Chapter 5
Five
SKYE
There are few betrayals more personal than a shower that lies to you.
I turned the hot tap and waited. The pipes coughed. The boiler whirred. I stuck a hopeful hand under the spray and was rewarded with a blast of Arctic punishment that made my soul leave my body and hover near the ceiling, filing a complaint.
“Traitor,” I told the shower. It hissed in what I took as agreement.
Lovely. Now I needed to fix this before the guests started complaining.
Dreading having to call the annoying plumber, I wrapped myself in my robe, shoved my feet into slipper-socks with pom-poms that had seen better days, and went downstairs.
I’d barely hit the last step when I heard the metallic clank of tools, a muffled curse, and the suspiciously alive rattle of my ancient hot-water heater.
I rounded the corner to the utility cupboard, ready to tell off a burglar with hopefully excellent DIY skills, and stopped so hard my slippers squeaked.
Noah was kneeling on the floor with the cupboard door open and his shoulders inside like he intended to climb into Narnia via the boiler.
His jacket was on the floor, sleeves were shoved up, and his forearms flexed around a tool I did not know the name of, which felt like a personal failing and kind of annoyed me.
There were two safety manuals open on the floor, neither of which he seemed to be reading, and the muscles in his arms flexed.
It would be rude of me to ogle him while he was working, but apparently it was too early in the morning for me to remember my manners, and I took a moment to appreciate his very fine backside.
I used to wrap my hands around his waist and dig my palms into the back seat of his jeans, loving how he felt beneath my hands.
“What are you doing?” I asked, which came out more sharply than I intended because I was cold and the morning had already betrayed me and also it hurt to think of sexy moments from the past with him.
He startled, bumped his head, and swore in a tone that even would have made the Book Bitches scold him.
“Good morning,” he said, backing out of the cupboard, big and awkward and annoyingly handsome, into my hallway. “I’m negotiating with your hot-water heater.”
“Oh good,” I said. “Because it’s been very stubborn lately and has refused all my reasonable offers. Have you tried threatening it with a sledgehammer?”
“Step one on my list,” he said, wiping his hand on his shirt. “Step two is asking it nicely with a spanner. Step three is calling Gregory. He seems to know all the right people to fix things in town.”
“You can’t just … fix things,” I said, flailing my hands. “That’s not … that’s not how we do this.”
“We?” He tilted his head and I flushed.
“I mean. Here. At the inn,” I said, waving at the cupboard. “I have a system.”
“It appears your system is failing,” he said mildly, and the worst thing was he wasn’t wrong. It was embarrassing to have him see the worn edges of my struggling business.
“Why are you in my cupboard, Noah?”
“I couldn’t sleep. Your pipes sounded like a rave in a tin can. There’s a leak right there.” He pointed, and I had to edge closer to see, which meant I had to smell him. Coffee and soap and a hint of cocoa. The nerve. “It’s dripping onto the pilot, which means it’s struggling to stay lit.”
He touched something with the spanner, the boiler sighed, then caught, then purred in a way I haven’t heard in months.
I let myself have one, just one, tiny groan of pleasure. Hot water might be my love language.
“Don’t,” I said quickly, catching his grin. “Don’t look smug.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Still … the corners of his lips tugged up in that deliciously handsome face.
He was absolutely dreaming of it.
“I appreciate the ... help,” I said, because my gran had trained me to use manners. “But you can’t just start fixing things around here.”
He sat back on his heels. “Why not?”
“Because.” I folded my arms over my robe so my annoyance had a shelf to perch on. “Because it’s my job.”
“And you’re doing three people’s worth of work by yourself.”
“It’s my inn.”
“And it was your gran’s inn,” he said, not unkindly. “And she’d haunt you for letting this place chew you up.”
The words landed like an elbow to the ribs. “Leave my gran out of this.”
“I’m offering help.”
“You’re offering control,” I snapped, surprising both of us. “You always do. You swoop in and decide how the story goes and everyone else is supposed to clap and say thank you.”
His jaw tightened. “That’s not fair.”
“No? That manager I told you not to trust. Remember him? You put your life in his hands and drove away while I stood on the footpath with a suitcase and a backbone and promised myself I’d survive it.
Forgive me if watching you crouch in my cupboard with a spanner feels like déjà vu in a cheaper jacket. ”
He flinched. I hated that it made me feel vindicated.
“I’m not trying to rewrite history,” he said evenly. “I’m trying to fix a leak.”
“Beautiful metaphor. Very on brand.”
“Skye.” He put the spanner down and lifted his hands like I might bite him. “You’re tired. Let me take some weight. I can do repairs, I can run out for supplies, and I can even answer the bloody phone. I grew up here too, remember? I know my way around a tool shed. I’m not … helpless.”
“And I’m not helpless either.”
“I never said you were.”
“You didn’t have to.” My voice went sharp. “Every time you ‘help,’ I hear, ‘You can’t handle this.’”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Well, that’s what I hear!”
“Skye. I love … I mean, loved, you.” Noah’s voice caught and my eyes widened.
Had he just said what I thought he’d said?
“Despite what you may think, you still matter to me. I know I have a lot of sins to atone for, and if sorting your hot-water heater out is a place to start, well, I’d like to.
I want to …” His voice trailed off, and what looked like longing filled his eyes.
I had no idea how to respond to that. All reasonable thought left my brain as I stared at his mouth, wanting desperately to feel his kiss. Just once more.
We stared at each other, breath fogging in the cold hall, the boiler purring like a cat that enjoyed drama.
He’ll be gone soon, Skye, and then life will return to normal. My thoughts returned, waving red flags at me.
Footsteps creaked on the stairs. One of my American guests, a nice woman in her sixties having a tour of Scotland, called down to me. “Skye, dear, have you got any more of that marmalade? I’m afraid I’ve gone through it all.”
I took a shaky breath. “I have guests. I have rooms to turn over. I have a boiler that, thank you, is no longer plotting my demise. I don’t have bandwidth for … for you in my cupboards and whatever else this is.”
“Copy that.” A muscle in his cheek jumped.
He opened his mouth to say something else, but coward that I was, I turned my back and fled to my room and quickly got ready for the day, before racing to the kitchen.
My hands shook as I set up trays, the cups clinking in an accusatory way, as if they’d been following along and had notes.
By the time the tea was poured, Noah had vanished. His jacket was gone and so was the spanner. The boiler, that traitor, continued to hum.
I carried the tray into the lounge, delivered tea to the guests, smiled, joked, lied charmingly, and escaped back into the hall where nobody could see me crack.
The house breathed around me. The inn had lungs … anyone who said otherwise hadn’t slept in an old building long enough. Too wound up to do the laundry, I went upstairs and locked the door to my flat. I just needed a moment to sort my thoughts out.
“I love … I mean, loved, you.”
I couldn’t ignore how my heart had instantly responded to his words, and a part of me hated myself for how excited I’d been to hear he actually still cared. Or had cared. Or at the very least, wanted to make some amends. What had he meant by that?
Leaning my forehead against the door, I took several deep breaths and tried to get some control of my emotions.
During check-ins, I was professional, competent, and mildly amused by the chaos of human behavior.
When things went wrong, I never stressed.
I just got things done. Why had Noah’s arrival turned me into someone who nearly cried at a boiler and a banshee who yelled at a man for helping?
I wasn’t someone who normally had wild swings of emotion, and now I felt untethered, and unsure of my footing.
I paced the tiny sitting room.
The radiator clicked. A gust of winter wind rattled the window. The air shifted.
And then my gran—dead eight years and still very much herself—cleared her throat.
“Are you done?” she asked.
My head snapped up so fast my neck made a noise. She stood by the fireplace as if she’d come out of it like Santa, in her house cardigan and her sensible skirt and her leather slippers with the little bow. She gave me the look she reserved for people who left wet towels on floors.
“You’re not real,” I told her, my chest hitching, because apparently my response to ghosts is impoliteness.
“Och, I am,” she said. “And don’t you be sassing me.”
“Bloody hell. But I must be stressed. This has to be a stress response.” I flapped a hand toward her. “Lack of sleep. A byproduct of being emotionally waterboarded by a man with a spanner.”
“Language,” she said mildly, which was rich coming from someone who once told a plumber to stop “faffin” about like a damp hen.
I pressed my palms to my eyes. “I am hallucinating my gran.”
“You’re avoiding the point,” she said, and crossed to sit in her chair. “You were always good at that, pet.”
“I am very busy,” I announced, unsure of what to say. “I have rooms to turn over.”
“You have a heart to unclench,” she said, like she was reading the menu and ordering for me. “Sit.”
I sat at her feet, wanting closeness, because, even if this was a stress-induced hallucination, I still missed her.