Chapter 26
MAGGIE
After spending much longer at the estate than we’d planned, it was pretty late when we pulled up to the closest hotel we’d been able to find on Ryan’s navigation app.
While he talked about why it was better to sleep over than trying to drive all the way back to the city in the dark, I just stared out the window, still thinking about that kiss.
For his part, Ryan already seemed to have forgotten about it. As soon as we’d broken apart, he’d marched away and started babbling about the logistics of covering the wall in flowers, and by the time he and Henry had ironed out his concerns, it had been like it hadn’t happened at all.
He hadn’t mentioned it or even looked at me in a way that made me wonder if that was what he was thinking about.
Back to being all business, he’d taken the lead with Henry, evidently intent on making sure that if he was going to try throwing the most elaborately outlandish wedding in history, there would actually be vendors available to help.
Eventually, when we’d climbed into the car, finally alone again, I’d thought he might bring it up, but nope. He’d been too busy listing the dangers of driving on a dark road after sunset.
“I think they’re closed,” he said as he parked in a spot I’d assumed was near the front desk. “Google said they were open, but that doesn’t look like a hotel that’s accepting guests to me.”
I blinked myself out of my thoughts and realized he was right. No light streamed out from inside, every window completely dark. When I turned to actually look around the parking lot, I realized the same was true for it. Every spot around us was totally empty.
“Maybe it’s haunted,” I suggested lamely, unable to help myself from stealing a quick glance at his lips.
Gosh, the things those lips did to me.
Honestly, I’d never felt anything like it. Ryan kissed like a man on a mission from Venus herself. Like his only aim was to make a girl feel like she was the only woman in the world—and to melt her panties at the same time.
Every other time I’d been kissed, there had always been some measure of hesitation, but not him. The guy had kissed me like he knew exactly what he wanted and left me with zero doubts that I was it.
Obviously, that wasn’t true. It must just be the way he always kissed, but dear lord above, I would love to be the woman who got to kiss him for the rest of her life. But he hadn’t just known, so clearly, I wasn’t that woman, and besides, he wasn’t who my dad had chosen for me either.
“Not everything is haunted, Maggie,” he said, and my gaze snapped back up to his.
I sighed. “Maybe not everything, but this hotel sure looks like it is.”
“Should I at least try to call them before we head home?”
I glanced back at the dark building. “You can try, but I doubt there’s anyone in there.”
“Yeah.” He followed my gaze with his own and dropped his head back against the seat. “I guess it’s a sign we should make the drive back to the city.”
“Or,” I said quickly, just as his shoulder tensed to shove the car back into gear. “We could go to the cottage. It’s only about thirty minutes away.”
Ryan’s gaze slowly returned to mine, with a silver shimmer in it from the moonlight filtering into the car. “I’m not particularly eager to actually break in, you know.”
“I still have the key, so we wouldn’t have to break in,” I said. “I never gave it back to Marcus, but I took it when we left instead of leaving it in the same place the instructions in my grandfather’s letter said to look for it after his passing.”
For just a moment, apprehension shone back at me from Ryan’s eyes, but after considering it for a moment, he nodded. “Yeah okay. We’re not driving another two hours into New York tonight and I need another day or two to finalize vendors anyway.”
My stomach fluttered. “Wedding vendors?”
“Yep. We need to find a caterer, entertainment, security, and someone who’ll rent us a carnival. That’s going to take time.”
I dipped my chin in a nod, but I could feel how wooden it was. Everything he’d said was completely logical. It was just that I’d spent the last couple hours obsessing about that kiss while Ryan was obsessing about planning my wedding to somebody else.
Fantastic.
“Okay,” he said after another beat, turning over the engine and backing out of our parking spot. “Let’s go.”
I turned to the window so he wouldn’t see the unreasonable, illogical, downright inappropriate disappointment on my face. On our way to the cottage, neither of us said much, both of Ryan’s hands on the steering wheel as he navigated stretches of unlit road before we finally rolled into Deerfield.
Not long after, we pulled up to the cottage, but honestly, it also looked like the setting of a horror movie. Broken trees from the other night’s storm and probably one or two more since jutted into the dark. The windows were black and the porch creaked when Ryan unlocked the door.
I stuck close behind him, relieved when he flicked on the lights and a warm, orange glow illuminated the living area. Ryan let out a slow, deep breath too, then glanced at me over his shoulder and flashed a smug smile.
“Let there be light,” he said, striding farther in and flicking on some more lights as he went past the kitchen and the hallway. “Welcome home, Maggie.”
For a second, I flashed on what it might be like to hear him say those words for real. Like, if we ever moved into a place of our own, together, but I crushed the thought with a mental hammer and glanced up at the dark staircase.
“I’m not sleeping in the bedroom. It’s definitely haunted.”
He groaned. “What is it with you and hauntings today? I’m starting to regret showing you that venue.”
“Don’t you dare.” I gave him a serious glare before heading to the narrow linen closet I’d found last time we’d been here.
After pulling out a few blankets and two pillows, I carried them to the couch and kicked off my shoes, getting comfortable. Ryan sat down on the other end. Unfortunately, as always, his laptop wasn’t far away.
He finally pulled off his jacket and undid the top few buttons of his shirt after ditching his tie, but he kept his socks on once he’d kicked off his shoes too. Apparently, that was as far as he was willing to go before getting to work.
As I threw the blanket over both of us, he leaned back on the couch and put his computer on his knees. Then he opened it and got right back to planning. “I want to talk to the caterers Henry suggested first thing tomorrow.”
“Okay.” I lay down on the couch, burrowing my head into my pillow before reaching for one of the books I’d brought downstairs from the attic on our last visit.
I’d been fascinated by them then, and I was definitely more fascinated by them now than I was with the logistics of wedding planning. The coffee table was still covered in them, but Ryan clearly didn’t notice.
“Next up, we need to focus on the rentals,” he said. “If we’re doing a carnival, we have to do it right. So we’ve got to find out what the suppliers can actually provide.”
“Cool.”
“Oh, and the photographer,” he said, clicking into a new tab before searching a couple of names from the list Henry had given us. “We want someone who actually understands what we’re doing rather than turning this into another society wedding, right?”
“Right.” I watched him for a moment, so utterly focused on his laptop that a fire could’ve broken out on my side of the couch and he probably wouldn’t have noticed. “You’re taking this very seriously.”
He didn’t even glance at me. “What’s the point of doing anything if you’re not going to take it seriously? That’s just wasting time.”
“Fair enough.”
I glanced at the book in my hand, the edges softened with age and spiderwebs of tiny cracks running across the leather cover. There was no title, with only a faded symbol pressed into the front to provide any clues about what it was. The symbol didn’t mean anything to me, though.
Gently sliding my fingers under the front cover, I opened it and a photograph slid out, landing face-up on my arm. The woman staring back at me from it was the same one from my grandfather’s wedding picture.
Shit. How did I forget about this?
As determined as I’d been to find out the story when we’d last left here, I hadn’t even really thought about it over the last couple weeks.
Too much had been happening and too many other things had demanded my attention, but seeing her again made that strange, prickling feeling return to the back of my mind.
Without even really thinking about it, I picked up the photograph and turned it over, not expecting much, but a note had been scrawled across the bottom right corner and my breath caught. Viola, 1954. The trip to see Our Cottage.
“Ryan,” I breathed, blinking hard as I stared at the note. “That’s my grandfather’s handwriting.”
He looked up from his laptop, his brow furrowed until he saw the picture in my hand. His eyes widened. “Is that another one of her?”
“Yeah.” I held out the photograph and he took it, glancing at the picture before slowly turning it over. “Her name is Viola.”
“It also looks like this was their cottage, not just his.”
My heart pitter-pattered in my chest and it was like I could feel the blood draining from my face. “I think he had an affair, Ryan. That’s the only explanation, right?”
Saying the words out loud was horrible, but Ryan’s features tightened and he sighed, then raked his fingers through his hair and squeezed his eyes shut.
“Look, I know what it’s like to have to process something like that.
My dad did something similar to my mom, but that doesn’t mean it’s happened here. ”
“I thought my grandfather was a good man,” I whispered, so shocked now that reality was fully staring me in the face that I couldn’t even find my voice.
“Maybe he was, Maggie. Let’s not jump to conclusions about someone who isn’t here to defend himself.” He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “The wedding picture is pretty significant. This could be something else entirely.”
He handed the picture back to me, a soft smile appearing on his lips as he held my gaze. “We don’t have proof of anything yet. These are only clues. If we keep following them, eventually, we’ll get to the truth.”
I kept looking into his eyes, a sense of peace settling over me when I registered the fact that he’d said we.
Ryan wasn’t outright dismissing my suspicions or trying to convince me to leave the past in the past. I wasn’t sure if he actually meant to include himself in the investigation I intended to launch, but he had.
That meant a lot to me. Like, a lot.
There was definitely something here, but I suddenly didn’t feel so desperate to solve it. I supposed Ryan was right. There were other explanations.
When he finally turned back to his laptop to keep making arrangements for my dream wedding—a wedding most people would’ve considered either a nightmare or a disaster—I shifted closer to him without really meaning to.
The glow of the screen washed over his face as he typed something else into a search engine, frowning for a beat before he nodded and copied a few website addresses into a document open in another tab.
Since it looked like he had things completely under control, I didn’t interrupt again, instead letting my mind wander to the day we’d had—and that kiss.
I rested my head against his shoulder, sort of expecting him to move or to ask what I was doing, but he didn’t. Instead, he shifted the blanket higher around me and kept typing with one hand, the steady rhythm of his fingers against the keyboard strangely comforting.
My eyes grew heavy as I listened to it, sleep threatening to drag me under until one final question occurred to me. “Ryan?”
“Hmm?”
“Did you mean to kiss me like that?”
The rhythmic typing stopped for a second, but then it started up again and I was asleep before I heard his answer. If he’d even given one at all.