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When their dogs arrived, the waiter, who was also the cook, slid them onto the table, saying, “Bon appétit.” Then he skip-jumped back to the kitchen. Which was amazing for a guy who had to be six foot four and had the muscles of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Cal grinned as he prepared to pick up his massive everything-on-it hot dog. “Man, I love that smell.”
“I never would have guessed you were a hot-dog guy.”
Before he took a big bite, he said, “When I was a kid, my dad would take me fishing really early in the morning. We were done by noon. And on the way back from the lake, there was this little diner where we always stopped for hot dogs.”
“It sounds like you were really close to your dad.”
“Yeah, when I was a kid, we were.” A frown replaced the happy light in his eyes.
This was her moment. The perfect opportunity to ask him to share more of his past with her, even the difficult parts. Especially those. “Did something change when you became an adult?”
He was silent for a long moment. Long enough for her to wonder if he would finally divulge something of his secret past to her.
But all he said was, “He died a long time ago.” Then he shook his head, as if he was letting the memory go rather than telling her more.
When he took a big bite, she realized the moment had already slipped away, without his actually answering her question.
But she had to tell him, “I’m sorry you lost him.”
“Thanks.” He took another bite of his hot dog as though the death of his father was nothing serious.
Her chest clenched at how quickly he’d shoved aside his emotions. If she decided to be with him in the long term, would he do that with her? With their child? Just shove every feeling down deep where he never had to look at it, never actually feel it?
She couldn’t live with that. But she had to believe he would eventually trust her enough to open up to her all the way.
When he did, she could finally open herself up to marriage and, far more important, love.
Chapter Twenty-Three
After their hot dogs, as they drove farther south, Lyssa gasped and grabbed his arm. She held out her phone. “I just found a haunted hotel. We have to go!”
Cal had never thought he’d find someone who could introduce him to so many new things. And get him to enjoy them, too, taking him out of a rut he hadn’t even known he was in. He wanted to soak up every new surprise she came up with like a sponge. He felt like the two of them were on the same wavelength, the same plane of existence. He could hardly believe he’d found a woman so unique and yet so perfect for him.
But could he convince her to stay? That was still the unanswerable question…
While Cal had waxed nostalgic over hot dogs, he’d stopped short of telling Lyssa about the ways his dad had destroyed the family.
He’d told himself he wanted to keep only good memories of their road trip, not mire them in the bad. He tried to convince himself that his father’s sins had no bearing on his relationship with Lyssa. He didn’t want to dwell on the fear that he was just like his father—good old Dad, who couldn’t resist his much younger secretary and had blown the family apart. Just as Cal’s need for Lyssa might blow apart their relationships with the Mavericks and Lyssa’s parents.
Her voice pulled him out of the past and back to the present. “I’m so excited. I can’t wait to see a ghost. Will you be there to hold me tight if I scream?”
“You’re going to be the one holding me tight,” he said, his humor bubbling up. That’s what Lyssa did for him, always seeing the brighter side.
Laughing most of the way, they arrived at the haunted hotel an hour and a half later.
The town was barely more than a dot on the map, with all-American streets named D and E and F one way and Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth the other. He wondered what had happened to A, B, and C and First through Fourteenth.
The hotel was straight out of the 1800s, with a wide wooden front porch and a long balcony along the second floor. The lobby resembled the sitting room of a bordello, with sofas and chairs upholstered in plush red fabric. The reception desk might once have been the oak bar of a saloon. And surprisingly, there was quite a large crowd waiting in the lobby.
At reception, the concierge was a tall, thin woman in her early sixties, with the name Dorothy emblazoned on her name tag.
“Dorothy, we’re hoping to book a room.” With a pleasant smile, Cal leaned on the counter.
