Jill Shalvis - Out of This World

I walked in. Gert had the place stuffed to the gills with Victorian furniture and lace, lace, lace everywhere. Looking at it all, I gulped at a new thought.

Who was going to clean all this out?

Kellan followed me, and sneezed, his allergies coming to life from the weeks of dust.

Marilee still stood just outside. She hadn’t moved or said a word, and yet her anxiety was palpable.

This, in turn, brought back my goose bumps. “What?” I whispered.

“You’re going to have to deal with her things,” Marilee whispered back, and entwined her fingers until the knuckles turned white.

“Why are we whispering?” Kellan asked both of us.

Marilee just tightened her lips and looked around uneasily, as if the ghost of Great-Great-Aunt Gertrude was watching us from above.

Or from wherever she’d landed.

“Seriously, this is silly,” I said, gesturing for Marilee to come inside. “Come in.”

“Oh no. I…couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m…busy.” Marilee stayed firmly put on the threshold, and given the stubborn set to her jaw, nothing short of an apocalypse was going to budge her. If that. “Besides, Gert never invited us in.”

“Never?” I asked.

“Never.”

Wow. That seemed pretty harsh. It wasn’t as if the staff had a lot of places to go, which brought me to another question.

What did people do out here when they weren’t working?

“She’s gone,” I pointed out, purposely speaking in a regular voice, though I had to admit, I felt a little spooked. “Surely now that’s she’s gone-”

Marilee vehemently shook her head, her long, gorgeous hair flying around her face. “You’re on your own.”

“Okay.” I looked around, uneasy myself. “No problem.”

Yeah right, no problem.

Kellan ran a finger over the huge wooden snowshoes on the wall. “How did she get all this stuff up here?”

“Gertrude had a thing going with Jack’s grandfather.”

“A thing?” Kellan asked. “As in…”

“They were doing it,” Marilee said. “Right up until he kicked the bucket last year. Gertrude would order stuff from catalogs, but no one would deliver way out here. So she got Jack to bring her a piece every time he came up here. It took a while.”

Looking at the room, which was so stuffed that pieces were literally on top of each other, I could well imagine it’d taken a while. Years.

Now I had to decide what to do with it all.

Suddenly it felt so overwhelming. All of it. I had no guests, bills that had to be paid, probably a mortgage of some kind…and no revenue.

“Do you know a good Realtor?” I asked Marilee, thinking, Who am I kidding? I’d be lucky if she knew any Realtor, much less a good one. Who’d be crazy enough to come all the way out here?

More importantly, who would be crazy enough to buy Hideaway?

Marilee turned to me, her eyes no longer unreadable but now filled with shock. “You’re selling?”

“I’m just going over my options-”

“But Gertrude told us you’d never sell. That you loved her so much, you’d keep everything status quo. That’s why she left the place to you. You weren’t supposed to even think about selling.”

Um, okay. Except I hadn’t “loved” Gertrude, as Marilee thought. I hadn’t even known her. She’d never shown the slightest bit of interest at all in me or my life.

There was a six-pack of water on the coffee table, and since my throat had suddenly become parched, I grabbed one. Only I was still shaking a bit, and the bottle hadn’t been perforated correctly, so with a frustrated sound I handed it to Kellan, who had no luck opening it either.

“Look,” I said as gently as I could. “I don’t know how I can possibly afford to keep up with everything this place requires.”

“It’s not hard.”

Seriously, she had no idea. This place was so far out of my realm, not to mention that it probably required organization and planning skills, neither of which was part of my repertoire.

Plus, Gertrude and I had spoken exactly twice in my lifetime. Once had been at my high school graduation, where she’d handed me a card with five bucks in it, then demanded to know what I was going to do with my loot. The second time had been at my father’s funeral, after he’d died from a fall off a building he’d been painting.

Great-Great-Aunt Gertrude had stood by his casket at his funeral and tutted, then looked over at me. “You an artist, too?”

Unable to speak for the grief, I’d nodded.

“Well, that’s a damn waste,” she’d said.

Yeah, family closeness at its finest. Needless to say, that she’d left me the inn still had me speechless.

But now Marilee was looking at me, waiting for reassurances that I didn’t have. I dug up a small smile. “Looks like I have a lot to think about.”

Marilee seemed as if she might argue with that, but in the end, she only nodded. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just…tired after this whole day. I need a few minutes to freshen up, rest a little bit. Do you mind?”

“No.” Ever the hostess, Marilee bowed her head briefly, expertly masking any emotions, as if she’d never had them. “Of course I don’t mind. This is your home while you’re here. You do as you please.”

Kellan looked at me. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

Nodding, he turned to Marilee. “I’ll help you get all the supplies inside.” He sent me a look over his shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”

Yep, with your tail dragging, I thought. Ah hell, Kel, don’t get hurt.

But of course he would, poor bastard.

“Oh.” Marilee hesitated. “It’s Friday afternoon.”

“Yeah.” I waited for more, but she just looked at me expectantly. “What about it?”

Marilee blinked. “You…don’t know?”

“I don’t know what?”

Another long, assessing gaze, but she didn’t answer.

Earth to Marilee…

“Nothing,” she finally said. “Just…be careful.”

Okaaay.

“And, uh, you should stay close,” she added.

As opposed to what-walking back to civilization? “I can do close.”

After she left, with Kellan following her-exuding that eternal hope only a man can summon-I stood there, in the doorway of Gertrude’s place, not belonging inside and definitely not belonging outside.

Belonging nowhere.

With the late-afternoon air came a cool breeze that felt crisp and refreshing against my heated skin. I could see a path that wound its way into the woods.

Stay close.

The words echoed in my head. I’d stay really close, and right on the trail, but the scenery drew me. I wanted-needed-to soak it in for a minute. Then tonight, maybe I’d spend some time drawing, to soothe my nerves.

I’d gone about twenty yards when four deer appeared, silent and watchful. They looked shaggier and darker than I’d imagined they would be. But then again, my deer experience was pretty much limited to the movie Bambi . Still, they were beautiful in an awesome sort of way, and I stood still.

So did they.

After a moment, at some invisible sign I didn’t catch, they all bounded back into the woods, vanishing as quickly as they’d appeared.

I let out a long breath, feeling…changed somehow, and kept going. It was gorgeous out here, I had to admit. Gorgeous but foreign, in another-world kind of way. There were so many trees and bushes and growth that I couldn’t see farther than a few yards in any one direction. Yet when I lifted my eyes, I was surrounded by a three hundred sixty-degree vista of jagged, granite mountain peaks that looked like something right out of a book. My artist’s soul ached, it was all so beautiful, and my fingers itched for paints.