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“You didn’t punch him in the face; you kicked him in the balls.”
“Yes.” She let out a breath. “And thank you for the assist.”
“No problem.”
“No, really. Thank you. My pride took a hell of a hit over Jonathan. It meant a lot to be able to have some payback. I owe you.”
“Yeah, so you said.”
They stared at each other for one throbbing moment with something dangerous and interesting sizzling around the edges.
“Okay. Name your price.”
He could think of any number of dangerous and interesting things. She’d expect something like that, something that involved dimly lit rooms. He figured her for a woman who usually got just what she expected.
“I like pie.”
“Excuse me?”
“Pie. I like it. It’s a good time of year for cherry pie. Anyway, I gotta go.” He got to his feet; so did his dog. “You know, sometimes what goes around comes around; sometimes it doesn’t, and a good kick in the balls has to be enough.”
Maybe it was, she thought as he left, but why didn’t it feel like enough?
Now that her mad was over, and she was left alone, everything connected to her life that involved Jonathan seemed hollow. All the years she’d dedicated to his family’s businesses, to him, to being the perfect employee, companion, hostess felt flat and false. Felt horrible.
Not only had she given the Wickhams and Jonathan her best, but in the end, her best fell short. Worse, so much worse, they’d used her. There was no question his parents had known. They’d entertained her in their home, as their son’s … companion. They’d met her family.
They’d betrayed her. They’d made her a fool.
No. She pushed herself to her feet, put the glasses back on the tray. She’d done that to herself. She was responsible for her own actions, her own decisions, just as she was for her own happiness.
She carried the tray inside to the kitchen, calmly poured the remaining tea down the sink. Yes, her mad had fizzled, she thought as she loaded the glasses in the dishwasher. Now she felt sad, sad and shamed.
Tears burned her eyes, so she let them come. Why not? She was alone, wasn’t she? Dutifully she went into the basement, carried up bottles of water, cans of soft drinks.
She restocked the refrigerator, then just rested her forehead on the door.
And smelled the fresh, warm scent of honeysuckle, felt a hand stroke her hair.
She squeezed her eyes shut. Not alone after all.
“I’ll be all right. I’ll be fine. I just have to get through this little pity party.”
Don’t cry over him.
Hope wasn’t sure if she heard the words, or if they played in her mind.
“I’m not. Not over him, not for him. For me. For the three years I gave myself to him thinking it mattered. It’s hard to know it never did. Hard to realize, to really understand he thought of me as an accessory he could buy, use, set aside, and, worse, pick up again whenever he wanted.”
She took a breath. “That’s done. I’m done.”
She turned, slowly, saw only the empty kitchen. “I guess you’re not ready to let me see you. Maybe I’m not ready either. But it helps, having another woman around.”
Better, she went into her office for the cosmetic bag she kept there. Once she’d freshened her makeup, she made a shopping list.
She had a pie to bake.
As she wrote, she heard The Lobby door open. Even as she rose, assuming her guests had returned, she heard Avery call out.
“Right here.”
She stepped out.
“What’s going on?” Avery demanded. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Ryder said Jonathan was here, and you were upset.”
“He said that?”
“Well, he said your ex-asshole came by and stirred you up. I figured it out. What the hell was that dickhead doing here?”
“He—” She broke off when she heard the front door open, and the voices pour in. “I can’t explain now.” She pulled Avery out The Lobby door. “My guests are here. I’ll tell you later.”
“I’m off at five. I’ll get Clare and—”
“I can’t, not with guests here. And these ladies like to party.” But this took face-to-face, she thought. Texting or emailing wouldn’t cut it. “Tomorrow, after they check out.”
“Give me a clue,” Avery insisted.
“He thought I should move back to Georgetown, take my job back, and be his mistress.”
“Big buckets of shit!”
“At least. I can’t talk now.” She glanced over her shoulder.
“Do you have check-ins tomorrow?”
“No, actually, I don’t have guests tomorrow night.”
“Now you do. Clare and I are coming, and we’re staying. I’ll bring food for a roast-Jonathan’s-shriveled-little-balls party.”
“Yes.” The worst edge of her mood flew away as she threw her arms around Avery. “That’s exactly what I need. Just exactly. I need to go in.”
“You call if you need me before tomorrow.”
“I will, but I’m better—much.”
A woman could always count on her girl pals, Hope thought as she turned to the door. They never let you down.
But she hadn’t realized Ryder had the insight to understand she’d needed them.
Maybe she should have.
THAT NIGHT, WHEN the inn was quiet again—though she wondered if the echoes of six happily tipsy women playing Rock Band would swirl through the rooms for days—Hope settled down with her laptop.
Carolee had the breakfast shift, she thought, so she could sleep late if she needed to. She wanted to give the search for Lizzy’s Billy an hour before bed.
She remembered the sensation of a hand stroking her hair when she’d been low. Women friends didn’t let you down, she mused, and she supposed she and Lizzy were friends—of a sort.
She brought up the website of the Liberty House School. Her ancestor Catherine Darby—whom she’d discovered was Eliza Ford’s sister—their Lizzy’s sister—had founded it. Hope had attended it herself, as had her siblings, her mother, her grandmother.
Maybe that connection would bear fruit.
She found the email address for the head librarian and composed a letter. Maybe there was some sort of documentation, old letters, something. She’d already mined her family, but according to everyone she’d spoken to, all the papers relating to Catherine Ford Darby had been turned over to the school long ago.
“Just a name,” she murmured. “We just need a name.”
The sisters might have written each other when Eliza left New York for Maryland, for Billy. If not, surely Catherine had written a friend or a family member about her sister.
Next she wrote a distant cousin, one she’d never met. Family sources claimed the cousin was writing a biography on Catherine Ford Darby. If true, the cousin might be a source of information. You could hardly write about Catherine without writing about her sister, the sister who’d died young, and so far from home.
With the emails sent, she brought up the site listing all the Civil War soldiers buried in the National Cemetery in Sharpsburg.
They suspected Billy had been a soldier, either from the area or who had fought at Antietam. Perhaps both. But the data they’d uncovered on Lizzy had her arriving at the inn right before the battle, and dying while it raged.
Everything indicated she’d given up her wealthy, well-positioned family in New York and traveled to Boonsboro—young and alone. For Billy.
Every instinct told Hope that Lizzy had come for him, for love. An elopement? An assignation? Had they found each other, however briefly, before she’d contracted the fever that took her life?
She hoped so, but everything pointed to Eliza Ford dying alone, without friends or family beside her.
So many boys died, too, Hope thought. She picked up the sad task of reading names. So many, and William was a common name.
/> Still, she stuck with it, making notes until her head began to throb and her eyes blur.
“That’s all I can do tonight.”
She shut down the laptop, walked through the apartment, checking lights and the door.
When she crawled into bed, she reviewed her to-do list for the next day. But fell asleep with the memory of that kiss in the parking lot. Ryder’s hand fisted in her hair.
The smell of honeysuckle drifted over her. But this time she didn’t feel the hand stroke her hair.
WHEN THE CREW knocked off the next afternoon, Ryder took advantage of the quiet to run through his checklist, make adjustments to the work assignments for the next day.
Dumbass snored under the plywood spanning the sawhorses, letting out occasional yips as he dreamed of chasing whatever dogs chased in dreams.
Long day, he thought. Long week. He wanted a cold beer and a hot shower, in that order.
