Authors: Sophie Pembroke
“This wedding can be my notice period,” Carrie said, recovering her thoughts. “We can work together on this one last wedding, then when the money’s all in, I’ll pay you back and we’ll go our separate ways. That’s fair, right?”
Anna seemed to be considering it, at least. Carrie felt her breath building up in her chest, burning her lungs, as she waited for an answer.
“Fine. But if things go wrong, if you can’t pay me back by the time the wedding’s over...” Anna got to her feet. “Then we put someone else in charge here, and you come back to work.”
“Yes. Okay.” Carrie scrambled to her feet. “Except not the part about me coming back to work for you. That’s over.” As she said it, Carrie felt lighter. “Not that it matters. This wedding will be a success. You’ll get your money. And then you’ll never have to see the Avalon again.”
And she’d never have to see Anna bloody Yardley again, either.
* * * *
Half an hour later, after the marquee men had finally left, Nate found Carrie in the bar.
“You going to open that?” he asked, slipping into the chair opposite her and motioning at the still-closed bottle of champagne sitting on the table in front of her.
“Not yet,” she said, staring at the bubbly.
Nate considered. He’d expected her to be upset. From all accounts from his spies around the inn–mainly Cyb and Izzie, who’d been skulking in the shadows to keep an eye on things and possibly adding a creepy vibe to what was already a disastrous show ’round–things hadn’t gone well with Anna. On finding her in the bar, he’d been fully prepared for an evening of sobering her up and feeding her black coffee and toast.
But she seemed...calm. Like she was concentrating very hard on something.
“Are you...okay?” Perhaps he should hold her hand or something. Give her a hug. Or, after last night, would that just look like an attempt to get her in to bed again, like he didn’t understand the depth of her problems?
Maybe he should just get himself a drink.
“Okay isn’t exactly the word I’d choose,” Carrie said, gaze never leaving the bottle.
“Upset?” Nate tried again. “Disheartened? Depressed?”
Finally Carrie looked up at him, and he knew before she said exactly how she felt. It was printed across her eyeballs. “I’m bloody furious.”
Nate moved to the bar, grabbed two glasses and a bottle of Nancy’s Scotch. Who cared if it was only just gone midday? Neither of them had to drive anywhere. “Right,” he said, pouring large measures into each glass and pushing one across the table to her. “If we’re not opening the champagne, then let’s get stuck into this.”
Carrie wrinkled her nose up at the glass, and Nate found himself distracted for a second by the way she looked just like the photo of her as a child Nancy had kept on her dressing table. “I told you I’m not depressed. I don’t need to drink.”
“No, but you’re angry, so I’m guessing I do.” He swallowed the first shot, then poured himself another to sip more leisurely. “So. Tell me about your day.”
Picking up her glass, Carrie leaned back in her leather chair and gave him an appraising look. Nate mirrored her movement, kept his face blank and waited for her to talk.
“Actually, it started off pretty well.” Carrie took a sip of her whiskey. “Up until the point it became clear I dropped the ball last night. Hell, not even just last night.”
Nate winced, wondering how much of this was going to mean he never got to have sex with this woman again. “How?”
“I stopped being the boss,” Carrie said simply. “Anna shouldn’t have been able to surprise me like that. I should have known what was coming.”
“Oh, come on. It was a last minute trick by a bitter and twisted boss. You can’t blame yourself, or me for that matter.” Nate topped up her glass. She hadn’t drunk very much of it, but he figured she probably needed to.
But Carrie pushed the whiskey away. “Look. I said I wanted to stand on my own two feet to make this place a success.”
“And I said you needed help,” Nate put in, not really liking where this seemed to be going.
Carrie gave a nod of acknowledgement. “And you were right. But accepting help isn’t the same as letting go of the reins. I’ve just let all of you get on with whatever you thought would help, and while most of the time you’ve been right, I still need to be keeping it under control. If I want to be the boss and not let Anna bloody Yardley take over, then I need to lead. I need to know everything that’s happening.”
And I can’t sleep with the help
hung in the air between them, unsaid but so loud Nate could swear he heard the words. He nodded to show he understood, even the things she wasn’t saying. Which didn’t mean he agreed with her. Everything was all or nothing with Carrie, that was the problem. He’d have to work on teaching her about shades of gray.
But first. “She wanted to take it over herself?” Nate hadn’t spent a lot of time with Anna, but he knew straight off that if she was running the Avalon Inn, he was on the first train to London.
Carrie shook her head. “She wanted me back in the office and someone with less ‘personal attachment’ running the place.”
“You said no, of course.” Because otherwise, Nate was heading to the station.
“I quit my job.” He must have looked stricken, because Carrie laughed and went on, “Oh, don’t worry. I’ve got it all sorted. We work with her on Ruth’s wedding, then pay her back out of that. Then we find someone with bucket-loads of cash to help up fix everything else.”
“Because there’s loads of them just hanging about,” Nate said, and sighed. “Sorry. You did the right thing. We’ll figure it out.”
Carrie’s voice turned chilly. “I know I did the right thing. And I will fix it.” She drained her tumbler. “I got us all into this mess by bringing Anna on board in the first place. And now I’ll get us out of it.”
Chapter 9
While winter worked its way into the bricks and mortar of the Avalon, Carrie threw herself into fixing everything she could for as little as possible.
The main advantage in working so hard, she’d realized, was that it made it a lot easier to ignore Nate. The builders were back in, rebuilding the sagging terrace and replacing the rest of the windows, and with the wedding less than a month away, Carrie had far too many other things to concentrate on to have time to check up on him. She’d just leave him to his digging, or whatever it was gardeners did in the winter.
Unfortunately, avoiding the Seniors proved harder. Cyb, for instance, hadn’t forgotten Carrie’s request for dance lessons, however jokingly made. And so, one cold December afternoon, Carrie found herself on the dance floor in the dining room, trying to learn some basic ballroom moves.
It didn’t take long for her to realize the dance lessons were going to be a disaster.
Carrie wasn’t a natural dancer, and she didn’t need Cyb’s pitying looks and Stan’s occasional snorts of laughter to tell her that.
“Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea,” Carrie said as she failed, once again, to grasp the basic steps Cyb was trying to teach her. “I mean, I’m usually too busy to dance at weddings, anyway. No one need ever know how dismal I am at it.”
“Nonsense.” Cyb moved Carrie’s arms into the correct position, again, and nudged her misplaced feet with the toe of her sensible beige heel. “Every girl needs to be able to dance at least one dance well. How else are you going to impress a boy?”
Carrie got the distinct impression that, had Stan not been in the room, ‘a boy’ might have been replaced in her sentence with an actual named person. “I haven’t got time to be impressing boys,” she said, keen to nip this one in the bud.
Cyb gave her a knowing look. “Regardless. You’ve got to learn sometime. And I say it should be this afternoon. Stan!”
Stan, unusually biddable, came and took his place opposite Carrie for what had to be the fifteenth time. Carrie wondered if Cyb had filled him in on their relationship status yet. At least somebody should be enjoying some romance right now, and it really wasn’t going to be Carrie. Cyb started the music, then stood behind her and moved her arms again.
Carrie sighed, and resigned herself to another hour of being manhandled around the floor. It just didn’t seem worth it.
It was getting harder to find the motivation for all sorts of things. Even if she didn’t have to see Nate, she had to deal with his grandmother’s disapproving eyes daily. Added to Jacob and Izzie’s initial teasing, followed by confused glances when Carrie crossed rooms to avoid Nate, she couldn’t even pretend her issues weren’t affecting everybody else, too.
“Ow,” said Stan, as she stood on his foot again.
“Sorry,” Carrie murmured, and bit the inside of her cheek to keep her focus on the dancing and not on Nathanial bloody Green.
After another hour or so, Carrie began to feel slightly more enthusiastic about the whole dancing idea. She hadn’t trod on Stan’s toes for almost ten minutes and Cyb was no longer standing behind her, guiding her movements. Instead, she was watching from the side, hands clasped together in front of her chest, grinning. Perhaps she could do this after all.
The music came to an end, and Cyb clapped her hands together. “That was wonderful, Carrie!”
Carrie looked to Stan for a less biased assessment. “It was definitely better,” he assured her. “And now, if you two ladies don’t mind, I do have other things I need to do today.”
Cyb nodded, and he disappeared out of the dining room and back into the lobby. “He loves it, really,” Cyb told her, as she began packing away the tapes. “He loves any excuse to dance.”
“I’m not sure he’d call what I was doing dancing.” Carrie pulled the first few tables into their usual position. “But it was very kind of you both to help me with this.”
“It was a pleasure.” The smile on Cyb’s face said that, against all odds, she actually meant it. “You’ll be a perfect partner for Nate, now.”
The smile on Carrie’s face froze, although Cyb didn’t seem to notice. The older woman was instead preoccupied with a hat she’d found on the stage. “Oh, look what Stan’s left behind. I’d better chase him...” And she was gone, with considerably more speed than Carrie thought she could have managed after an hour and a half of dancing.
Maybe Cyb didn’t need to tell Stan at all. They already acted like partners. Other than the sex, what was she missing? But that train of thought led Carrie back to her one night with Nate. She knew exactly what
she
was missing.
A hell of a lot.
With a sigh, Carrie thumped down to sit on the stairs leading up to the stage. Did everyone think she and Nate were a couple? Or at least an inevitability? Did they think this was a lovers’ tiff? Was it? Hadn’t they noticed they’d barely spoken since Anna’s visit?
Even if she wasn’t his boss, and there weren’t a thousand reasons for them not to be together–starting with the fact they’d only known each other a few months and ending with her needing him for the gardens, and what if something went wrong and he left?–Carrie wasn’t sure she wanted to be in a relationship purely because everyone else thought it was a good idea.
But then she remembered the feel of Nate’s skin against hers, the heat of his mouth on her body, the way he moved against her in the dark of the attic, and she knew that wasn’t the only reason. They fit together, there was no point denying it. But was it just physical? Was there something more?
And could she take the risk of finding out?
Sighing again, Carrie got to her feet. All she wanted to do was curl up in bed with Puss and a book and forget the whole day. And maybe, for once, she was just going to do just what she liked, and damn everyone else.
* * * *
Carrie was avoiding him.
It had been two weeks since Anna bloody Yardley’s visit, since Carrie told him her focus had to be on the inn, and while he’d known she was serious, he hadn’t expected her to be so literal about it. How was he supposed to convince her to take a chance on him if every time he got near her, she started studying the furnishings and finding another urgent job to do? It was getting disheartening. If it hadn’t been for the smiles she’d given him the morning after their night together, he’d have worried he wasn’t doing it right.
But he’d been over every moment of that night in his head, for endless nights now. Every time his head hit the pillow, it started running through his mind again, his own personal porn movie, from the moment Carrie led him up the stairs to the kiss goodbye when he’d had to physically drag himself away from climbing back into bed with her. It had been the most incredible night of his life. And he refused to believe it had been anything less than spectacular for her too.
None of which explained why he couldn’t get her alone for a moment. Even if she insisted on working like a drone, he was part of her work. Perhaps he just needed to find a good enough business reason to get her alone.
Or, more likely, perhaps he needed to help her fix her business first, so she had time to focus on other things.
Nate sat back on his heels and tossed his paintbrush into the pot beside him on the terrace. Which brought him right back to his original problem. How was he supposed to help her if she was avoiding him?
A tinny ringing noise started in his back pocket, and Nate pulled out his phone with a scowl. Melody’s London number blinked on the screen. She’d said she would ring, he reminded himself. And he was still perfectly capable of saying no.