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“She’s your ancestor.” With his habitual shrug, he went out, walked to the parlor door. He tried the knob, glanced back. “How about telling your great-great-whatever to cut it out.”
“Cut what out?”
He jiggled the knob again.
“That’s just—” She nudged him aside, tried the knob herself. “This is ridiculous.” Out of patience entirely, Hope continued to rattle the knob. Then she threw up her hands, jabbed a finger at it. “Do something.”
“Like what?”
“Take off the knob, or the whole door.”
“With what?”
She frowned, glanced down. “You don’t have your tools? Why don’t you have your tools? You always have your tools.”
“It was a lightbulb.”
Temper merged with just a touch of panic. “It wasn’t a lightbulb. I told you it wasn’t a lightbulb. What are you doing?”
“I’m going to sit down a minute.”
“No!”
At her near-shout, D.A. moseyed to a corner and curled into it. Out of the line of fire.
“Don’t you dare sit on that chair. You’re not clean.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” But he went around the chair, opened the window. And considered the logistics of the roof.
“Don’t go out there! What am I supposed to do when you fall?”
“Call nine-one-one.”
“No. Seriously, Ryder. Call one of your brothers, or the fire department, or—”
“I’m not calling the fire department because the damn door won’t open.”
She held up her hands, took a breath. Then sat down herself. “I’m just going to calm down.”
“Good start.”
“There’s no call to be snotty with me.” She pushed at her hair—and yes, the in-between length definitely annoyed. “I didn’t jam the door.”
“Snotty?” It might’ve been a smirk, might’ve been a sneer, but it hit just between the two. “I’m being snotty?”
“You take snotty to a new level. You don’t have to like me, and I keep out of your way as much as possible. But I run this inn, and damn well. Our paths have to cross occasionally. You could at least pretend to be polite.”
Now he leaned back against the door. “I don’t pretend to be anything, and who says I don’t like you?”
“You do. Every time you’re snotty.”
“Maybe that’s my response to snooty.”
“Snooty!” Sincerely insulted, she goggled at him. “I’m not snooty.”
“You’ve got it down to a science. But that’s your deal.” He moved over, looked out the window again.
“You’ve been rude to me since the first minute I met you. Right in this room, before it was a room.”
She remembered the moment perfectly, the dizziness, the powerful surge inside her body, the way the light had seemed to burst around him.
She didn’t want to think about it.
Irritated, he turned around. “Maybe it had something to do with you looking at me like I’d punched you in the face.”
“I did not. I just had a momentary … I don’t know.”
“Maybe because you charge around on stilts.”
“Seriously? Now you’re criticizing my shoes?”
“Just commenting.”
She made a sound in her throat that struck him as feral, leaped up, and banged a fist on the door. “Open this damn door!”
“She’ll open it when she’s ready. You’re just going to hurt yourself.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.” She couldn’t say why his matter-of-fact reaction increased her own temper, and that hint of panic. “You—you don’t even use my name. It’s like you don’t know it.”
“I know your name. Stop banging on the door. Hope. See, I know your name. Stop it.”
He reached up, covered her fisted hand with his.
And she felt it again, that surge, that strange dizziness. Cautiously, she braced against the door, turned her head to look at him.
Close again, as they’d been on New Year’s. Close enough to see those gold flecks scattered across the green of his eyes. Close enough to see the heat, and the consideration in them.
She didn’t think about leaning in, but her body did. To stop it, she pressed a hand on his chest. Was his heart a little unsteady? She thought it might be. Maybe she only hoped it, so she wouldn’t be alone.
“She trapped Owen and Avery in E&D,” Hope remembered. “She wanted them to …” Kiss. To discover each other. “She’s a romantic.”
Ryder stepped back, and the moment broke like glass. “Right now she’s a nuisance.”
The window he’d opened closed quietly on its own.
“I’d say she’s making a statement.” Calmer now, steadier as he seemed less so, Hope pushed at her hair. “Oh for God’s sake, Ryder, just kiss me. It won’t kill you, and then she’ll let us out of here.”
“Maybe I don’t like having women—dead ones or live ones—maneuver me.”
“Believe me, kissing you isn’t going to be the highlight of my day, but I have guests arriving any minute. Or.” She pulled out her phone. “I’m calling Owen.”
“You’re not calling Owen.”
She got him now. Having one of his brothers come over to let them out? Mortifying. Kissing her, she calculated, was the lesser of two evils. Amused, she smiled at him. “You can close your eyes and think of England.”
“Funny.” He stepped over, braced a hand on either side of her head. “This is because I’ve wasted enough time, and I want a cold beer.”
“Fine.”
He leaned down, hovered a moment, a breath from her lips.
Don’t think, she ordered herself. Don’t react. It’s nothing.
It’s nothing.
It was heat and light, and oh, that surge again from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head. He didn’t touch her, but for that mouth against mouth, and she had to curl her hands at her sides to stop herself from reaching out. Grabbing on, dragging him in.
She let herself slide, couldn’t resist it, as the kiss spun out.
He’d meant to do no more than brush his lips to hers. As he might to a friend, an aunt, a plump middle-aged woman with a couple of grandkids.
But he sank into it, too deep. The taste of her, the scent, the feel of her lips yielding to his.
Not sweet, not sharp, but something mysteriously between. Something uniquely Hope.
It—she—stirred him more than it should. More than he wanted.
Stepping back from her cost brutal effort.
He stared back at her for a beat, for two. Then she let out a breath, uncurled her hand, tried the knob.
“There.” She opened the door. “It worked.”
“Get moving before she changes her mind.”
The minute they were in the hall
, he walked straight to the now cheerfully burning light, lifted the globe from the floor, fixed it on.
“Done.” He stood where he was, gave her another long look.
She started to speak, and the doorbell pealed.
“My guests are here. I need to—”
“I’ll go out the back.”
She nodded, hurried downstairs.
He listened to the clip of her heels on wood, let himself take a breath.
“Don’t pull that crap again,” he said. With his dog faithfully at his heels, Ryder walked away, out of the scent of honeysuckle and Hope.
CHAPTER THREE
GRABBING PRIVATE TIME PRESENTED A CHALLENGE, BUT a woman needed the ear and input of her female friends. Hope grabbed what she could the next day in the window after preparing breakfast for guests and before Vesta opened.
She dashed across Main Street a few minutes after ten, and straight into the restaurant. Clare and Avery already sat at a table, studying Avery’s potential wedding dress, again, on the iPad.
“I brought muffins.” Hope dropped the little basket on the table, tossed back the cheerful red napkin. “Blueberry, still warm from the oven. Thanks for being here.”
“You made it sound urgent.” Avery took a sniff, went mmm, grabbed a muffin.
“It’s not urgent. It’s just a thing. I know you’re busy.”
