Jill Shalvis - Out of This World

He shook his head. “Nah. When Gertrude’s attorney sent us the money she left us, he told us about her, that’s all. Said she was L.A. all the way, an artist, who’d be showing up eventually to see what’s what and then heading back to her murals in the city.”

I didn’t catch much of what he said after “the money she left us,” and I shook my head. “Wait. So you got something in the will?” I hadn’t even seen the will; I’d only spoken to the attorney on the phone.

“Well, of course,” Axel said. “I’m going to take a nice vacation. Somewhere warm, of course. I’m thinking Virgin Islands. Maybe the Caymans, depending on the surf reports, you know?”

Did I know? No, I didn’t know. I knew nothing. In fact, I knew less than nothing.

“Oh, and dudette, now that you’re here,” Axel went on, “you’ve got some back wages to pay.”

“But, what if I’d never shown up?” I asked, overwhelmed.

“Well, of course you were going to show up.” He smiled that smile that normally I’d consider contagious and return full force, but I couldn’t smile back right now because anxiety was gripping me.

“You’re Gert’s niece, aren’t you?” He chuckled, and the long tassels on his beanie swayed back and forth. “Probably just as organized and anal as she was, right?”

I smiled weakly. If he only knew…“I’ve been calling”-I tried to sound as if I was in control, when I was so not-“but I couldn’t get through.”

“Yeah. We lost the phone a while back.”

“We?”

“Marilee’s here somewhere, too. She’s the cook and housekeeper. You owe her some back wages as well.”

This just got better and better, didn’t it?

“We just heard her shut a door upstairs,” I said.

“Nope. She’s out back watering her flowers. As for getting a hold of us, you can text me on my cell, though I mostly don’t have any reception up here.” He patted his pocket, found it empty, frowned, then patted another pocket.

And yet another.

Still came up empty, not that he looked too troubled. “I had the thing earlier,” he murmured. His tassels hit him in the face as he bent, slapping at his pants.

“I also sent an e-mail,” I said.

“Yeah, not so good with the computer, dudette. Sorry.” Giving up on finding his cell, he turned away to grab a steaming mug off the counter.

“If there’s no phone, and no one is manning the Web site, how do potential guests make reservations?” I asked.

He blinked, then scratched his head, as he sipped at his drink. “Dunno. Gertrude used to do that.”

The woman had been buried for three weeks. A really bad feeling began to work its way through my system. “So no one’s been handling the business since she-”

“Well, I keep meaning to find that phone…”

Three weeks with no income, and yet the staff had been working. That seemed like unnecessary out-of-pocket expenses to me.

My pocket.

“Well,” Axel said, heading for the door, “time for my nooner.”

I had no idea what he meant, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. “But it’s past noon,” I said, looking at the small cuckoo clock on the counter. “It’s nearly four o’clock.”

Not seeming too concerned-and I had my doubts that he could get concerned about anything, even if his life depended on it-he shrugged. “You know what they say,” he said in that slow voice. “Better late than never.”

“Yeah. So who’s upstairs?”

“No one.”

“But-”

“Relax, Rachel Wood.” He accompanied this with a pat on my shoulder. “You’re here now, in God’s country. Just take it easy.”

Easier said than done.

“Time stands still here, dudette.” His smile widened. “Everything’s good.”

And with that, he was gone.

“Probably misplaced his crack pipe,” I said into the silence.

“I think it’s more a bong-type love affair,” Kellan said, and looked around. “Truth is, this place isn’t as bad as you imagined, Rach.”

“In what realm of reality?”

He shrugged. “If it wasn’t so completely inaccessible, it’d be worth something pretty decent on the real estate market. Might still be worth something.”

Yeah. I was thinking the same thing.

Hoping the same thing.

As Kel and I stood there in the kitchen looking at each other, still a bit shell-shocked, the back door opened, and in walked a woman.

She appeared to be in her mid-twenties, like me, and she was of average height and weight, but that was where her averageness ended.

She looked Native Alaskan and gorgeous; shiny black hair to the middle of her back, matching eyes and flawless, exotic features combined to leave me speechless, so I could only imagine what it would to do a red-blooded man.

I took a quick look at Kellan.

Yep, his mouth was agape, as if maybe he was planning on catching some flies. Any second he was going to start drooling.

Men. Poor, stupid, helpless creatures, completely led around by their penises.

“Um…hi,” the woman said, clearly surprised at the sight of us, but holding it together with a grace and elegance I could only admire, because I hadn’t been given either grace or elegance at birth.

She held a small flowerpot in her hands, and she set it in the sink. “Who are you?”

“Rachel Wood,” I said. “I-”

“Inherited. I heard.” She dismissed me fairly quickly, then eyeballed Kellan with those midnight-black eyes.

Kellan stood up a little straighter, while I rolled my eyes, because I figured his chances of scoring with this woman lay somewhere between zero and fat chance.

Marilee moved with that beautiful ease of someone who had no doubt about how good she looked at all times, grabbing a glass and heading to the refrigerator. Meanwhile, I tried to see Kel as she did. He still had that perpetually messed-up caramel hair, a good part of it stabbing into his eyes, hiding their gorgeous color from the general public. Not “artfully” mussed, but neglectfully mussed. Tall and gangly, he carried himself with no grace or ease.

Right now, for example, his shirt was wrinkled from traveling, and also a little on the shabby side, as if maybe he’d had it since the nineties. Knowing Kellan, he had. Not that he was frugal. He was the opposite, actually. He happened to be one of the most generous people I knew, giving time and money he didn’t always have to his causes, but fashion was not one of them.

Which meant he didn’t always put his best foot forward when it came to first impressions.

Still, in the manner of clueless men everywhere, he smiled at the woman, one of those inherently goofy smiles men got when they were pathetically hopeful about getting sex in the current millennium, but of course didn’t really have a chance in hell of actually getting it.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t a catch. Truthfully, I’d secretly always thought he’d make a hell of a boyfriend because he’d been raised by women and knew them inside and out in a way most guys did not. Kel would never, for instance, send a mother screaming into the night, fearful for her daughter.

The thought of Kellan being an asshole in any way made me want to smile. Nope, he didn’t have a bad bone in his mellow, easygoing body. Not a single one.

A damn shame, let me tell you.

Apparently the stunning woman in front of us didn’t go for the absentminded-professor thing any more than I ever had, because she dismissed Kel as fast as she had me, filling her glass with ice cubes, while my gaze locked on something in the still-open freezer.

Two boxes of Girl Scout Cookies. Specifically, Thin Mints.

Oh. My. God.