Jane and Austen (4 page)

He hesitated before answering, “How could I miss the big
event
?”

And now he was back to insulting my job again. As if he sensed my annoyance, Austen reached out and took my hand. With a start, I saw that he was still wearing the bracelet I had given him before he left—it hurt that he thought more about my gift than he did about me.

“You need a break,” he said. “I can already see Taylor running you ragged. We should go to the beach today. I haven’t gotten a sunburn in way too long.”

I jerked away from him, more violently than I intended, but he just didn’t get that I didn’t want to grow attached. “I just heard you tell Taylor that you were much too busy with the books to help us out. I’m not dumb. I get it. You think my job is a joke.”

“What? Are you kidding me? I did
not
say that.”

“You didn’t? Okay, let’s see. The first thing out of your mouth when you saw me was, ‘Wow, Jane, I can’t believe that your job sucks so much.’”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Not in so many words—it sounded like you were asking me why I would still want to be here. And now you think you can just be charming and I’ll blow off the opportunity of a lifetime—even if you think Taylor’s wedding is a train wreck—so that I can have the privilege of entertaining you at the beach?”

“So you think I’m charming?”

I fumed. “Yes! Too much! Should I pay you for this honor of taking you out, or maybe we can work out some kind of trade? Let me give you my life savings. Oh, wait, I don’t have one because my job’s worthless!”

“Jane, are you really mad at me, or are you doing that thing you do when you’re stressed out and you take it out on me? You know I’m here for you if you need to let out a little aggression.” He thought this was a joke. I let out a deep, shuddering breath and he threw his hands up in a defeated gesture. “Okay,” he said. “Fine. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings . . .”

“Oh, you can’t,” I interrupted in a calmer voice, “because I don’t have them now.” He looked surprised, and I quickly amended my words. “For you. For you!” And then I flushed, because that sounded even worse. I knew the telltale redness had crept up my neck and nestled into my ears, because Austen stared at me in fascination. I hadn’t meant to let him know how I’d felt. I was like one of those idiots who gave everything away to the bad guy in the first five seconds of an interrogation.

Austen’s brows furrowed. I didn’t dare move, but if he did, I’d be out the door faster than he could get to me and try to smooth things over between us. I couldn’t face him after what I’d just admitted. Except here we were, face to face, and I couldn’t breathe. I listened to the jingling bells of the door behind me.

“Hello? Uh, hello, do you work here? Who gets my car keys?”

I swallowed and turned. A beautiful girl at the doorway gave us an uncertain smile. A dimple deeper than the Grand Canyon appeared at her right cheek. “I’m one of Taylor’s bridesmaids. I have reservations. Bella Thorne.”

The girl walked in and I was immediately sorry when I got her full glory. Bella Thorne was the youngest in Taylor’s group of friends, and I felt like an evil stepsister staring down Cinderella. She had long blond hair that hit the middle of her back. Freckles decorated a sun-kissed face. Her jeans and wrap shirt might as well have been a paper sack, because she’d outshine anything she wore.

Freddy, our errant bellhop and valet, careened into the driveway on his golf cart. His red porter jacket mirrored a captain’s in the British army, and the way he held himself made me think he never lost a battle. His dark hair was messy but purposely so, and his normally brooding looks were more pronounced than ever. He had barely parked before he was out of the vehicle and hurrying for the front door. Since he was never that eager to report to duty, I had a feeling he had seen the girl on her way in and was
desperate
to be of service.

 “Jane,” he greeted me. He normally wasn’t so pleasant. Without sparing me another glance, which
was
completely normal, Freddy swept his dark hair from his arrogant eyes. “I’ve got this,” he told me under his breath. My suspicions were immediately confirmed when he swept an elegant bow to the beautiful bridesmaid and plucked her luggage from her hands only to drop it at my feet. “I’ll take you to your room,” he said.

Bella dimpled again, looking pleased at the effect she had over our handsome baggage handler. Freddy was already ushering Bella onto his golf cart before I came to another realization. He had left me with all the luggage again. Even worse, I was afraid to look back at Austen and see just how little my accidental declaration of love meant to him after he had seen the perfect girl. I took a deep breath and dragged Bella’s luggage to the pile in the middle of the room.

“Hey, Jane,” Austen said.

I turned cool eyes on him, hoping I looked like the heartless jade I wanted to be. “Are you offering to help me with the luggage?” I asked.

“No.”

Of course he wasn’t. If he cared about me at all, he’d stumble all over himself to make sure that my dainty hands never felt any kind of strain. I knew the true-love drill. I was fooling myself that I meant anything to him. I managed to get the smaller bags under each arm and the larger bags in my hands. I backed my way to the door that led out to the hallway—which unfortunately made it so that I was facing Austen again.

He looked as though he wanted to say something, but then when he saw my struggle, he started to laugh again. “If you need help, just ask.”

“Oh, you mean I have to beg?” I hit the door with my back and realized that it wasn’t going anywhere unless I possessed a third hand to turn the knob.

He sighed and circled the front desk to get to me. “I’ve got it.”

He cornered me against the door and tried to wrestle Mary’s plastic-covered bag from my hand. “No,” I said. “You lost out on the opportunity to be a gentleman. Now it’s my turn . . .”

“To be a gentleman?”

“At least my mother raised one.”

“Give me the bags.” He sounded stern this time.

No, I was a strong, independent woman, and I didn’t need a man who didn’t need me. “Austen, if you really want to help, you can . . . guard the front desk. Help me out by taking keys.”

“You mean be your assistant?”

“If it isn’t too lowly? Being the slave of a slave?”

I dropped the bags and my fingers fumbled behind me until they found the doorknob. Though he guffawed, he also looked torn. He had just told Taylor that he had more important things to do than to help me, except I happened to know that he wanted to steal me off to the beach instead. I tottered through the door into the hallway, hoping it didn’t look like the handles from the luggage were digging holes into my hands. Austen retreated to the counter, taking one last backwards glance at me and shaking his head in frustration. I planned to leave him there all day if I could swing it.

Dragging the bags through the hallway to the backdoor, I readjusted them in my hands. There was no golf cart in sight and I’d have to take them through two courtyards to get them to Mary’s and Bertie’s bungalows. After the first two steps, I ran into an archway. I grunted and scrambled past it only to knock my shoulder against the rough stucco wall of the Rosing’s house. I blindly felt my way through the first courtyard, running into anything hard I could find so that by the time I reached the first bungalow, I was aching and out of breath. I dropped the luggage onto the steps, hearing Mary’s complaints inside the Uppercross. Her door was open in the back and she was shouting over to Bertie whether the former runway model liked it or not.

“It is freezing in my place.” Mary gave a loud sniff. “My nose is cold. Feel it.”

“I’d rather not,” was Bertie’s clipped reply.

I stretched out my fingers to get some feeling back in them and hauled up the luggage again, staggering over the shared patio of the two bungalows.

“Oh, there you are.” Bertie stepped from her door, the bright sunlight outside making her silhouette look like a paper doll turned sidewise. Mary also came out, wiping at her nose with a wilted tissue—her nose wasn’t dripping at all. I dropped Mary’s plastic-covered bag off first in her living room. She eagerly ripped off the plastic from it, searching through the contents until she found a thermometer. “I’m sure I have a temperature. My brain is burning up!”

Mary was making a war zone out of the Uppercross Bungalow by taking out a ton of plastic bags from her suitcase and throwing them around the room. “I can’t afford waterproof luggage,” she said. “I’m sure Taylor’s husband will give her such things after they’re married. He’s rich. I won’t mind taking a cruise with them if they paid for it,” her voice came in huffs through her exertions as she spread the plastic bags over her bed and searched around the mattress perimeter with shaking hands. “You don’t have bedbugs, do you? Horrible bloodsucking things—I saw a documentary. It would just be my luck to get them.”

I edged past her to Bertie’s place in the Southerton Bungalow and dropped the designer luggage onto the plush carpet. Bertie didn’t spare them a glance. She crossed her arms like the crossbones on a pirate flag. “My cutie needs some exercise. Please take her, J.”

J?

Before I knew it, the scrawny, white teddy bear was in my hands, and Bertie had slammed her door behind me. The puppy was smaller than my hand and wore a red-and-white-striped onesie. What was I going to do with the little rat-bear? She licked my arm with a tiny pink tongue, and my heart melted. I could always add her to the collection of stuffed animals in Mister’s kitty box.

I cradled the puppy against my neck and kissed her grape of a head while I skirted around the palm trees and fountains in the courtyard. Unhindered by bags, I made faster time on my way back. Reaching the back door to the lobby in the main building, I spied Austen still at his post at the checkout counter. He had resorted to taking out his laptop and working irritably on his bookkeeping. No wickedness in his smile, no concerned looks; and when I entered the room, he showed no undue interest in me at all.

I refused to feel bad. Nothing had been ruined between us because nothing existed there, except for the fact that we liked to get on each other’s nerves. That meant that I was ahead of the game today.

I handed him the puppy and went back to the last of the luggage.

“Jane!” he said. “A teddy bear? Really?”

“She needs to take a potty break.” I picked up the bags that belonged to Gorgeous or Beauty or whatever her name happened to mean and threw the one with a strap over my shoulder.

“I can’t believe it!”

Ann-Marie’s voice made me jump. I had been so distracted with Austen that I hadn’t noticed that she had come back to torment him. She had taken her usual spot on the sofa near the TV. “Do you know who John Willoughby is?” She whipped around to pierce us both with a look.

I wasn’t sure who she was talking to, but Austen got rid of the suspense and shook his head. “No idea.”

“Well, he’s dead! He got shot ten times. They think it’s a murder-suicide and he was trying to break up with his girlfriend. She shot him over and over and then killed herself.”

“Hmm, and
that
is why I stay clear of relationships.” Austen peered over the dog’s head at the books of accounts. “But you never know. Maybe he shot himself ten times and then killed her.”

 Ann-Marie stumbled to her feet and dashed over to the desk. “How could he do that? That’s impossible.”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“What sort of world do you live in?” Ann-Marie was practically shouting at him now. “He couldn’t even do that!”

 I felt my lips twitch up, but then forced them back down. Austen’s completely inappropriate jokes weren’t funny. Ann-Marie caught sight of the wriggling animal in Austen’s hands. “Puppy!”

She quickly divested him of the wriggling creature and gave it more loving than it could possibly want. “You cute little thing. Is this yours, Austen? Hot man with puppy—that only makes you ten times hotter, you know. I always wanted a puppy.”

“Look.” I held my hands up to stop the volley of words. “Whoever takes the puppy, just make sure that she flushes after she uses the facilities outside. Then you can return her to the witch in the Southerton Bungalow for processing.”

Austen laughed. “What are the witch’s plans for the little doggy? The glue factory or a witch’s brew?”

“I . . . I . . .” He was already joking with me. I wasn’t sure what I thought about that. “I think the lady just wants to weigh down her purse with it,” I said.

“Too bad,” Austen said. “Poopsy would make a perfect little hot doggy.”

 “Oh no!” Ann-Marie snuggled the puppy closer. “Don’t you listen to those horrid people. You stay with me and I’ll keep you safe.” The puppy licked her nose. She took the little rat-bear outside, continuing to talk as if the puppy might answer her back. The TV blared behind Ann-Marie, forgotten. A headline ran across the news station, reporting that a certain Will Dancey had taken a break from his music tour and was rumored to be heading to California.

That’s when I remembered that he had nowhere to stay.

I turned off the TV and whirled to face Austen. “You can’t stay in the Wood House. There’s another guest staying there.”

“The Wood House?” he asked. “You realize there are rats staying there too, and spiders and sand? Not to mention me. Sorry, it’s taken.”

“Now, wait a second. Freddy was going to clean it up to make it suitable for guests.”

He laughed at that. “Isn’t there a crummy little loft upstairs? The last time I saw it, no one was paying full price for that.”

And it was also mine. “Not funny, Austen.”

“I guess neither of us wants to give up our rooms for a guest. Look, Jane, there’s a nice hotel next door. It’s not a sin to put it to use. Put the extra guest in the Kellynch.” He flipped lazily through his books at the counter like I was the most boring thing on earth.

And he had
not
solved my little dilemma. Taylor would kill me if I put Dancey in the Kellynch, but no argument would stir Austen. And since his parents owned the place, I didn’t really have a say. My fingers landed on Bella’s luggage. There was nothing more to do but to retreat with it through the narrow hall. I trudged out the back, occasionally muttering a complaint or two every time I slammed my fingers against the wall. Courtship was dead, true gentlemen were deader—well, once I was through with Austen. Okay, the luggage was my fault, but at least I was stronger for it. Already I was getting a great arm workout.