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

Oh, why not?

If the fountain is so popular for wishes, I might as well give it a shot. I take one of my last coins out of my bag. Closing my eyes, I focus on my wish. Please let me sell this inn and get the money I need for my investment so that I can find myself and spend my days at coffee houses with hipsters and learn how to meditate and do whatever hipsters do with crystals. Please let me sell the inn. Please let me have money. Please let me get a credit card and basic cable. Please, please, please. I tentatively toss the coin in. It barely makes it over the lip of the fountain, and rolls down the side, making its way around the other coins until it finally rests by the muscly tall man’s coin. They lay there side by side…my dull nickel and his shiny quarter.

Hmm…I don’t feel any different. There doesn’t seem to be a wave of magic happening. No Freaky Friday, alternate universe, change of life in a non-hormonal way, woo-woo wish-granting. Nothing. Truthfully, I don’t know if wishes are even real. But it only cost me a nickel, and that’s a pretty good deal, even if things go haywire with the will. I’m reasonably sure they won’t. This is a done deal. I have the letter in my bag to prove it. I’ve got the inn. It’s for sure.

See the lawyer. Sign the papers. Get the inn. Sell the inn. Easy peasy.

With my wish made, I pick up my bag and walk the rest of the way to the attorney’s office on the other side of the plaza.

I think I’ve got the right address, but this can’t be the place. The lawyer for my aunt’s estate is supposed to be at number two Plaza Circle, but the sign over the door says this is Apple Love, which turns out to be a store for apple-headed dolls and not some weird juicing place for alternative sexual persuasions.

Inside, the store is terrifying. It’s like a horror movie on acid. Like a nightmare after eating Chinese food at midnight. Like Saw but with an abundance of lace doilies and American flag curtains. There are shrunken apple heads with beady eyes staring at me from every surface. And there’s a lot of surfaces. Multiple, multiple surfaces. There are shrunken apple heads on tables, shrunken apple heads on shelves, shrunken apple heads behind glass, shrunken apple heads piled on the floor.

It’s a massacre. I shudder and swallow down bile, which is rising in my throat. Apple head bile…the worst kind.

I close my eyes and breathe through my nose, trying to calm myself. After a few seconds, I take a peek, and they’re still staring at me. Apple heads. My heart races. Who would have thought that I would be so scared of an old apple dressed in a pinafore dress?

“May I help you?” an old woman asks, making me yelp in surprise. She’s around eighty years old, and she’s wearing a pinafore dress just like seventy-percent of the dolls. In fact, she’s a dead ringer for half of the dolls in the store. Her face and head look wrinkled and shrunken, just like a desiccated apple. Yikes.

“Miss? You okay?” she asks. “You’re awful green. You want some taffy? I’ve got some banana taffy that will knock your socks off.”

Suddenly, I’m not creeped out anymore. Anyone who offers me candy is good with me. Besides, I’m very hungry.

“I would love some banana taffy.” It’s not quite as good as ice cream, but I have a killer sweet tooth. I would happily live off of Skittles and Tootsie Pops. Putting my duffel bag on the floor, the apple-head old lady gives me a fistful of taffy. I unwrap one and put it in my mouth. It’s delicious. Sweet and it makes my teeth stick together.

“That’s better,” she says. “You look almost human.” That’s funny coming from a woman who looks like a desiccated fruit, but she’s right. The taffy is making me feel much better. I didn’t know how worn out I was getting released from prison and traveling all day. I pop another taffy into my mouth.

“Yum,” I say with my mouth full of the sticky candy. “I think I’m lost. I’m looking for a lawyer named Robinson.”

She points upward. “Second floor. The stairs are in the corner past the Fourth of July dolls and the I Like Ike dolls.”

I thank her and grab my duffel. With a mouth full of taffy, I climb the stairs. The lawyer’s offices take up the entire second floor, which isn’t that big. There’s a waiting room with a receptionist, and behind her is a door to what I suppose is the attorney’s personal office. There’s wood paneling on the walls, and the floor is covered with avocado green carpeting. The office looks like a scene from That 70s Show.

“Beryl Meyer to see Mr. Robinson,” I tell the receptionist. She looks like the prison warden of the prison I just left, and I break out into a panic sweat, thinking for a minute that this is all a practical joke, and I’m going back to the slammer.

“Please have a seat. He’s running a little late.” Her voice comes out like Glinda the Good Witch of the North, which is the polar opposite of the warden’s jackhammer gravelly voice. The difference between them breaks me out of my panic. Relieved, I take a seat in the small waiting room.

That’s when I notice him. He’s been sitting in the waiting room on the other red plastic chair the entire time. It’s the guy from the fountain, and boy is he handsome. Outside, I only noticed that he was tall and muscular, but now I can see the entire package clearly. The entire Gerard-Butler-in-300-can-eat-my-dust package. He sits with his muscular back straight and his large hands in his lap. He stares straight ahead. It’s like he’s got the whole sentinel pose down. He’s wearing fatigue pants and a Brock Lesnar MMA T-shirt. His jaw looks like it was cut by a stone-cutter, and his bone structure is sharp and perfect. Michelangelo would look at this man and give up sculpting because no way could he ever make anything close to this perfect. One look and he would take a hammer to David.

I’ve known men like this before. I mean, not as good-looking, but damned close. It’s called false advertising. Mind-blowingly, drool-inducing beautiful on the outside but jerk on the inside. He’s got the false advertising down better than anyone I’ve seen before. He’s Chris Pratt on his best day mixed in with a crapload of holy wow.

“I’m not falling for it,” I tell him, jutting my chin up.

“Excuse me?” he asks. Damn. His voice is sexy, too.

“I’m not falling for it,” I repeat, slowly, enunciating every word. He furrows his eyebrows and studies my face, like he’s posing a silent question.

“Mr. Johnson is ready for you now,” the receptionist interrupts. I stand up, but the hunka-hunka guy stands up too.

“I’m sorry, but I have an appointment,” I tell him.

“I was here first.” His voice is still like velvet, melted butter with a sharp edge that slices through my pelvic region. He’s looking down at me like I’m a fly that needs to be swatted.

The receptionist stands between us. “The appointment is for both of you,” she explains, looking slightly concerned.

“Both of us?” he asks.

“I think you have me confused with someone else,” I say. “We’re not together.”

The receptionist rolls her eyes and gives me a shove toward the office. “You are for this appointment. Go on. He’s waiting for you.”

The attorney is a middle-aged man with an old-fashioned comb over and a large pizza sauce stain on his striped shirt. My stomach growls, thinking about pizza. The lawyer doesn’t bother shaking our hands. “Sit. Sit,” he urges waving his hands at the chairs. He takes a seat at his desk and opens a file.

“I’m the executor of Eleanor Thatcher’s will.” He looks up and throws me a sympathetic expression. “Lovely woman. She will be missed.” I take his word for it. I didn’t even know my Aunt Eleanor existed until two weeks ago.

“She was a lovely woman,” the man sitting next to me says.

I check him out. He’s young and good-looking. Could my aunt have been some kind of super cougar? “You weren’t her…” I start.

“Her what?”

“No, you couldn’t be.”

“Couldn’t be what?” He never quite relaxes. His body is tense, like a spring ready to get sprung. He narrows his eyes, as if he’s daring me to say it.

“You know,” I say charitably. I don’t want to say it. He’s in his early thirties, and my aunt had to be older than dirt. Was he her gigolo? Were there still gigolos these days?

“I don’t know. Enlighten me,” he says, sounding angry.

“Thor was a friend of the family, and knew Eleanor his whole life, isn’t that right, Thor?” the lawyer says.

Thor nods. “Thor?” I ask, dragging out the word, as if it has four syllables. “Are you for real?” But I know the answer. He can’t be for real. He looks like a Greek god and has a Viking god’s name. He’s all kinds of god and no kind of real, but I don’t like where this conversation is headed. Is Thor going to hone in on my inheritance? This can’t be happening.

“What’s going on here?” I demand before Thor can answer.

“I’m getting to that,” the attorney says and hands each of us a key. “Eleanor left you the High Tide Inn, all of its contents, and all of the land that surrounds it. Congratulations.”

“Why are you giving Thor a key?” I demand.

“Because she gave it to both of us,” Thor says, his voice a dull roar. “You and me.”

“Halfsies?” I squeak.

Funny how things work out. Scratch that. What I mean to say is: Funny how things don’t work out. How things crash and burn and explode like the Empire’s Death Star. I mean, the Death Star took a lot of work, and it had to be a big bummer for Darth Vader to have it blown up under his nose.

All right. Bad example. Darth Vader probably deserved it. But I don’t deserve to have my dreams dashed. I was so close to finally getting my life on track. Then, boom, splat, kapow. My life is a whole list of comic book words.

After the meeting, Thor grabs his key and marches down the stairs at a fast clip. He marches everywhere all the time, like he’s perpetually on parade on Veterans Day. I run after him, but weighted down by my duffel bag, I struggle to keep up, and where he’s wearing sensible work boots, one of my bedazzled flip-flops gets caught on a stair, and I have to backtrack to slip it back on. To top it all off, my duffel knocks into Wonder Woman Apple Head, a special edition doll by the front door, and I have to help return it to its invisible plane. By the time I make it outside, Thor is halfway around the Plaza, getting into a golf cart. I run as fast I can while crimping my toes to keep my flip-flops on, finally catching up to him.

“This is your car?” I ask about the golf cart. He ignores me and starts it up. I run around to the driver’s side and put my hand on the steering wheel.

“Wait. Wait. Let’s talk about this.”

He turns off the cart and leans back, looking at his hands. “What do you want to talk about?”

“You stole my inn!” I screech at the top of my lungs. I probably need to change my strategy. I don’t do the diplomatic thing so well. I’ve heard that you get more flies with honey than you do with vinegar, but I’ve never had a chance at one fly, and now that I’ve got a whole swarm of them within reach, a Viking god is going to swipe them all away from me. “I mean, you stole my inn,” I say in a quiet, calm voice, doing my best at diplomacy.

Thor starts the golf cart, again. I run around to the passenger side and hop on. “Where do you think you’re going?” I demand.

“To my inn.”

“Not your inn. My inn.”

He takes a deep breath. “I don’t like losing my temper,” he says calmly.

I get in his face. “Oh, big man is getting mad. Big man is getting real mad,” I say in probably the most irritating, annoying way imaginable. My mouth is up against his ear, and I sound like I’m twelve years old and have been told that I can’t go to a Beyoncé concert. I’m not proud of my behavior, but I’ve never been in control my whole life, and just when I thought I was the master of my universe, the universe imploded, and I’m left with being master of nothing. Not even an atom.

Thor turns his head so that we’re face to face, our eyes so close that he looks like he has four, and I can smell his breath. Oatmeal and chocolate milk. “I’m this close to pushing you out of my cart,” he threatens.

“I’ll call the cops.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to sell my inn, invest my money, and live a happy life.”

“Fine,” he says.

“Fine?” my heart leaps into my throat, and a bubble of happiness bursts in my brain. “Really?”

“When I get the inn up and running and turning a profit, I’ll buy you out. I don’t think staying in business with you is such a good idea, anyway.”

My brain swirls and turns, trying to make heads or tails out of his offer. “You’ll buy me out?”

“I’ll buy you out.”

“How about you buy me out now?” I ask.

“I don’t have any money.”

Swell. “How long until you have the money?”

“Not long. A year or two.”

My hopes and dreams come crashing down around me, again. “Are you kidding?” I screech. “I can’t wait that long. I have thirty-seven dollars in the whole world. Wait a minute. No I don’t. I have eighteen dollars after the ferry ride. How can I survive with only eighteen dollars?”

Thor puts the cart into drive. “Not my problem. Are you coming or staying?”

Am I coming or staying? If I stay, I have eighteen-dollars to my name and no place to stay. It’s possible that the apple-head lady will put me up for a night, but I don’t think I’d like sleeping among the apple heads, no matter how much taffy she gives me.

Thor sits with his hands on the small steering wheel, his back straight. He’s got a killer body, about negative five percent body fat. I bet he would never eat banana taffy, and that fact helps me beat back the attraction I feel for him. I’m trying hard to deny any attraction for him. Stay on track, Beryl. Remember the false advertising.

Thor’s a hard, disciplined man, and he seems like he’s bound and determined not to give in, but I’ll be a lot closer to getting my way if I go with him. I can’t convince him of anything if I’m on the other side of the island, eating taffy.

“Let’s go,” I say. Without another word, he peels away from the curb. We make a circle around the wishing fountain, and drive through the village.

“Funky place,” I say. “Apple head doll store. Am I right?”

He doesn’t say much. He stares straight ahead, either focused on the road ahead, stuck in his own thoughts, or actively ignoring me.