DC.”
“But…but obviously you won’t be making as much, living here. Our economy is very depressed.”
“You’re not doing your part to sell your town here,” he told her. “Or your inn.”
“I’m being practical. You cannot move to a place on a whim and declare that you’re moving in with a stranger, unannounced and uninvited.”
“It’s not a whim, I’ve always wanted to live in Maine. It’s been on my short list for years. Visiting a couple of weeks ago gave me the chance to confirm that I like it, it’s suits me. As for the inn…” he gestured to the grand, empty hallway. “It seems like you have some rooms available.”
Her scowl returned because it seemed like he was making fun of her. “Right now I do, but I don’t always. Most rooms will be booked, over the next few months. You’ll have to do a full rotation, if you stay, picking up your stuff and rearranging. You can’t always have the good escape room. You’ll hate that.”
“I will hate that,” he agreed.
Her momentary triumph was short-lived when he continued.
“But I wasn’t planning to take one of the guest rooms.”
Her eyes widened. “Surely you’re not suggesting that you want my room.”
“No, that would be crazy.”
She quirked an eyebrow, as if to say that if the shoe fit, he should wear it.
“I’m going to live in the attic,” he finished, so nonchalant that she almost missed it.
“Like Casper the ghost?” she blurted.
“If you say so.”
“You can’t, the attic’s not finished, it doesn’t even have insulation. You’ll freeze.”
He shrugged. “I’ve slept worse, colder places. And obviously I’m going to finish it.”
“What?” Her voice had reached that register that only dogs could hear now, filled with incredulity and dismay. “What?”
Burke pressed a palm to his ear and wiggled it back and forth. “Yeesh. Maybe you don’t know this, because you can’t hear yourself, but you’re really loud and shrill sometimes.”
“What?” Georgie demanded, an impossibly few decibels higher. “What nonsense are you spouting? You can’t go around finishing people’s attics for them.”
“Why not? I scouted it last time I was here. The bones are good.”
“The bones are mine, and did you seriously break into every room in my inn?” she demanded.
“Yeah. And how can you say no to someone finishing your attic?”
“Because it’s…because…it’s so not normal, ” Georgie huffed.
“Who cares?”
“I care, my brother cares, this town cares. Do you know what people are going to say when they hear I have some strange guy living in my attic?”
“I thought about that, actually,” he said and paused, as if waiting for her to congratulate him for the forethought. Georgie shrugged helplessly, unable to fathom where to go, or where his brain was. “I could fix stuff.”
“What are you talking about? Fix what stuff?”
“Practically everything. This place is a disaster.”
Georgie didn’t think it was possible for her to become angrier, until it happened. She thrust her finger toward his face. “You cannot disparage my inn.” This inn was everything to her, the representation of her entire life of striving.
Burke looked confused. “Disparage? I’m stating facts, how is that an insult? When a house is almost two hundred years old, stuff breaks, stuff falls apart.”
“It’s fine,” she insisted.
He pointed to a giant water stain in the ceiling above them.
“It’s shaped like Big Bird, it’s practically art,” she maintained. Having him point out the very real flaws in her building made her feel something akin to panic. Georgie was well aware of the disrepair around her, but it was all she could do to keep her head above water. Anything more than survival felt like too much, at this juncture. But she was in good company because no one in town was thriving. The area was depressed and growing more so.
“Okay,” Burke drawled, as if explaining something to an idiot. “Maybe I’m not saying it right. You need a handyman, I need a place to live. I am handy. I will live here and fix stuff.”
There had to be a flaw in that plan, didn’t there? Georgie stared at him, trying to make sense of the confusing jumble in her head. “I don’t understand what’s happening here. You’re really moving to another state, on a whim, to live in my attic and be my handyman?”
For the first time, he broke eye contact and looked away, his expression…pensive? Georgie didn’t know what it was, but it softened something inside her. “Haven’t you ever felt the need to get away and start over?”
She had, many times. It was what compelled her to culinary school, to buy this inn. “Yes, but the thing about starting over is that your problems don’t cease to exist; they come with you. Sometimes starting over doesn’t make a difference.”
“This time it will,” he said. He sounded so certain that it softened her even more.
“How are you going to have money? A handyman wasn’t in the budget. I…I can’t pay you.” It was embarrassing to admit she couldn’t pay for something she desperately needed, but it was reality. Any little bit of extra money she received went into her lagging savings, to try and cover the times when things were even more desperate.
Burke’s cheek ticked, increasing her embarrassment. He must realize the disparity here, that she would be getting more from him than he would be getting from her. What was a free room—in an unused space—compared to everything that needed done in the inn? “I have savings.”
“You can’t…” she began.
Burke held up a hand to halt her. “Let me worry about what I can and can’t do. I…need this. I need a fresh start. Also…”
“There’s an also?” Georgie interrupted.
“There’s always an also,” Burke said. He took a breath and looked her straight in the eye. “I saved your life.”
“Excuse me? What?”
“That first day, you almost fell down the stairs. I saved your life.”
“Okay,” she drawled. “First of all, you almost killed me. Did you forget that you’re the reason I almost tumbled down the stairs? You were lurking, and I pinged off you. Second, thank you? Please live in my dusty attic, for services rendered, is that what I’m supposed to say?” What exactly did he want from her, in this scenario?
“No, see, it doesn’t work like that.”
“Like what?” Did everyone walk away from conversations with this man thoroughly confused?
“You owe me a life debt.”
Her eyes bugged. “You’re going to stick around here until I save your life?”
He actually laughed at that, though laughter for him consisted of saying, “Ha,” with zero inflection, and then standing perfectly still, not even blinking while the “ha” settled. “That’s not likely, and that’s not what it means.”
“Fill a girl in, won’t you? I’m afraid I’m not caught up on the life debt manual,” Georgie groused.
“When someone saves your life, that person becomes responsible for it.”
“Mr. Burke.”
He almost visibly shrank back. “It’s Burke.”
“Burke,” she amended, gathering the hem of his army-green t-shirt in her fist. She wadded it and gave it a hard tug. “That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard, and I have an older brother who was once a teenage boy, so I’ve heard a lot of dumb stuff.”
He yanked his shirt free of her grip and smoothed it. “My culture takes umbrage at your derision.”
“What culture? The culture of Weird Burglars Who Owe Life Debts and Live in Attics?”
“Yes, we meet on Wednesdays. Sometimes we’ll meet here, I hope that’s okay.”
She laughed and gave him another ineffectual shove. “You cannot be this weird and live in my attic.”
“By definition, doesn’t one have to be a weirdo to live in an attic?” he asked.
She tipped her head, studying him. “How weird are you?”
“I guess you’re going to have to roll the dice, if you want to find out,” he said.
And just like that, Georgette had a weirdo in her attic.