Can't Take My Eyes Off of You (Summer Lake #2)(8)

“Nope. They all wanted him, but he never dated anybody in town.” Sarah shrugged. “Honestly, Liam’s always been hard to read. Which only ever seemed to make women want to try to uncover his heart. It’s the same old story we’ve all heard a million times—some poor, delusional girl out there thinks she’s going to be the one to make him fall. The reformed rake brought to his knees by love.”

“Definitely delusional,” Christie agreed. She knew firsthand all about girls like that.

Because she’d been one of them her entire life.

Heck, she’d wanted so badly for things to work out with Wesley that she’d actually accepted his proposal of marriage. And before Wesley…well, she’d been even more delusional with her previous boyfriends. She’d seen only what she wanted to see—and ignored all of the warning signs.

Never again. Especially given that warning signs had started flashing bigger and brighter than ever before when she’d been talking with Liam. He was just Christie’s type, in fact.

The very type that always ripped her heart out of her chest and stomped all over it.





CHAPTER FOUR





Six hours later, Christie had seen the bride and groom off on their way to the airport for their honeymoon and was saying good-bye to the final wedding guests—many of whom couldn’t resist addressing the huge white elephant in the room.

“Such a lovely wedding, Christie. We’re just all so sorry you won’t be up there tomorrow marrying Wesley.”

Ugh.

“Oh, honey, it must be so hard at your age to have to start over. We’re all trying to think of any single men we can introduce you to.”

Double ugh.

“You must be so overwhelmed running the inn without Wesley. I heard Liam was back home to help.”

God, no.

Liam hadn’t come home to help her with the inn. Ten minutes in the same room with him was enough to send her head spinning and her heart racing. Working together would surely do her in completely.

Only William Sullivan had known the right thing to say. “It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. All that matters is that you’re happy. Let me know if you need to get away in my rowboat for a little while. Sometimes there’s nothing better than sitting in the middle of a quiet lake with the water and the birds and the mountains for company.”

She’d hugged him so hard that he had to have been more than a little surprised by it. But he had no idea how much his words of support helped.

Finally, she was back in her room, where she was desperate to take a long, hot bath.

She reached for the zipper of her dress, knee-length green satin that played up the best of her figure and hid the worst. She hadn’t told anyone that it was supposed to have been her rehearsal-dinner dress. Figuring it was better to get some use out of it after the amount of money she’d spent on it, she’d decided to wear it today.

Still, after ten-plus hours running around in it, she couldn’t wait to get into a pair of leggings and a T-shirt. But when she tried to pull the zipper down, it wouldn’t go. She tugged and pulled at it until her index finger was scraped sore by the small metal tab.

Was this dress cursed?

Just as she had the thought, the window in her bedroom that looked out on Main Street began to shake. She hadn’t noticed the wind earlier in the afternoon—in fact, it had been unusually still out on the water—but the weather changed so fast in the Adirondacks that the sky could go from bright blue to pelting hail in seconds.

With some help from the moonlight, she could see that the treetops weren’t blowing. And the flag on the town hall was limp. But, strangely, the window was still shaking.

Wesley had fixed up this suite of rooms high under the inn’s roof especially for the two of them to move into after their wedding. Sixty years ago, this bedroom had been the honeymoon suite. But only a few years later, for some reason that no one seemed to know, it had been converted to storage.

Wesley had insisted she move in a month ago, and she’d agreed, glad to have the chance to make the rooms feel like home before the wedding, rather than returning from their honeymoon to an impersonal space. But as she stood in the middle of the bedroom, she felt cold, despite having turned on the heat earlier. The small hairs on the back of her neck prickled, and a rush of air moved over her, almost as if someone had walked by.

Spinning around, she saw that she was still completely alone.

Or was she?

She’d always had a vague sense that something wasn’t right about the bedroom. She’d even heard rumors during the months she’d worked at the inn that it was haunted. And though she’d laughed it off, over the past few weeks since she and Wesley had called off their wedding, she wasn’t sure it was completely ridiculous anymore.

But when her stomach growled, she decided low blood sugar was the only reason she was thinking about ghosts and spirits. Her bath would have to wait until she went back downstairs and had a snack. There was leftover cake, and considering she hadn’t eaten much all day, she figured she deserved a big slice. Maybe two. Plus, even though her employees had all gone home, if she was lucky she might find a guest in the common rooms downstairs who could help her unstick the zipper.

So the dress was staying on for the time being. Shoes, however, weren’t going to happen again tonight. Just the thought of putting her heels back on had her wincing.