It's In His Kiss

“These chandeliers are reproductions of what was here in 1895, without the gas, of course,” Beth said quickly.

But Vanessa had moved on, tapping her pointy foot on the parquet floor. “What kind of wood is this? I don’t like it. I prefer walnut.”

As if she would recognize walnut if she fell over it. Rosebud rolled her ghostly eyes. Princess Vanessa was a pain. A royal pain.

It went on that way as the tour continued, with Beth leading Vanessa on to the next space, a lovely, intimate private dining room recommended for the rehearsal dinner, and then up to the guest rooms. But the bride-to-be’s list of demands just kept getting longer, and she wanted it all at rock-bottom prices.

Beluga caviar. Cristal champagne. Special lace tablecloths from Belgium. Special caterer. Special masseuse. And on and on, down to her insistence on the Inn’s best honeymoon suite, although all the linens were going to have to be changed. She required Egyptian cotton with 800-thread counts, of course.

“This suite is the only thing you’ve got that’s even slightly acceptable for my honeymoon,” she sniffed, running a finger over the edge of a mahogany side table.

Hrmph. Rosebud might not have been the happiest hooker on the premises, but after 109 years, she had a certain loyalty to the place. Besides, she’d once lived in the lap of Denver society—during an era far more elegant than this one—and she knew there was nothing wrong with the Inn at Maiden Falls or its rooms or its chef or its linens or anything else.

And certainly not the gorgeous suite they were standing in, the one they called the Lady Godiva Suite, which reminded Rosebud of the inside of a candy box with its deep reds and pinks and chocolaty browns. Like the rest of the Inn, it was full of antiques and featured a beautiful, sensual pre-Raphaelite painting, one of the odalisques, over the fireplace in its sitting room. Right now, there were fresh flowers, a display of fine chocolates and a bottle of excellent champagne on ice, all awaiting tonight’s lucky guests.

Rosebud adored this room. She hoped Beth told Princess Vanessa to zip her narrow scarlet lips very soon, or she might just have to shove her out the window of the Lady Godiva Suite.

“But if she dies on the premises, with my luck she’ll be stuck here with the rest of us into eternity,” she grumbled.

The wedding coordinator was more diplomatic. “I can look into some of your other requests, but I can’t promise you this suite,” Beth said gently, referring back to her notes. “The Inn is insanely popular, and your dates are awfully soon. Are you at all flexible about, say, midweek? We may even be booked for those, but that’s your best shot.”

“You do know who my fiancé is, don’t you?” Vanessa asked, raising one dark sliver of an eyebrow.

Rosebud was curious about that herself. Who would willingly hitch themselves to Vanessa’s wagon?

Beth blinked. “I’m aware that his uncle is one of our owners, yes. To be honest, that’s why we’re trying to accommodate you. Normally you’d have to book at least a year ahead. If not two. Because your fiancé’s uncle made a special request, we will do everything we can. But we can’t squeeze out someone who’s already reserved the space. I’m sure you understand.”

“I’m not sure I want to get married here, anyway,” the bride said with a frown. “Retro-Victorian kitsch is so yesterday. The whole place just reeks of Nothing Special to me.”

“Oh, it’s very special.” As Beth led her charge into the hallway, Rosebud ignored the locked door and lazily passed through the thick wood to join them. “We don’t really advertise it, but the Inn has a unique reputation.”

The bride-to-be looked a bit more interested. “I heard that Daphne Remington got married here, but I never thought she was all that. What level are you talking? Jennifer and Brad? Gwyneth and Chris? Or real royalty?”

“Although our clientele includes some very fine names, it’s not about that,” Beth said quickly. “It’s more the atmosphere.”

Vanessa lifted her narrow shoulders in a shrug. “I’m not feeling any atmosphere.”

“Well, you see…”

“Yes? What?”

“Around the turn of the century, it was a bordello,” the wedding coordinator confided. “A fancy bordello. There’s this theory that the women who worked here are still here, sort of, um, hanging around the rafters, if you get my drift.”

“Like, ghosts?” There was that eyebrow again. “Ghosts of old hookers? Is that what you’re saying?”

“In so many words, yes.” Beth smiled as they neared the elevator. “Let’s just say that everyone seems to have a really good time when they stay here, and we think it may be because there are some lusty spirits giving them a little boost. I’ve seen and heard some things—”

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Vanessa said flatly. “It all sounds ridiculous to me. And obscene. Ghost hookers. Yechhh.”

Obscene? Rosebud took issue with that. She had never done anything obscene in her entire life, and none of the others, not even the Countess, fell to that level. What was wrong with helping honeymooners have more fun?

“Just between you and me,” the bride-to-be went on, “I’m only considering it because of the family connection. But I don’t know…”

“We have a lot of happy brides and grooms,” Beth put in.

“Yes, but we’re no ordinary bride and groom. We’re very choosy.”

Which did not come as a surprise to Rosebud.

“Well, not every property is right for every couple,” the wedding planner noted. “Maybe you’d be happier choosing a different location.”

Good for you, Beth! Give her the boot! But Vanessa didn’t seem to have noticed the message behind Beth’s tactfully phrased words.

Frowning, the bride-to-be muttered, “Ned seems to think this place is our only option with so little time to plan.”

Ned. So that was the name of the poor bridegroom shackled to the Wicked Witch.

“If time is the problem, maybe you should consider pushing back the date,” Beth said helpfully. “A year, even two, would open things up. You might even want to pick your date based on when you can get your first choice of location.”

“Wait another year? Not a chance,” Vanessa declared. “I’ve been waiting for Ned to propose for two years. I know him. If I don’t pounce, he’ll back out. So I’m pouncing. If that means getting married in this dump, so be it.”

Dump? As the elevator arrived, Rosebud briefly contemplated letting Vanessa get stuck in it for a good, long time. But she wasn’t that good with elevators, plus that would trap Beth, too, and that hardly seemed fair.

Perhaps a small slip and fall…But there were no raw materials hanging around in the hallway to create any interesting tricks, so she had to let it go. For now.

“Let’s go down to my office and look at what exactly we have available in August,” Beth said soothingly as she pulled back the brass door to usher Vanessa into the elevator. “Once everything is set, I know you’ll love having your wedding here at the Inn.”

As those two rode the elevator down, Rosebud took her own route, sliding smoothly through the floors and showing up ahead of them at the sales office. As she dawdled by the door to Beth’s office, she mused, “What to do? What to do?”

There were so many dirty tricks it would be fun to pull on Vanessa when she came back for her wedding in August. “Floods and blizzards and all that good stuff were really more Sunshine’s thing, but I might be able to screw up a little plumbing and generate a nice-size flood.”

“Don’t even think it,” Miss Arlotta’s voice admonished her sternly. “Remember the Bedpost Book, with all those black marks and no gold stars and only that one little notch? If you do anything to monkey with this bride’s happy honeymoon, you are going to be one sorry sister. Count on it.”

“Yes, but she’s extremely unpleasant,” Rosebud argued. “It shouldn’t be my job to sentence some poor man to a life sentence with that. She’ll eat him alive before their first anniversary.”

Miss Arlotta’s head popped up in front of her, fully visible. Just her head. This was not only highly unusual, but it was downright frightening!

“We don’t get to pick ’em. We just have to make ’em happy. Shape up, Rosebud,” she barked. “You’re skating on thin ice.”

At that, the head popped out of sight, just before Beth and the bride turned the corner and headed that way. Trying to forget the disturbing image of Miss A’s disembodied head hanging in the air, Rosebud focused on the task at hand. She was going to have to swallow her dislike and make this work, because the boss had made it crystal clear she didn’t have any other choice. And even Rosebud was afraid of Miss Arlotta’s powers, murky as they were.

“How hard can it be?” she asked. “I’ll make sure stupid Vanessa enjoys a torrid honeymoon, and then…”

But wait a second. Vanessa and Beth weren’t alone. There was a man with them. A handsome man. Rosebud stared. Dark hair, dark suit. The man from the window. And yet…

If she’d had a jaw at that moment, it would’ve dropped to the floor. She knew him.

“Ned, I’m so glad you decided to join us.” Vanessa swiped her thumb across his cheek to remove a smear of red lipstick. “Now that you’re here, darling, you can tell me all the reasons you like this place, and maybe I can be persuaded to like it, too.”