Compromising Positions (17 page)

Amelia smiled at him and he pressed the button on her phone. He stared at the picture for a long time before nodding. “Perfect,” he murmured. He punched in his number and sent the photo to his phone.

Meanwhile, Amelia found a pair of yoga pants and tugged them on. She dressed for warmth and comfort and added a pair of thick socks and her boots. When she was finished, she picked up a few of her belongings still in the adjoining bathroom and tucked them into her overnight bag.

He watched her from the bed, his gaze silently following her every move. She felt his eyes on her like a sweet caress. She returned to the bed and sat down.

“Are you going to be all right here on your own?”

He smiled. “Probably not. I'm planning to take to my bed and mope around for the next few weeks.”

She reached out and cupped his face with her palm. “Please don't do that. When I think of you, I'd like to think that you are happy.”

It was a sweet sentiment, but one that Sam wasn't ready to accept. He wanted her to stay. Amelia could see it in his eyes. But she'd already decided that she had to go home.

She had to put their relationship in perspective. She couldn't seem to think rationally when she was around him. The magnetic pull between them was too strong to deny. When she was with him, she was ready to throw everything she'd built in the past year away. She had to be sure that would truly make her happy. Her feelings for Sam defied any and all reason. They lived two different lives in two different places. Their physical attraction seemed much too powerful to sustain over time. And though they shared a few interests, Amelia wasn't sure what his hobbies were—beyond sex with her.

She lay across his naked chest, her cheek pressed against the smooth muscle. His heart beat, slowly, steadily, and Amelia closed her eyes. It would be so simple to stay here with him, to just abandon her job and her life and make a new one with Sam.

“Tell me what's going to happen now,” Amelia murmured. “Will you call me? Will I call you? Will we just wait to see who gives in first?”

He smoothed his hand over her hair. “Why don't you call me when you get home, just so I know you're safe? And then we'll go from there.”

“When will we see each other again?”

Sam thought about this a bit longer. “When do you want to see each other again?”

“I'm probably going to want to drive back here next weekend. But I'm not sure that would be the best thing.”

“Does absence make the heart grow fonder?” Sam asked. “Because I can't imagine my heart being any fonder of you than it already is.”

Amelia dropped a kiss on his lips. “I'm awfully fond of you, too, Sam Blackstone.” She glanced at the clock on the bedside table. “I should probably get on the road.”

He groaned, pulling her close, but Amelia wasn't going to get caught up in any long and emotional goodbyes. They'd decided to see each other again, so there was no need to get all sappy about her departure.

“I refuse to get sentimental,” Amelia said. “I'm just going to say goodbye.”

He shook his head. “I think that's best,” Sam said. He sat up, the sheets falling away from his naked chest. Her gaze dropped to the smooth expanse of chiseled muscle and hard flesh. “I'm not going to tell you how much I'll miss you. Or how I won't be able to sleep without you by my side.”

“Stop,” Amelia warned.

“Or how I'll miss the feel of your hands on my body or the taste of your lips on mine.”

“You're deliberately trying to make this difficult.”

“I'm trying to ensure that you'll remember what we shared here,” Sam said. “So maybe you'll want to come back.”

“I really don't want to leave,” she said softly.

He pulled the blankets back. “Then come to bed, Millie.”

“I can't. But I promise I will be back.”

“Soon?”

She nodded, then went to pick up her overnight bag. “Stay warm without me, Sam,” she said.

“I'll be thinking of you,” he said, smiling.

She crossed the room and leaned over the bed, giving him one last kiss. It was sweet and perfect and Amelia closed her eyes as she pulled away. Then, with one last look at him, she turned and walked out of the stone kitchen.

Amelia threw her bag into the back of the Lexus and hopped in behind the wheel. For a moment, before she pushed the ignition, she hoped that it wouldn't start, that she'd have another excuse to stay. But the engine roared to life in the quiet morning air.

She was just about to pull out when she saw Sarah hurrying from the inn, a basket in her arms. The other woman opened the passenger's-side door and placed the basket on the seat. “Just a little something for the trip,” she said. “Coffee and some pastries and fruit. And some of that granola that you like. Oh, and leftover quiche.”

Amelia reached over and gave Sarah's hand a squeeze. “Thank you,” she said.

“You're coming back, right? He won't be able to do without you.”

“And what about you?” Amelia asked. “I'm going to be your maid of honor. You can come to Boston to look for wedding dresses. We'll make a weekend out of it.”

Sarah smiled. “Goodbye, Amelia.”

“See you, Sarah. Take care of him.”

As she steered the SUV out onto the road, Amelia took one last look at the Blackstone Inn. When she'd arrived in Millhaven, she'd come for nothing more than an old bed. And now that she was departing, she was leaving behind something entirely unexpected. A man. A man who might be her future.

9

S
AM
HUNG
UP
the phone, then rubbed his tired eyes with the heels of his hands. Suddenly he felt utterly exhausted, as if he could crawl into bed and sleep for the next month.

“Are you going to mope for the rest of your life or are you going to go to Boston and try to convince Amelia to come back and live here with us?”

Sam glanced up and gave Sarah a cold look. “I'm not moping. And she's only been gone for six hours. I'm not that pathetic that I can't do without her for that long.”

“What's with the sad-puppy face, then?” she asked.

“There's nothing wrong with my face.”

“James, does Sam have a sad-puppy face? Be honest.”

Sam glanced over at James, who'd just wandered into the room, his toolbox in one hand and a crescent wrench in the other. Sam's eyebrow arched as he waited for James's answer.

“I'm not getting in the middle of this,” James finally said. “I've decided to make that rule number one. I'm going to go install that new water filter instead.”

James walked out of the room, leaving Sarah and Sam to discuss family matters in private. “We're getting a water filter?” Sam asked.

Sarah nodded. “He had one sitting around and thought he'd install it in the kitchen. He's determined to modernize our plumbing. I told him he could do it as a wedding present to me.”

“Wedding presents already?” Sam said. “You just got engaged.”

Sarah stared at him for a long moment. “So, are we going to talk about her or are we just supposed to forget that Amelia ever existed?”

“No, we can talk about her,” Sam said. In truth, Sam needed to talk about her. It made her seem more real. “I told her I understood how much her independence meant to her. So I have to let her go home. We need some time apart to see if we really want to be together. It makes sense. Not all of us fall in love in a matter of days like you and James.”

“James and I have known each other for years. And people fall in love at first sight all the time.”

“And that's you. You've only been madly in love for...what? Three days?”

“Actually, it's been a little longer,” Sarah admitted. “He was here a couple months ago to install the new toilet in the stone kitchen. That's when I decided there might be something between us. The point is, I didn't let anything stand in my way. Don't be such a wuss, Sam. Go after her.”

“The last thing I want is to show up on her doorstep and get shut down. She knows my life is here, not in Boston. That doesn't leave us many options.”

“How did you leave it?” Sarah asked.

“I'm not sure. It was all a little vague. She did accept the locket I gave her.”

“You gave her a
locket
?” Sarah asked, her voice laced with disbelief. “What kind of gift is that? What's that supposed to mean? A locket? Twelve-year-old boys give their girlfriends lockets.”

“It wasn't just any locket. It was great-great-great-grandmother's locket. The silver one with the filigree setting. She liked it.”

“So you want her to come back,” Sarah said.

“Sure. But she has a life in the city. What do I do if she wants to stay there?”

“You go there and try to make it work,” Sarah said.

“I have an inn to run,” he said.

“James and I can run the inn. He loves the place. It makes him excited. There are just so many things to fix. This morning he spent two hours making lists of all the things that needed to be done here. He made me dig through old bills and records to find out when the roof was last fixed and when the electrical was overhauled. The question is, do you want to run the inn?”

Sam realized he'd made that decision last night in the sleigh. “Yes, but only with Amelia.”

She reached into her pocket. “I found this old brochure. It has a bunch of information about the George Washington bed. It's from the bicentennial in 1976. You might want to give a copy to Amelia. That would give you an excuse to call her.”

She held out the brochure to Sam and he took it, then crossed the room to the sofa and sat to read it. But as he stared at the photo on the cover, Sam recognized the bed in the cover picture. It was sitting in room twelve, the room that Amelia had stayed in her first night at the inn.

“Oh, hell,” he murmured. “It's the wrong bed. She's got the wrong damn bed.”

Sarah sat beside him on the sofa. “What are you talking about?”

“This is a photo of the George Washington bed. Taken about forty years ago. Notice anything?”

“That's not the bed you gave to Amelia.”

“It's not,” he said.

“So which bed is the real bed?” Sarah asked.

“I'm beginning to wonder if there really is a George Washington bed.” Sam shook his head. “What if this was all some marketing trick made up by one of our great-great-great-grandfathers?”

“George Washington did stay at the inn,” Sarah said. “We have his signature in the guest book on three different dates.”

“Sure, and maybe when the inn suffered a few financial setbacks, the Blackstone ancestor-in-charge chose a bed, claimed it was the one that George Washington slept in and sold it to some unsuspecting collector. It would be a quick way to put the books back in the black.” He chuckled softly. “Not a bad plan,” he said.

“Except you gave the bed to Amelia.”

“I gave
a
bed to her.” He waved the brochure. “And according to this, we still have the authentic bed. At least the bed that was authentic in 1976.”

“What if they find out the truth about the bed?” Sarah said. “Do you think she could lose her job?”

“She didn't pay for it. I can't imagine that it would cause a problem.”

Sarah shrugged. “Yeah. But people are paying to see the bed. Wouldn't that be...”

“Fraud?” Sam asked. Sarah did have a point. “I don't want to get her into trouble. I can pack up the other bed and drive it to Boston and—”

“If you leave later in the afternoon, then maybe she'll ask you to spend the night.” Sarah slid over and threw her arms around her brother's neck. “I love you, big brother. Don't let her get away.”

He tucked the old brochure into his shirt pocket and walked up the stairs. When he reached the room at the end of the hall, he opened the door and entered. He hadn't been in the room since the first night he'd met Amelia. The first night he'd kissed her.

He looked at the flowers he'd picked for her, now a little wilted and standing in a glass vase. Such a strange set of circumstances had brought him and Amelia together. A silly old bed. Was this the fates at work? Was the universe conspiring to bring them together again?

Sam didn't want to appear desperate to see her. And he didn't want her to think he was making excuses to check up on her. He'd decided five minutes after she'd driven away that she'd need to come back to him.

But maybe he ought to just call her and give her the option of having him deliver the bed or send it another way. The last thing he wanted to do was to make her think he didn't respect her independence.

Life had a funny way of throwing a wrench into a guy's plans, even when he didn't have any plans at all. He'd been waiting for his life to begin, angry that he'd been tethered to the inn and helpless to choose his own happiness.

When Amelia had walked in, it was as if a switch had been thrown. He could suddenly imagine a future, and a happy future at that. But only if it included working side by side with Millie.

So he would give her a choice. If she wanted to live in Millhaven, he'd make her an equal partner in the inn. If she wanted to stay in Boston, he'd do whatever it took to be with her. He could be digging ditches, shoveling sand, picking rocks from a field. As long as he had Amelia waiting at home for him, he'd be happy.

Yes, he needed to see her again. He needed to say all those things that he'd left unsaid. He had to convince her that her life was with him, wherever that might be.

He couldn't offer her a prestigious job in the art world or the kind of career she'd dreamed of. He couldn't give her an apartment overlooking Boston harbor and an exciting slate of social activities. But he could give her days full of laughter and nights full of passion.

If Amelia was the kind of woman who wanted something like that, then maybe she'd accept his proposal. He crossed to the bed and began to tear the sheets off. Hearing the noise, Sarah appeared in the doorway. “Do you need some help?”

He grinned at his little sister. “Yeah, I could use a hand.”

“I want you to bring her back,” she said. “She belongs here with us. And she could never be happy anywhere else.”

“I hope you're right,” Sam replied. “And I don't know whether anything I say will work. She wanted to go back. She's proud of her job.”

“Just tell her that you love her,” Sarah said. “Everything will fall into place after that.”

“If it were only that simple,” Sam murmured.

* * *

A
MELIA
GOT
BACK
to the city around 10:00 a.m., and considering the weather, the trip had been uneventful. The interstate had been lined with tall mounds of snow. Safe inside the inn, she hadn't realized how bad the storm had been.

The miles were passed listening to sappy country love songs and punctuated by quiet sobs and soft laughter. She'd relived every single moment she'd spent with Sam, trying to remember their conversations word for word and failing miserably.

When she got to Boston, though everything looked familiar to her, it didn't feel comfortable or soothing, the way home should. Instead she found herself longing for the quiet, warm atmosphere of the inn and for the man who lived there.

The farther away she got from Sam, the more she felt the pull of their connection. Three hours seemed like nothing, and yet it felt as far away as the moon. It wasn't just the physical distance but the act of leaving each other, of giving up what they'd shared for the responsibilities of the outside world.

The traffic in downtown Boston was tricky. The narrow streets were lined with parked cars and the pedestrians were crossing against the lights. When she reached the Mapother, she pulled her SUV and the trailer into the loading dock.

Amelia had never really learned to maneuver the trailer in reverse, so she hopped out and walked to the security entrance right beside the tall garage doors. She slid her security card against the sensors and entered.

Mike Parris, the head of shipping and receiving, was passing by and he stopped. “Hey there, Amelia. Did you get your bed?”

Amelia smiled. “I did. It's outside in the trailer. Can you have someone unload it and get it up to the exhibit? We open next Monday and I need to get everything finished this week. We've got school groups coming on Friday and it would be nice to preview it for them.”

“No problem,” Mike said. “I'll deal with the trailer.” He paused. “Oh, by the way, Vivian was looking for you. She's been asking about you all morning. You might want to check in with her.”

“I was hoping to go home and grab a quick shower. Is she just casually looking or does she seem desperate to find me?”

“On a ten-point scale, I'd say her desperation is about a fourteen and rising.”

Amelia smiled. “All right.” She gave Mike her keys, then headed through the warren of racks and storage areas to the office. As she passed her own office, she grabbed the stack of pink phone messages that had been left on the corner of her desk.

She found her boss three doors down in an office piled with books, magazines and empty Starbucks cups. “I'm back. They're unloading the bed right now. It should be ready for previews by Friday.”

Vivian motioned to her, pointing to a chair across from her desk. “Come in, Amelia. I trust you had a pleasant trip back?”

“The roads were a bit slippery in spots, but I didn't have any trouble. I did run into a few problems with the bed. We've only got it on loan. There wasn't a clear bequeath to the museum, so I had to settle for what I could get.”

“Well, darling, you've done a wonderful job for us here at the Mapother. You've always been willing to go the extra mile, if you know what I mean.” She cleared her throat. “And I certainly don't regret hiring you, but...”

A sick feeling washed over Amelia and she stared at Vivian in disbelief. “Are you firing me?”

“Darling,
firing
is such a harsh word. I'd prefer to say we're parting ways.”

“Why? I got the bed. Granted, it took me a bit longer than anticipated, but it's here and it's ready for the exhibit opening next week. You said it was all right for me to take the time.”

“This has nothing to do with your exhibit, which I'm sure is going to be a great success.”

“What is it, then?”

“We've received a rather substantial donation. Five million in cash. Our largest single donation ever.”

“Well, what does that have to do with me?”

“The donation came with a condition. If we want the money, we have to end our relationship with you.”

“I don't understand. If we have more money, we shouldn't be cutting staff.”

“Darling, the money is coming from your family's foundation. They asked that we terminate our professional relationship with you.”

Suddenly everything became perfectly clear. Amelia had suspected that her mother was ruthless when it came to getting what she wanted and this proved it.

“Your mother said there might be more for us, depending upon...”

“Oh, I understand now,” Amelia said. “She's decided to punish me the only way she knows how. It's quite a clever idea, if I do say so myself.”

“Amelia, you have to understand our point of view. We can't turn down that kind of money. The board would fire me in a heartbeat if I did. We all have to make sacrifices for things we believe in. I happen to believe the Mapother needs this money.”