Hideaway Hero

“It’s not a soap opera,”she protested limply.

“Sure it is. Although there’s never quite enough dirty stuff to make it really juicy.”He consumed the strawberry in one bite—an oddly sexy action—and tossed the stem expertly back onto the pink tablecloth. “Out with it. What’s wrong?”

With anyone else—especially her father—she would have denied it. But with Gabe, honesty was easy. A relief, even. He knew all her secrets. Sometimes she wondered how much she’d spilled that first year, over the wine.

“It’s just that I’m not ready for…the next step. But Franklin thinks I should be. And I’m afraid I’ve goofed by scheduling this vacation right before Valentine’s Day. It’s such a perfect setup for a proposal.”She lifted her hand. “I might as well have tattooed a bull’s-eye on my ring finger.”

Gabe laughed. “Every time you bring a man here, Chick, the poor guy leaves with his dreams dashed.”

“Not every time.”

“No?”He ticked off on his fingers. “The first year was that Roger guy. The one who slept alone for two nights, then gave up and went home. Year two…was his name Ty?”

“Ty and I did just fine,”she reminded him.

“Yeah, but by the next year things had definitely cooled. If I remember correctly, you spent a lot of your nights helping me muck out stalls.”

“That wasn’t my fault,”she said, poking his thigh with her toes. She couldn’t help noticing that his muscles were rock solid. He worked hard, day and night, to keep the Hideaway running at its best…but never complained. He loved this business.

He loved building and growing and cooking—unlike Greta, who created nothing. She merely brokered deals between other people. People who didn’t have her problems with commitment. People who were willing to say Yes. I want to put roots down here.

“Ty issued an ultimatum.”She frowned. “Marriage or nothing. He should have realized that would be a mistake.”

Gabe nodded slowly. “He was in love. People in love don’t always think clearly.”

“Which is why the next year I brought Red Malone. Back then, Red wasn’t interested in getting serious with any woman, so I knew it wouldn’t be complicated. It was great. No strings, no false hopes.”

Actually, she’d decided against having sex with Red that year, too, but Gabe didn’t know that. Red had accepted her decision so gracefully she hadn’t needed to flee the suite. Red had cheerfully made up the sofa bed and turned the week into a platonic festival of food and fun.

“Okay, Red went well,”Gabe admitted, “but now this Franklin guy. Apparently he, too, is wanting more than you can give.”

Something about Gabe’s thoughtful expression made Greta feel twitchy. He was usually so nonjudgmental. Was he looking at the pattern, these five years of failure, and finding her flawed? Did he really think she was a callous heartbreaker?

Surely he realized that she wanted to find a life partner. Sometimes her fear of ending up alone woke her in the night and scared her breathless.

She was thirty. She’d had two lovers in her entire life.

All her relationships had fizzled out.

Still, Gabe couldn’t believe she should marry the wrong man just because she feared she’d end up alone. That would be as depressing as marrying for the reasons her father recommended—financial security or professional advantage.

“What are you thinking?”She didn’t know why Gabe’s opinion mattered so much to her, but it did. “Is there something wrong with me? Should I say yes if—”

Before she could finish, another knock came at the door. She stared at the spot, paralyzed. Gabe shot her one unreadable glance, then stood and opened it.

But it wasn’t Franklin this time, either. It was Warren, the bellboy. He held an arrangement of yellow roses.

“Flowers for Ms. Kinyon.”

Finally Greta found the use of her limbs again and joined Warren and Gabe at the door. She took the flowers, put them on the coffee table and tugged the card off its plastic stick.

The card stuck briefly in its envelope, and she had to yank it free. But finally she could see what was typed on the note.

She heard Gabe shut the door, then felt him at her shoulder. She registered his cool, manly scent—of growing things and open air.

“What? Don’t tell me Mr. Lucky really decided to propose.”

“No.”She reread the card. I’m sorry, Greta…

“Well, what, then?”

She turned and held out the card.

“He’s tired of waiting. He found somebody else.”

Chapter Two (#ulink_31eca141-18b0-55c9-baf3-aec7040571ce)

This Valentine’s Day was starting out colder than usual—well below forty degrees at midnight, darn near flirting with freezing. When Gabe went out to replace a beam of rotten wood at the top of the grape arbor, the full moon had risen, a cold, white wafer in the starry black sky. From his perch, he could see its reflection lying on the bay like a crust of ice.

He turned away from the sight and shifted the hammer in his gloved hand, ignoring the familiar twinge in his bad shoulder. He forced his focus back on his work. Tomorrow was an important day, the day that could save his business from bankruptcy, and he was already behind schedule. If he allowed his gaze to keep drifting to the bay, the repair to the beam would take twice as long as it should.

For ten years, ever since his driven, upwardly mobile life had exploded and left him at rock bottom, he’d worked hard to develop an immunity to stress. Even when he bought the Hideaway, he hadn’t allowed himself to invest too deeply in it—emotionally, at least. Succeed or fail, he told himself, it didn’t matter. Instead of always climbing, with his eye on the next dollar or the next score, he tried to appreciate the simple things. Like a crisp pear, or a smart dog. Or an icy Valentine’s moon.

But somewhere along the way, he’d started to care about the Hideaway. Really care. The hotel and its staff had become his heart, and now that he was in danger of losing it, he felt all the old passion and ambition boiling to the surface.

Tomorrow a woman from Bay Beauty magazine was coming to do a feature spread on his low-profile bed-and-breakfast, and to ensure the Hideaway stayed in business he needed to impress her. And he had to prevent her from pursuing the angle she’d hinted she might want to use—the sexy innkeeper and his bevy of female guests.

Not just because it would make him, and his inn, look sleazy and ridiculous. The real problem was that it was a dangerously short trip from “hunky hotelier”to the ugliness buried in Gabe’s past.

Which meant he’d have to keep a strictly professional distance from all his guests this week.

Including Greta.

He gripped the hammer tightly and shook his head. Could the timing be any worse? This was the first year Greta would be staying alone. And he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

“Hey, gorgeous. Are you going to stay up there all night?”

He peered over the edge of the arbor. The voice had come from the pool, back toward the main building, and it was decidedly female.

He kept the pool light on until three, since many of his guests liked moonlit dips in its heated waters, so as he peered in the direction of the pool, the glowing turquoise rectangle blinded him for a minute. But after a few seconds, he made out the body stretched across a cushioned lounger. A curvy body—but oddly…well, hairy.

She looked like a long, undulating…ferret.

He squinted, then groaned. Not ferret. Mink. Above the ankle-length mink coat, the platinum-blond tresses helped him put a name to the body. Katie Marchada. Bay-view suite, second floor west.

Where her twelve-year-old son and her husband were undoubtedly sound asleep right now.

Damn it. The truth was, the Bay Beauty reporter had a point. He did have a lot of female guests—a lot of lonely women who enjoyed getting a few days of TLC from a handy, attractive guy like Gabe.