Up to Me (Shore Secrets) (9 page)

“The thing is, I kind of do, now.”

He balanced his elbows on his knees, letting his hands dangle, loose as his teasing grin. “You mean, now that you’ve gotten your way, along with your massage school certification?”

“Actually, yes. I fought so hard because I cared. A little maturity helped me see that my ancestors worked just as hard at keeping the hotel going. Selling off my shares was the same as thumbing my nose at their decades of hard work. It was thoughtless and selfish and I wholly regret it.”

No, that wasn’t all of it. Her ex-therapist Dr. Takeuchi would be disappointed if she couldn’t reveal the whole truth, after all their years of hard work. Ella scrubbed her hands across her eyes and whooshed a deep, cleansing breath in and out.

Gray gently tugged her hands down. He looked at her, but not with the pitying concern she was so darn sick of, the knowing looks people exchanged across the top of her head if she so much as blinked twice, which wordlessly said
Ella’s too fragile for this conversation
, or
Ella’s too emotional for this conversation.
Nope, Gray’s eyes held nothing but honest, basic curiosity. It made it so easy to talk to him. No judging, just two people, sharing.

“What is it?” he asked. His warm hands still cradled hers.

“I guess it’s that a connection to family—any connection, no matter how tenuous—became so much more precious to me once my whole family was gone. I still don’t want to run it, but I don’t want to let it go, either.” There. No bursting into tears, just a flat declaration of a belief she’d mocked, or at best, ignored, almost her entire life. One that she now clung to with the vise-grip determination of someone dangling by their fingernails from the edge of the Grand Canyon. “It took their deaths to make me see that I’d do anything to maintain that legacy. To uphold the Mayhew name and tradition. I’m all that’s left. I can’t let their memory down.”

Gray seemed to absorb that for a few moments. “What happened? With your parents, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Her hands clenched around his. But Ella wanted to get it all out. If this man was the first in three years she actually wanted to date, she wanted to do it right. Be totally upfront. So what if he was only here for two weeks? It could be the best, most intense two weeks of her life. It could set the tone for all her dating relationships going forward. Although that felt too portentous. Probably unwise to heap all those expectations onto him. This was all about her. How Ella wanted to move forward. How she didn’t want to tiptoe—or worse, have him do it—around the truth of her past. Gray’s response, good or bad, wasn’t the point. Mostly.

“Funny you should ask. That’s the final part of my story. Are you sure you want me to keep going?”

The corners of his mouth twitched. “I’m sure I want to take you out on a date, and this appears to be the only way to make that happen.” Sliding off the bench, he leaned back against it, with one arm draped along the seat. Gray beckoned her over.

Whether he was being sweet, or just polite, she didn’t want to squander the opportunity to touch more of him. Ella didn’t hesitate to scooch into the warmth of his side. She deserved some reward for revisiting this emotional battlefield, didn’t she? And it was too early for her usual go-to: a triple scoop of chocolate ice cream with dark chocolate sauce, four cherries, and as much whipped cream as she could squirt directly into her mouth. But cuddling with Gray might just be better. His hand curled around her shoulder in a comforting, miniature version of a hug.

“My parents and I achieved an uneasy peace once I agreed to work as a massage therapist in the spa at Mayhew Manor.”

“Really? They just rolled over?”

Hardly. “After a three-month battle during which they tried to convince me to run the place. But I held firm. I’d be a massage therapist, either here or elsewhere. That was the only choice. So they decided agreeing meant I’d at least be under their roof, so to speak. My interpretation was that I needed to get out from under at least one of their roofs, and get my own apartment.”

“I’m surprised you lasted that long,” he mumbled.

“Why, when did you move out?”

The rhythmic stroke of his curled fingers stopped cold. “It’s, uh, complicated. Sooner, let’s just say.”

Yup. It was definite. Ella wasn’t the only one with a thorny past. But that would be for another time. If Gray decided both that she wasn’t crazy-pants, and that there would be another time. “I found a great little place. Dad shot it down. Insisted the complex was at an unsafe corner. A dangerous blind entrance. I don’t know if you noticed, but big stretches of the road that hugs the lake don’t have streetlights. Locals don’t care, and tourists don’t know enough to care. Or they’ve visited eight wineries in three hours and are way past caring about anything.”

“You guys should put up streetlights.”

Right. Like nobody from the mayor all the way down to the trash collectors had thought of that. “Well, if you’ve got a spare five hundred thousand dollars to implement that plan, feel free to stick around and present it at the next Town Council meeting.”

A soft chuckle, and his hand resumed its stroking. “Message received.”

“I put down a deposit on the apartment. Mom and Dad both kept calling, trying to get me to change my mind. I said if it was really that dangerous, somebody would’ve died already, or there’d be a stoplight, and they just couldn’t stand the thought of me reaching for a little piece of freedom.”

“Typical boundary stretching for someone your age.”

“Exactly. How many people get crappy apartments in the seedy part of town right after leaving college? It’s almost a required rite of passage.”

“Like eating ramen noodles four times a week to save money for Margarita Madness Mondays?”

Gray had a knack of expertly tickling her funny bone. “I knew you’d understand. So I begged them to just come over and see the apartment. See the adorable bow window and the breakfast nook. The pretty, deep blue tiles in the bathroom. I knew if they saw it for themselves, they’d fall in love just like I did.”

“Did they?”

“A little. Mom thought it was adorable. Dad kept his stubborn chin point going on the whole time, but stopped grousing.” Ella refused to pause. Refused to give herself the chance to not say the words that always cut through her like a jagged shard of glass. “And then they turned out of the parking lot and got T-boned by an SUV. Right in front of me. The SUV pinned their little Jaguar against a wall. Mom died instantly. Dad, well, I ran to him, talked to him while we waited for the ambulance, but he died just a few minutes later.”

The lazy hand on her shoulder pulled Ella into a full, tight embrace. No words, just the comforting thump of his heart beneath her cheek. It might be pity, or sympathy, or just plain good manners. Ella didn’t care. She just let the warmth of his chest beneath her and the sun on her back bring her back into the peace of the moment.

“My bad decision led to them emptying their savings to buy back my shares. Even worse, it was my bad decision in choosing an apartment that directly led to their death.”

Gray’s breath stirred across the top of her hair. “That’s a lot to take on yourself. You didn’t force them to buy your shares back. You weren’t driving the car that killed them.”

Funny, that’s just what her therapist had said on day one. And at every visit thereafter. “Grief clouds rational thought. You could say I freaked out for a while. My therapist called it an intermittent fugue state. The bottom line is that I didn’t trust myself to make decisions anymore. Not at all.”

“Couldn’t you just lay low for a while? Not think about things?”

“I wish. But once my parents died, I suddenly became the sole owner of Mayhew Manor. Business decisions were thrust upon me, whether I liked it or not. Smaller things, too. Like whether or not to sublet the apartment I’d never even moved into. It was all too much. So I did what felt natural. Habitual. Safe. I came out here to the mailbox, wrote down my problems, and asked for advice.”

Gray tilted her chin up to glare straight at her. “That’s insane. You let the town barber or, or nursing-home bedpan washer or whoever, make decisions that affected the day-to-day running of your midsized boutique hotel?”

Yep. There it was. The tight, barely controlled screech in Gray’s voice that labeled her one-hundred-percent, certifiably bonkers. “Yes. I mean, no. The management of the hotel wasn’t affected by my epic indecision. Eugene, our manager, has been in place for years. He kept the day-to-day stuff running smoothly. All my friends you met today? They kept everything else in my life going.”

He dipped his head in a nod of appreciation. “Those are some amazing friends you’ve got.”

“Don’t I know it.” But as much as she relied on them, they relied on her, too. Ella couldn’t let Gray think that she just sat back and let other people handle her like a marionette. “Let me be clear—I could make decisions. It’s just that I questioned them. On a daily basis. I didn’t second-guess myself. I quadruple-guessed myself every third second. Reading what people wrote calmed me. Soothed me. Dr. Takeuchi, my therapist, noticed the change right away. He called the mailbox a coping mechanism. Not something I should turn to forever, but a way to get out from under the crushing, immobilizing grief.”

Gray smoothed her head back into the hollow of his collarbone and resumed running his fingers languidly through her hair. God, she could let him do that all day, every day, it felt so good. “Then I’m glad it helped,” he said.

“It did. I’m much better now. Stronger. More sure of myself. But it’s hard to just quit the habit of turning to the mailbox. The entire town pulled together to help me. To comfort me. To guide me by the hand through the worst experience of my life.” There was a freedom in talking to Gray, a complete outsider. Ella could admit to him what she’d told no one else. “Except that now, I’m kind of stuck in a rut with it. When too much time elapses between my journal entries, people swing by to check on me. What used to be reassuring is becoming smothering.”

“Because they care so much.”

“Mmm-hmm.” But she couldn’t tell anyone that. It would sound ungrateful. Hurtful.

“That’s why Brooke texted everyone yesterday? To give you a group consensus on dating me? And now you’re compelled to let the whole town weigh in, too?”

“Mmm-hmm.” Yesterday Ella hadn’t been sure she was ready to ask Gray out. She’d caught herself willing to rely on the mailbox, just like always. But after their chat—and other things—on the stairs, she’d spent a considerable portion of the rest of the night thinking about it. This—the sexy temptation that was Gray—was her line in the sand. It was time for her to stand entirely on her own two feet, decision-wise. She’d still ask for advice in the journal until she could figure out a way not to, but she’d also find a way to move forward without waiting for a reply.

His chest heaved in a deep sigh beneath her cheek. “Well, on the bat-shit-crazy scale, it isn’t quite up there with eating chalk. Or collecting those hideous porcelain figurines with big eyes.”

“You’re setting a pretty low bar for me. I appreciate it.” His teasing whisked away her pensiveness. This emotional outpouring had been exhausting. Which meant her experiment had failed, at least partially. No way could Ella possibly go through this every time she met an attractive man. But her only other option—besides marrying Gray, and how insane was that—would be to only date men who lived on Seneca Lake. Men who already knew the story. Too bad she couldn’t think of a single, viable candidate.

“It comes from a good place.” He paused. “Everyone wanting to help you. I see that. God knows I’ve never seen anything quite like it before.” Another pause, as if he fighting with himself to look past his knee-jerk response. “But it seems to work for you. Who am I to judge?”

Could he really be that easygoing? Gray’s initial reaction had angled much more towards shocked ridicule. The whole death thing probably squeezed the snickers right out of him. But she didn’t want him to only see a broken woman leaning on a town. The beauty of the mailbox was that everyone leaned on each other, in equal measure. She pulled out of his embrace to pin him with an accusing glare. “Is it possible you’re humoring me a little bit? Are you worried I’ll fall apart on you? I know that women’s tears are like acid-laced Kryptonite to men.”

“Nope.” His eyes slid down, and to the side. A definite tell. “Look, I’m not worried you’ll fall apart. From what I can tell, you’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever met. Am I humoring you?” Gray waved his hand back and forth. “A little. Maybe a lot.”

“You don’t believe in the mailbox. You
are
being judgey,” she accused.

A long push of his hand through his thick hair, down the line of his cheek to wipe across his lower face, specifically those lips Ella really, really wanted to kiss again. He ended by gripping his chin in a thoughtful pose. Oh, he was thoughtful, all right. Probably racking his brain for a way to skirt her question.

Finally, he said, “I believe it works for all of you. Heck, if the whole town does this, who am I to judge? No skin off my nose either way. I just know it could never work for me. My life, my choices. Nobody else gets a vote.”

Ella had to admit, he’d come up with a fair response. But she didn’t want to settle for just fair. Fair was a C grade. Her beloved town and its wonderful tradition deserved nothing less than an A from Gray.

“Now you’ve thrown down the gauntlet.” She pulled the journal off the bench onto her lap. “You have to write in it. Just to see what sort of response you get.”

“You’re really going to make me do this?”

“We’ll both do it.” Ella flipped through the pages to get to the last entry. “Oh, look. It’s the secret romance.”

“It doesn’t sound like anything in this town’s a secret,” he grumbled.

“This is. It’s been going on for a year. Two people, conducting a love affair, from what we can tell, solely in the pages of this journal.”

“Must lead to some nasty paper cuts.”

Ella thwacked him on the leg. “This is no joking matter. Apparently somewhere in town are a man and a woman who desperately care for each other, but can’t be together.”