So Inn Love Read online

  I guessed I had never mentioned the fact that Caroline and I weren’t exactly best pals anymore. We stood there waving at my grandparents, and I felt kind of awkward, as if we were kids again and they’d just dropped us off at the beach.

  “How was lunch?” Caroline asked glumly as we watched them drive away.

  “Okay. Weird, embarrassing. You know my grandfather, how he likes to joke around. So he joked about me and Hayden. Ha ha. So funny,” I complained. I sat down on the wide steps. “I felt like it would never end.”

  “I don’t know what you’re so upset about,” Caroline replied. She sat a few steps above me. “One, Hayden really likes you. Two, you had lunch with Mr. Talbot. Senior.”

  I decided to ignore the first part. “So?”

  “So, I’ve been here two years and I’ve never had lunch with any of the Talbots,” Caroline said.

  “Oh. Well, it wasn’t that fascinating,” I said. “Confidentially and all.”

  “Still. It’s not fair. You come here and in like two seconds you’re part of the in crowd,” Caroline complained.

  “What? I am not,” I said.

  “Yes, you are,” she said. She sounded really hurt about it, and I wondered if that was why she hadn’t been glad to see me show up for the summer.

  “Look. The only in crowd in my opinion is the one that you happen to be in. You know what I mean? It’s your friends. It’s something you create yourself,” I said.

  “Easy for you to say. It took me two months to make good friends last summer,” Caroline said. “It was really hard. I mean, maybe if we both started here at the same time…it would have been easier, you know?”

  “Yeah, it probably would have been. But you didn’t make it easier on me when I showed up here,” I reminded her.

  “No. I guess not. I was so worried you were going to tell a bunch of embarrassing stories about me.”

  “Maybe I would have,” I admitted. “If I knew any really good ones.”

  “Don’t you?” Caroline asked.

  “Not really. I mean, we were kids then,” I said. “We did stupid things. It didn’t matter—we had fun. Anyway, why do you care so much what everyone thinks?”

  “Because! Don’t you?” Caroline asked.

  “Maybe at first,” I admitted. “I definitely didn’t like showing up and feeling like an outsider. But then, I knew my way around town, and I was working pretty hard so I didn’t have time to worry about it, and I got to be friends with Claire, and Josh—”

  “And Hayden—”

  “And I kind of stopped worrying about it,” I said. “But earlier, you were saying…Hayden really likes me?”

  “Liza, you sound like when we were twelve,” Caroline laughed. “You wondered all the time whether that boy at Sally’s coffee shop liked you.”

  “Well, yeah, didn’t you?”

  “No,” Caroline said in a haughty tone. “I knew he liked me.”

  “And you were going to ask him out—but then I was going to ask him out first—and then we saw him making out with that girl—”

  We both burst out laughing.

  “Oh my God, I was so crushed,” Caroline said. “Totally devastated. I wrote about ten pages in my journal that night. Which reminds me, I have got to burn that thing.” She smiled and stretched her legs out on the step. “So…how come we were so sure of everything back then?”

  “Yeah, that’s kind of funny. I don’t know,” I said.

  There was a loud beeping sound and I pulled the pager out of my pocket. “Do you think Miss Crossley was standing up there in her office, waiting for my grandparents to drive off?” I asked Caroline.

  “I wouldn’t put it past her,” Caroline said under her breath. We started to laugh, and then Caroline said, “Don’t tell her I said that. Promise me.”

  “I wouldn’t,” I assured her. “See you later.”

  I realized I’d never really gotten an answer to my question, as to whether Caroline thought Hayden was still interested in me. But it didn’t matter, really. At the moment I was just glad that we’d had at least one good conversation, and I wasn’t totally crazy. We had been really good friends once. Maybe we wouldn’t be again, but we didn’t have to be enemies, either. I should thank my grandparents, probably.

  I went up to Miss Crossley’s office and poked my head into her office. “You rang?” I asked. “Do you need me?”

  “Yes, uh, we—wait a second, Liza.” She shuffled some papers on her desk. “We’ve just had word from Mr. Wallace. He’s changed his mind and is heading back to the Inn, so I’d like you to go on the shuttle with Hayden to the train station. I think he’d appreciate if you welcomed him back,” Miss Crossley said.

  “But…can’t Hayden do that by himself?” I asked.

  “You’re the one he has a connection with, since you worked as his assistant. It would be best if you went too. Meet Hayden by the shuttle at 6:30, all right?”

  Miss Crossley? I’ve been really, really flexible. For days and weeks now. I’ve done everything you asked, I wanted to say. But please don’t make me do this, because I’m not ready to see Hayden and spend time alone with him yet.

  “Okay, fine,” I said.

  Fortunately we had guests to bring to the train, so Hayden and I didn’t have to be alone—or talk—during the ride into town. We dropped them off, then waited for the train from Boston to arrive. I paced around the platform, trying to keep my distance, while Hayden leaned against the van looking bored.

  Why did Miss Crossley do this to us? Couldn’t one person easily handle this task?

  When the train showed up, I didn’t see C. Q. anywhere. I looked up and down the platform, watching every train door for a glimpse of him. But nobody appeared.

  “Do you think he missed the train?” I asked as I walked back to Hayden. It was pulling away from the station. “Or maybe he fell asleep and missed the announcement for this stop?”

  “What are you saying? He wasn’t on the train?” Hayden asked.

  Had he fallen asleep standing there? “Do you see him?” I asked.

  “No, I guess not.” Hayden tossed the set of keys into the air and caught them. “Oh, well. I’m not going to worry about it, I’m sure he’ll call. Let’s head back. Unless you want to grab an ice cream first?”

  “Aren’t you worried at all?” I asked as I climbed into the van through the sliding door.

  Hayden turned around from the front seat, a puzzled expression on his face. “Aren’t you going to sit up here?”

  “No, I hadn’t planned on it,” I said.

  “Well, it just feels weird, like I’m a taxi driver.”

  “Well. Aren’t you?”

  Hayden narrowed his eyes at me. “You know, your grandfather is a lot nicer than you are.”

  “Let’s not get into discussing the topic of nice. You’re the one who went on a date with someone else without even warning me.”

  “It wasn’t a date,” Hayden said as he started the van.

  “Whatever. Let’s get back to the Inn and tell Miss Crossley her favorite guest isn’t checking back in.” I scrunched down in my seat and tried to ignore the fact that even the tiniest glimpse of Hayden, from the backseat, was attractive.

  “What are we doing here?”

  Hayden parked the van outside the closed, dilapidated hotel. He got out of the van and walked around to open the sliding door. “I wanted to stop someplace private on the way back—somewhere we could be alone and talk.”

  “We could have been alone at the train station. We were alone. So why not then?” I asked.

  “Just…come on. Walk on the beach with me,” Hayden urged. He held out his hand.

  This isn’t fair, I thought as I got out of the shuttle, on my own. Revisiting the scene of a crime of passion. Or just…the scene of passion.

  “This doesn’t mean anything. That I’m willing to walk on the beach with you,” I said.

  “Okay, fine, it doesn’t mean anything,” Hayden said. “You’re just
here for the sea air and exercise.”

  “Don’t make fun of me,” I said, but I was trying not to smile.

  “I’d never,” Hayden said.

  We walked through the broken-down gate on the side of the hotel that led to the beach.

  My eyes widened as I saw dozens of flowers strewn all over the sand. I wandered closer, stepping over a ring of white, pink, yellow, and red roses, mixed in with daisies and lilies. “How did these—where did you get all these?” I asked.

  “One was a bouquet I stole from the front desk. Caroline turned her back.”

  “She should know not to do that when you’re around,” I said, and Hayden grinned.

  “The rest I borrowed from the Inn’s flower garden,” Hayden said. “It was overflowing—I doubt anyone will notice. And before you say anything, it’s not that I wouldn’t buy flowers for you, but I really didn’t have the opportunity—”

  “No, it’s okay. It’s really nice,” I told him.

  I looked around and noticed a couple of the Inn’s deluxe beach towels, folded and sitting atop a cooler.

  “In case we feel like swimming. And I brought some mineral water and some shrimp cocktail because I heard you really like that,” Hayden said.

  And I was so about to get sucked in by the love undertow, which was quickly turning into a riptide. I dug my heels into the sand to stop myself.

  “No, you’re not doing this again,” I said.

  “What?” Hayden asked. “Doing what?”

  “You have no problem being with me out—out here,” I said. “If no one’s around, then that’s fine. You’re wonderfully sweet and everything. But then in public, you have to either be single, or with Zoe, or—I don’t know. But I’m not okay with the whole Privacy Please thing.”

  “So you’re into the voyeur thing, then,” Hayden said.

  “Not funny,” I said.

  “Look, I came here because I wanted us to be alone. I want to spend time with you. Just you. I don’t want people watching us, or commenting, or—”

  “Or knowing about us,” I said. “I don’t know why, I really don’t. But I’ve never been one to hide before. And I’m not going to be now.”

  “But don’t you think it’s kind of fun? Kind of, I don’t know. Exciting. To have a secret?”

  “I’m not happy being your secret,” I said. “I thought I kind of made that clear, but apparently not.”

  “You’re not being fair,” Hayden said. “I’m trying to make it up to you. What do you think, do you think all this stuff happened by accident? I arranged it all. I convinced Miss Crossley. You were on the beach with Will because of me, you went on the shuttle tonight because of me—”

  “So what? That doesn’t mean anything.” It did, sort of, but I wasn’t ready to give him credit for that. “Let’s go,” I said.

  “Liza. Come on,” he said.

  This was killing me, but I had to do it. I walked over to the van and opened the passenger door. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  I walked out onto the Inn porch the next morning around eleven and stopped dead in my tracks. “Where did you come from?”

  “Nantucket,” C. Q. Wallace said. His feet were up on the railing, and he had a notebook in his lap.

  “Really?” I laughed. “No—I mean…we went to pick you up last night, and you weren’t there.”

  “You came to pick me up in Nantucket? How thoughtful.”

  “Yeah, well, I wanted to take a road trip,” I joked. “No, we went to the train station to get you.”

  “Interesting. I wasn’t coming on the train,” he said.

  “You never called to say that you were?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  So Hayden had fabricated that whole scenario, like he said. And I was kind of impressed. He had persuaded Miss Crossley to let me go on an errand that even she knew wasn’t real.

  “I rented a car and drove down,” C. Q. explained. “Got in this morning. And now that I have wheels, I’ll be able to get my own pens from now on.”

  “Great,” I murmured, wondering if I’d underestimated Hayden.

  “Anyway. I assume Miss Crossley told you the drill? Can you type some of this stuff up for me?”

  “She actually didn’t tell me, but I’m not in the middle of anything else, so sure,” I said. I figured Miss Crossley must be ill, since it was so late in the day and I hadn’t yet been summoned. “But if you wrote it in Nantucket, how accurate can it be about this place?”

  “Liza, it’s a funny thing. But sometimes you need to leave a place in order to write about it. It’s a matter of perspective.” He handed me a pad of legal paper. “If you can type this new material up, I can e-mail it to my editor this afternoon and have her insert it into the manuscript.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I guess.” The whole process sounded weird and sort of unprofessional to me, but I guessed someone who wrote best sellers knew more than I did.

  Dear Liza, I typed.

  “Wait a second,” I said. “Is this where my character gets really important to the plot?”

  “Just type it,” he said.

  I stared at the piece of paper. It was familiar handwriting, but I didn’t think it was his. “This doesn’t look like your handwriting.”

  “I wrote it when I was driving.”

  “You write and drive? That is so wrong.”

  “Just type,” he said again.

  I’m sorry. I realize what you mean about secrets. And you’re right—I have been a phony. I need to fix that. Hayden.

  “Is this all you have?” I asked. “Did you write this?”

  “Please. I think I have a little more literary style than that, don’t you?”

  I smiled and gazed at the ocean. It was a beautiful day; the sun was sparkling on the water and a light breeze blew my hair back from my face. “Can you give me like five minutes?” I asked.

  “I suppose,” he sighed. “But seriously, after this, I do have something for you to type.”

  “I’ll be right back.” I sprinted down the boardwalk. As angry as I still was with Hayden, I wanted to see him and talk to him. He could apologize a few more times and explain what it was all about. Maybe I’d forgive him this time. I could see he really was trying now.

  But when I got to the beach, Hayden was nowhere in sight. Lindsay was sitting on top of the lifeguard chair. I waved to her. “Is Hayden around?” I asked, forgetting my wounded pride for a second.

  “He’s gone for a few days,” Lindsay said. “He went home.”

  “Home?” That seemed a little strange. I hoped nothing was wrong. “When is he coming back, do you know?”

  “Saturday, I think,” Lindsay said.

  “Oh. Okay. Thanks!”

  I walked back up to the Inn, wondering if there was a way to reach Hayden while he was home, or if I should bother. He’d made such a nice gesture the night before, and now this note…

  But would it change anything?

  “Got the tray?” Daunte teased me as I walked past him into the dining room on Saturday. We were hosting another wedding at the Inn.

  “Yes, I have it,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.” I shifted the tray of raspberry sorbet dishes in my arms. Every single one of my coworkers had been giving me a hard time about the way I’d dropped my tray the week before.

  I flashed back to the last wedding. With any luck, this event wouldn’t be nearly as disastrous, or as painful.

  Then I saw Hayden get up onstage, next to the DJ. I didn’t even know he’d come back yet. What was he doing? Was he going to sing? Was this a karaoke wedding?

  “Excuse me, everyone. Could I have your attention please? I’d like to make a toast.”

  “Richard,” I said, pulling his best friend aside. “He’s not a guest at this wedding too, is he?”

  “No, he doesn’t know them at all.” Richard smiled at me. “Don’t worry, okay?”

&nbs
p; What was Hayden doing? Now they were hiring the Inn to even take care of their toasts? What wouldn’t these people spend money on?

  “My name is Hayden, and normally I’d just park your cars, but today I have a special announcement. But if this takes too long or is too boring and you need your car, just raise your hand.”

  A few people in the audience laughed, while Hayden unfolded a crumpled piece of paper and cleared his throat. “Bear with me a second here. Okay.” He looked at the crowd, but didn’t seem to notice where I was standing. “I don’t really know Maisie and Jacob, but, uh, I do know something about, uh, love,” he said.

  Just to be on the safe side, I set the tray of sorbet on the table closest to me.

  “The thing about love is that you can’t predict it,” Hayden went on. “You can’t plan it. It’s like the weather.”

  Like the weather? I thought. Doesn’t the weather change really frequently? Some days love is warm, some days it’s cold… Where was he going with this? And why?

  Claire came up beside me. “I don’t know what he’s doing, but I think it’s going to be good,” she whispered.

  Josh stood behind her, his chin resting on her shoulder. “Or really, really awful,” he said.

  “Great,” I muttered.

  “Sorry, I can’t read his—my handwriting.” Hayden seemed to be squinting at the tiny piece of paper. “The person we love is the one we follow. The one who tells us how to be in the world, and lets us know whether we’re doing the right thing or not. They’re our bellwether,” Hayden went on.

  “Barometer!” someone in the crowd yelled out.

  “Barometer,” Hayden said, nodding. “That makes sense.” He looked up at everyone. “You’ve got to check out the big barometer in the lobby, if you haven’t already. Antique. Really cool.” He took a deep breath and rubbed his neck, looking uncomfortable. “Anyway. True love can’t be measured by a barometer, but if it could be…” He squinted at the paper again, then crumpled it into a ball and shoved it in his pocket. “Oh, what the heck. Liza? I’m sorry I’ve been such a jerk. I want everyone here—especially you—to know that…well, I really love you. Now just dance with me, okay?”