Chapter 3 #2
“A real key!” She gripped it in her fist, loving its sturdy, heavy feel for reasons she couldn’t decipher, as a long-ago image teased her from a place just beyond her memory.
Then, quick as the almost-recollection came, it flitted away.
“I haven’t seen an actual hotel key in years. What a nice touch.”
His wide eyes and gentle smile surprised her. Engaged her. Even impressed her, since she had the feeling he and his staff hadn’t received many compliments or kind words today. “I didn’t mean to walk in on your conversation.”
“Social media is both the best advertising and the worst.” Caleb stepped around the desk to her, his smile still intact, genuine.
Up close now, he smelled of pine with a hint of leather—the kind of subtle cologne that made you want to lean closer and breathe it in.
“The posts Sarah just showed me fall into the ‘worst’ category.”
“How bad?”
“Dillon Hinckley checked out yesterday. This morning, he posted a picture of his room—number 203—then gave us two stars and wrote, ‘Does anybody even care about this place?’”
Ariel mock-scowled in return. “The famous travel blogger. That’s the worst for a hotel, yet you can still smile. Genuinely.”
“The entertainment industry—the hospitality industry too, apparently—teaches us to toughen our hides.”
And to bury the disappointment and pain.
“That’s the hardest thing about living in the public eye,” she said. “Fighting to stay upbeat and yet authentic in private, in public, and in the media.”
“And move on instead of wallowing in the muck.”
“Right.” A long-ago memory suddenly surfaced, and Ariel giggled and laid her hand on his impressive bicep for a moment. “But getting a few bad hotel reviews isn’t as bad as the time last year when that woman ran onstage and proposed to you during a concert.”
A slow smile softened his face, his dark-brown eyes crinkling and—oh, my word, didn’t it just make him even more handsome? “I never did figure out how she got past security and onto the stage. With flowers and everything.”
“I felt a little sorry for her.”
“I didn’t at the time. While security struggled with her, trying to get her offstage, I got smacked in the back of the head with a mic stand and had a goose egg for a week.”
The way he said it, pretending irritation, made her laugh. Caleb smiled and moved a little closer, and she removed her hand from his arm.
“I don’t hear much laughter here.” He lowered his voice. “I’m glad you came to this run-down hotel. Even though it was second choice.”
“I’m glad too.”
“Anything else I can do for you?”
She hesitated, unsure whether to ask for a favor, in light of the day he’d had. “Maybe I should wait.”
“No, tell me. I owe you one.”
“Actually, you don’t, since you did me the first favor the night of the Dove Awards. But…” After a moment’s thought, she jumped right in. “Do you have a moment for a quick question?”
“Yeah, but I’m starving, and you probably are too. Since the check-in rush is over, we can grab a bite at the restaurant.” He gestured toward a door with an 1852 Island Grill sign above it. “Maybe on the patio.”
Oh, he’d touched her sweet spot. “Whenever I eat outside, I feel as if someone gave me a present.”
“I love to give presents.” He offered his arm.
Ariel hesitated, recalling her aunt’s vow to Daddy.
She knew better, but both her father and her aunt would definitely call this romantic.
When the Sweetheart of Nashville had crossed his lobby with the grace of a dancer, her smile tentative and the hem of her long pink dress swaying softly around her cowboy boots, Caleb had braced himself, refusing to let his thoughts stray in the direction they wanted to go.
Experience had told him years ago that he couldn’t give a woman the security she needed until he figured out whether he wanted the life of a musician or an innkeeper.
Technically, his former fiancée, Stephanie, had told him. Either way, truth was truth.
After two weeks away from the music, the stage, and the fans, he’d have liked nothing more than to spend a quiet evening with a sweet, pretty woman who still lived the life he’d loved and feared he’d lose.
One who knew the close and almost spiritual bond among a band who regularly opened their hearts to each other and an audience as they expressed life, love, heartache, and faith together.
Who’d experienced the rush of being a small part of something unexplainable, bigger than mere sound.
And who felt the rush of contributing the speck of talent the Lord had given so He could reveal Himself through something as silly and frivolous and life-giving as a song.
He missed that life more than he’d known he would, when he left it all behind—whether temporarily or permanently, he didn’t know—for the sake of this heap of wood, brick, and stone. And he’d give almost anything if he could take it back.
Anything except his obligation to a grandfather and a centuries-old legacy.
But now, Caleb felt nothing but foolish as he stood here, waiting to see if she would walk with him or turn away.
A man could leave his arm stuck out toward a woman only so long…
With the temperature rising in the room, Caleb was a fraction of a second from withdrawing both his arm and his offer when she smiled and slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow.
“It’s cooler outside too,” he said as he breathed a sigh of relief and reached for a menu from the host stand. “My grandfather reopened the restaurant last year when your cousin Dani started trying to rejuvenate this island. Everything’s good. Especially the locally caught whitefish.”
They stepped outside to the spacious brick patio and lawn behind the inn.
Seeing it through Ariel’s eyes, Caleb realized they needed to hire a full-time gardener.
He chose a secluded table beside a leggy, overgrown lilac bush with a scent unlike any he’d smelled south of the island, and he handed her the menu. “What sounds good?”
“Barbecued brisket, corn pudding, and biscuits with muscadine jelly. But since I can’t get them this far north…
” She gave him that heart-stopping smile of hers, opened the menu, and took only a moment to choose.
“Next best thing—an artisan cheese board with sourdough and lobster mac and cheese. And sweet tea.”
As she looked up from the menu, their dark-haired waiter approached wearing black pants, a white shirt, and a black tie with a perfect Windsor knot. He raised one brow, his mouth twisting as if he could hardly hide a grin. “What can I get you, Boss?”
Caleb gave him a bogus scowl that quickly morphed into a smile.
“Knock it off with the ‘boss’ thing. Miss Sullivan, this is Blake St. John, my friend and leader of the men’s small group at church.
He owns Jonathon Island Outfitters on Main Street.
I called in a favor and asked him to help me out when I learned we’d have a crowd. Blake, meet Miss Ariel Sullivan.”
“My pleasure, Miss Sullivan. The music sounded great.” Turning his gaze to Caleb, he raised his electronic point-of-sale gadget to take their order. “Thought I was hallucinating when I saw you with a date, Boss.”
Caleb chanced a glance at Ariel and caught the gleam in her eyes. Apparently, the idea hadn’t totally repulsed her.
“Cheese board, mac and cheese, whitefish, coffee, sweet tea,” Caleb rattled off, then he sent Blake away with a shooing hand motion.
“Sorry about Blake. He jokes around to mask his grief. He lost his wife in a motorcycle wreck two years ago,” he said after Blake had laughed and walked away. “We met way back in first grade, when my family came home for a summer, and we’ve been friends ever since.”
A shadow he couldn’t identify crossed her face then disappeared. “Caleb, you’re one of the best guitar players in the biz. Maybe the best.”
While the abrupt change of topic surprised him, he couldn’t deny the wave of satisfaction her words brought. “I appreciate the undeserved compliment. Especially since Isaiah Mackay plays in your band. Nobody compares to him.”
Ariel closed her eyes for a fraction of a moment, and when she opened them, he thought he saw a flash of pain.
She hesitated, and he sensed the change.
“I need help,” she finally said. “Besides the concert at the end of our stay, my aunt and I are here to brainstorm, choose some new songs, and formulate a new image.”
In the falling dusk, a breeze picked up, blowing a few fine strands of hair across her face.
She brushed them away, seemingly without thought.
On a nearby lamppost, the old-fashioned light began to glow, revealing a faint glistening in those beautiful blue eyes.
“Isaiah broke his hand today. He’s headed back home, to his cottage on our Nashville horse farm. ”
“Knowing Isaiah, he would’ve rather fractured his hip than his hand.
” Hearing about another silenced musician didn’t sit well.
He pushed aside the feeling and focused on Ariel’s problem, but it didn’t take much thought to figure out why she was here.
He softened his voice. “I think I know what you want to ask me, but go ahead.”
“I need a temporary lead guitar player to help us reimagine our band’s sound and to play our concert at the end of our stay.
I’d like to offer you the job.” Ariel glanced around the patio and lawn, then cleared her throat and met his gaze.
“Unless you’ve decided to leave the music industry altogether. ”
Leave music behind—never. Leave his band?
If Granddad had his way, Caleb would never return to the Drake Hamilton Band.
His tenth great-grandmother, Elizabeth Jane Kennedy, would probably feel the same, since she’d started this whole legacy mess 245 years ago, when President Washington deeded her this parcel of land and she built the island’s first little log inn fifteen hundred feet inland.