Inn & Out (A Romantic Comedy) (Five More Wishes Book 2) (10 page)

I turn back to the inn. Thor is almost finished with the first coat of paint, and the house has taken on a whole new look. Bright. Beautiful. Welcoming. For the first time in my life, happiness is easy and within reach.

But it’s not in the plan.

“The event planning is working,” I tell Thor as we walk hand in hand up to the front door. “You’ll be able to buy me out soon.”

A person goes her entire life being treated badly by others. Then, one day she wakes up happy and treated well by another, and she sabotages herself, treating herself worse than anyone else could. I want to take back my words. I want to tell Thor that I want to stay and run the inn, have crazy alligator photoshoots on the cliffs, brawling kindergarten parents in the back, and dinner with geriatric contractors every night. I want to tell him that I want to stay with him, that I want to change my stupid plans. Vanilla lattes and vision boards are stupid.

I want boeuf bourguignon instead.

But I don’t say any of this. It’s like my lips are sealed shut and won’t let anything sensible through. Thor drops my hand. “I forgot I’ve got some work out back to do,” he says softly and walks away.

The day passes slowly. Jean and Bert read me the riot act about starving them the night before and insist that porking doesn’t replace three square meals a day. If I was hiding last week, Thor is hiding today. He’s nowhere to be found. When lunch time comes around, the doorbell rings, and this time it’s the pizza delivery man. Thor is right behind him.

“I got you pizza and salad for lunch,” he tells Jean and Bert. “Don’t complain.”

Thor takes my hand, and we walk upstairs. At first I think he wants to do more of the horizontal mambo, but he sits me down on the bed, and I know from looking at him that he’s dead serious, and the serious is not the good kind.

He hands me a thick, white envelope. “That’s five thousand dollars. I’ll send you the rest as soon as I can, but that should get you settled.”

“What?” I croak, my throat thick with emotion.

“Your plan. I think you should go now instead of later.” We lock eyes for a second and then he looks away. Running his fingers through his hair, he paces the room. “You need to leave while I can still let you leave. I need this place, this life. You don’t. This thing between us is a train wreck waiting to happen.”

I bite my lip to stop the tears that threaten to fall. “Okay,” I say, which isn’t at all what I want to say.

“Okay. There’s a ferry in an hour. Can you pack up now?”

“Okay.”

The second okay comes out resigned. My desire to shout “no” and fight to stay with him is pushed back to a place locked deep inside me. Here’s the evidence that I’m still a bum magnet. Who else would make me pack my bags and throw me off the island? It’s like a bad episode of Survivor.

It doesn’t take me long to pack. I haven’t accumulated more belongings in my short time on Summer Island. Thor insists that I keep the money from the two events, and I stuff it down into my duffel.

“Where are you going?” Bert asks when Thor and I walk to the front door.

“Beryl’s leaving,” Thor says when I don’t say a word.

Jean marches toward me and takes my hands in hers. “You’re not meant to leave, sweetie,” she says with unusual kindness, like she’s been going strong on the medical marijuana. “This is your home, now. Don’t you see that? Besides that, you and Thor are like me and Bert. Know what I mean?”

I shake my head.

She slaps the side of my head. “I mean forever, dummy. Forever.”

“Forever,” Bert agrees. Forever sounds wonderful and impossible.

“Beryl has other plans,” Thor explains, swinging the duffel over his shoulder. “Come on.”

“You’re a fool, Thor,” Bert calls, while we climb into Thor’s golf cart. “Love is forever! Make her stay!”

***

The weather turns, and it grows dark in the middle of the day as the clouds roll in. A light rain begins, and since we’re thirty minutes before the ferry leaves, we decide to wait it out in the nearby diner. Thor has driven in stony silence, except for grinding his teeth. He’s careful not to look at me, but I can’t stop looking at him.

Inside the diner, there’s only one empty table. A tall, young waitress with short black hair and dressed in a pink, utilitarian uniform takes our order. “Hey there, Thor,” she says brightly. “They say a big storm is coming in tonight.”

“I hope the roof holds out,” he says, darkly, staring at his hands.

“Hi, I’m Norma.” She introduces herself, and I like her immediately. She’s open and friendly, like a pixie who speaks her mind. But I’m painfully aware that she’s not my new friend; she’s only a last face on my way off the island and away from Thor. This is the short goodbye, a moment in a diner before I turn my back on Thor, the High Tide Inn, and a life of forever.

“Beryl.”

“I know who you are,” she says with a smile. “Everyone knows. This is a very small island. How about some apple pie? I’ve got homemade vanilla ice cream to go with it.”

“Sounds good,” I say, but I know I won’t be able to eat. When Norma leaves to get our pie, I feel a sudden urge to open up to Thor, even if I’m not prepared to open my heart. “I was in prison for a crime I didn’t commit,” I tell him. I don’t want to leave without telling Thor my story. “I thought I was in love, but I don’t know what love is. No one’s ever loved me, so how could I know? Anyway, I didn’t know that he was dealing drugs on the side, and he was hiding a bunch of it in my apartment. When he was arrested, he turned on me to cut a deal. When they found the drugs, they took his word over mine, and that’s how I wound up behind bars.”

Thor puts his hand on mine, and it feels wonderful. I wish he would hold my hand forever. “That’s terrible. I want to kill the creep.”

“I want a man who loves me. He doesn’t have to love me more than himself, just ordinary love. True.”

“Beryl, I gave you my room, my bed, and my money. You know you have my heart.”

But he doesn’t throw me the L word, and I don’t want to drag it out from him. “Here you go,” Norma says, serving the pie a la mode. I stab it with a fork, but I can’t eat it. When the time comes, Thor walks me the short distance to the ferry. The sky lights up with lightning, and a crack of thunder makes me jump in surprise.

“I’m not going to say goodbye,” I say, my voice betraying my emotion. I take my duffel from him and step away before he can hug or kiss me because I don’t think I can handle that. I walk to the ferry but before I get on, I turn around. “How dare you make me fall in love with you!” I yell back at Thor. “That wasn’t fair!”

He stands stunned for a moment but then rocks back on his heels and runs toward me. When he reaches me, he holds me close. “If you’re in love with me, why are you leaving?”

“You told me to.”

“You told me you wanted to leave. Your plan. Something about vanilla lattes and vision boards.”

“When you say it that way, it sounds stupid,” I complain. He holds me in his arms, like he’s never going to let go. I sink against him, letting him take my weight.

“I don’t want you to stay out of guilt or something worse. I want you to want to stay the same way that I want you to stay.”

“What way is that?” I ask.

“Like Bert and Jean, like Charles and Matilda.”

“You’re not selling your point very well.”

“You know what I mean, Beryl. Love. I love you. Slow burn, forever kind of love.”

It sounds wonderful. I want it to be true, but I’ve been fooled so many times before, and it’s always ended badly. I step back out of his embrace. “I’m stupid. I’m a bum magnet. I’m so stupid that I spent two years in jail because of it. I may be stupid, but I’m smart enough to know how stupid I am.”

“I’m not arguing your logic,” he says, smiling.

I slap his arm. “Don’t smile. Don’t be happy. How dare you be happy?”

“Okay. Sorry. But you love me and you’re stupid, and that makes me very happy.”

It starts to rain in earnest. Big round drops penetrate my clothes. I lean back to get a good look at Thor. “You’re happy that I’m stupid? Did you get into Jean’s medical marijuana stock?”

“I’m happy because I’ve changed your plans,” he says.

“You what?”

“I’ve changed your plans. I’m saving you from yourself.”

“Hey, you don’t save me. I save you,” I say, punctuating my words by poking his chest.

“That’s what I meant to say. You’re saving me by loving me and letting me love you, and I hope you’ll let me share your bed…which is my bed, but that’s beside the point. So I’m changing your plans, and you’re coming back with me.”

“Until you get the inn up and running?” I ask, my hope fading into the distance.

He nods. “Up and running and until we’re as old as Jean and Bert.”

“That’s really old.”

“I want to grow old with you.”

“You’ll probably look great, but my face will be hanging to my knees,” I say.

“I can’t wait. Although…”

“Although what?” I ask, worried.

“I can handle the face, but you might want to think about shaving your knees. I was nearly flailed alive by your leg stubble last night.”

“I’ll think about it,” I say, and my stomach growls. Suddenly, I’m starving. “Hey, is there a Sizzler on this island?”

“If there isn’t, I’ll build you one,” he says, and takes me into his arms and kisses me while the rain continues to pour.

Download the next installment of the Five Wishes Series:
Quick Bang

Continue reading for the first chapter of
Quick Bang
, Book Three of the Five More Wishes Series:

CHAPTER 1

There’s a whole lot of sex going on. At least I’m assuming it’s sex. I’m seeing limbs flinging this way and that, bodies stuck together, pretty much the whole shebang...no pun intended. It could be a mugging, but that usually happens with one’s clothes on, and this is happening with a definite lack of clothes. The couple also looks very happy, which is not normally the go to emotion during a mugging.

Now, their arms are wrapped around each other with her leg up around his hip. It’s like an erotic romance book cover. If I wasn’t watching through a closed window, I’d bet money that I’d hear some moaning. Lots of moaning.

Who wouldn’t moan while in Thor Stockman’s arms? He’s one of the best looking men on Summer Island, which is chock full of good-looking men. He and newcomer Beryl were hit and miss for a while. I was rooting for them, but Marcy, the other waitress here, bet fifteen dollars that they wouldn’t wind up together. It looked for a minute like she would win her bet. In fact, just fifteen minutes ago, I was serving Beryl and Thor pie a la mode here in the Summer Island Diner where I work, while they were saying a sad goodbye and getting ready for her to take the ferry to the mainland.

But she obviously missed the ferry, and instead of breaking up, they’re lip locked, limb locked, pelvis locked, and not coming up for air against the lamp post on the abandoned pier under a rain that’s getting heavier by the minute.

I fan myself with a menu and fight back the urge to put my hands against the glass to see more clearly. There’s low visibility because of the brewing storm, which has plummeted Summer Island into darkness in the middle of the afternoon, and because I’ve been breathing pretty heavily on the window while watching them do the nasty, and now the window is fogged up.

“Whatch’a looking at, Norma?” Marcy asks. She’s hemmed her pink waitress uniform so high that I can see her blue panties when she bends over. She’s told me that her sewing skills have given her enough income in tips to buy a new living room set with two recliners. My sewing skills aren’t that daring or profitable. My pink waitress uniform is only hemmed to just above my knees, and for that I had to take off a yard of material because I’m only a hair over five-feet-tall. I’m short all over, with a short, button nose, a black bob haircut, and even short fingernails.

“Nothing,” I tell Marcy, stepping away from the window and turning her around so that she doesn’t see the action. Thor and Beryl deserve their moment of privacy, even though they chose to get hot and heavy out in the open in the middle of the afternoon. Not that it looks like day outside. It’s more of a total eclipse, Dorothy is going to fly overhead,
District Nine
kind of day. We’re a small island off the coast of Southern California, so we’re not used to bad weather. I don’t even own an umbrella. But we’re getting our share of bad weather today. The wind and rain are throwing boats against the wharf, making a terrible noise.

“You-know-who is here,” Marcy whispers to me, as we walk to the kitchen to pick up the orders.

“You don’t have to call him you-know-who.”

“I don’t want him to know that you’re talking about him.”

“I’m not talking about him. You are.”

Marcy grabs hold of my arms, stopping me in my tracks. “Right. Exactly. Why aren’t you talking about him? When are you going to start talking about him? He won’t stay interested in you forever, you know.”

Her voice is low but urgent, and her big blue eyes look like they’re going to bug out of her face from earnestness. I sneak a peek at you-know-who, who’s sitting at his regular table in the corner.

You-know-who.

I take a deep, appreciative breath. Every time I think of you-know-who’s name—Stone Jenkins—I take a deep, appreciate breath. He’s been my big brother’s best friend since I can remember, and therefore, I’ve been taking deep, appreciative breaths for a very long time.

Stone is about six-foot-three, strong as a horse, blond with green eyes. His skin is weathered from working as a deep sea fisherman since he was a teenager, since even before I started working at the Summer Island Diner when I was in high school. He’s a great fisherman, probably because he’s so hot that the fish jump into his boat on purpose. Anything to get closer to him.

When Stone’s boat’s docked, he comes to the diner every evening for an early dinner. Otherwise, he’s out fishing, just like my father and brother. He grew up hanging around my house, stuck like glue to my big brother and becoming a surrogate member of my family.