The job didn’t suit him. Didn’t anyone hear the edge in his stilted words? She could, and would, do so much better. With guests, she was warm and welcoming. Charm was her strength.
Her analytical, logical husband would destroy her dad’s legacy. If her father hadn’t realized what would happen by changing the terms of his will, she did. She’d known Christopher Lewis her entire life and provided him with every good and bad idea. He wasn’t creative or inventive; he left all the brainstorming to her. He’d slowly kill the resort if given total authority.
She pictured the slow unraveling first of the resort and then the nearby community—not to mention her own aimless life—if she didn’t take control. She’d been gone long enough to own up to her misdeeds, and she’d lived with the consequences for years.
Losing the chance to make up with Dad would haunt her remaining days. Her shot at redemption required her to take over and successfully run the business. Honoring him with hard work was the only way to exorcise the demons haunting her.
She squinted. Christopher’s dazzling smile as he laughed with guests was blinding. His husky, low chortle carried across the water and sent a shiver along her spine. She had loved making him laugh. His genuine amusement was rare. As a child, he’d been serious. During their teenage years, he concealed his emotions like he’d be arrested at any display of feeling. Now he just gave away his smiles for free.Maybe he has changed.She harrumphed.
Flashing a light wasn’t cutting it. Ashley pocketed the mirror and carefully leaned back on the spiral staircase to avoid making too much noise. Built on a rocky outcropping grandly called an island, the building was little more than a tower with a non-functioning beacon and a widow’s walk around the exterior cupola that provided an unobstructed view of the lake.
With no additional rooms or insulation to absorb noise, sounds inside the building echoed outside, carrying over the wooden bridge leading to the resort’s shore. If she wanted to grab his attention, she had to get a little loud. She scooted closer to the window, unlatched the sash, and slid it up a few inches. Pressing her face against a wall, she kept her chin even with the ledge but hidden from view.
Too many of her plans relied on a wing and a prayer. Right now, she needed action. She breathed deep, inhaling the smell of fresh water and weeds. Wherever she went, she never forgot that perfume. She couldn’t shake a lot of the things that plagued her.
Outside, her husband walked to the edge of the sand, frowning at the water.
Was he trying to gauge the temperature? Cold as ice was her guess. A shudder wracked her body. The water had never been warm enough for her. She expected to catch sight of Steve and Carl Prim on the lake, driving tourists around in their sightseeing boats. She looked forward to it as a diversion from her self-imposed boredom. Without any distractions, welcome or otherwise, she focused all her energy on her husband at the shore. She needed to unnerve him.
Unless he crossed the bridge, he wasn’t coming closer. This was her moment to frighten him. She released a breathy sound somewhere between a word and a gasp. “Waaaaa-waaaaa-waaaaafffffles.” She teased the word.
He flinched.
She grinned, his jerking motions more rewarding than she’d imagined. This was going to be fun. Scare him off, stay for thirty uninterrupted days, and start the rest of her life. Check, check, check.
* * *
If Christopher Lewis believed in ghosts, which he absolutely did not, he might have had doubts based on recent events that suggested something amiss at the Inn on Loon Lake.
As he strolled along the lawn of the Inn, smiling and nodding at guests enjoying the late morning sun on a day still too chilly for swimming, he heard it.
“Waaaaaaaaffffflllleeess,” a female voice moaned.
He didn’t need to look at the lighthouse to know where the sound came from. Only one person thought the property was preyed upon by supernatural forces. Without a doubt, she was the one behind the current ghosting.
A haunting shouldn’t be tailor-made for one specific person. Unless she hoped invoking the name of his beloved childhood pet would somehow terrify him. The dog had died of natural causes at the ripe age of sixteen. Waffles wouldn’t return to the lighthouse. The terrier hated the place.
Christopher took a full, easy breath for the first time in years. His lungs expanded and contracted, no hitches or hiccups. He’d wanted to call her so many times over the last decade to explain but her father forbade him from telling her what Christopher had learned in his accounting position. He should have told her about her dad’s passing. Under the circumstances, however, he had stuck to the tried and true, feigning ignorance of her situation. He had instructed the lawyers to contact her and maintain the façade that he was clueless about her whereabouts.
He’d regretted every second since his wife had left. Ashley was home now. The prodigal had returned with no fanfare or welcome. Instead, she had hatched a plot. He’d congratulate her on her clever attempt to evict him from the property, if she hadn’t underestimated his desire to stay.
Scanning the Inn, he was pleased the replacement shingles had finally faded into uniformity with the rest of the roof. Poor flashing around the dormers had caused a leak that cost a bundle to fix. He prided himself on the flawless image of the business but never knew a moment without calculating costs.
Would Ashley understand the relentless passion required for success in this competitive industry? Did she have the drive? She had returned to take over, but they had shielded her from the operation’s struggles.
Years ago, he had been culpable in hiding the Inn’s dire circumstances from her at her late father’s insistence. Carrying on the family’s hundred-year-plus legacy, Xavier focused on his business, harming his relationship with his only child because he hadn’t wanted her to know the extent of his financial mismanagement. Christopher had had a front-row seat for the pain on both sides.
Xavier had been blind to his daughter’s need to be involved and was too proud to admit his faults to her. Once Christopher had shown him the problems, Xavier trusted Christopher to find the solutions. The arrangement had worked well. When Ashley asked Christopher to leave, she had put him in the unbearable position of choosing between his head and his heart.
Christopher’s decision to stay had been about preserving her legacy for their shared future. At the time, he hadn’t known how to verbalize his feelings without giving away the truth her father had asked him to hide. Every day, Christopher tortured himself by playing what might’ve happened if he had followed her.
As long as he’d known her, he’d listened to her stories about all the places she’d visit as soon as she left Loon Lake. She’d kept her word, traveling to every one of those and more. He wished he had said something to stop or stall her departure. Ashley had taken the spark of the Inn and the people she loved with her when she left.
She could walk away. Christopher wasn’t so lucky. And now, with her return, he definitely couldn’t leave. She’d be in over her head. Did she falsely remember the Inn in its current, immaculate state?
He remembered too much. Like every fix over the past ten years and how he’d agonized over triaging the finances to stay afloat. Other flashbacks plagued him, too. In quiet moments, he’d replayed every single moment they had spent together from childhood until the day she left.
“Waaaaaffffffffllllleeeesssss,” she called again, low and deep.
