Amie Denman - Back To The Lake Breeze Hotel

Surprised by the sudden breeze and soaring papers, Alice was even more shocked when Nate deftly caught two papers midair and used his other hand to right her stack before it spiraled to the ground and spread out in a paperwork tsunami. Nate took the strap of her bag and put it back on her shoulder. As he helped her balance her pile of papers, his hand touched hers and he jerked it back as if he’d been burned. He flushed red and stepped back.

The other men stopped their conversation to stare.

“Paper cut,” Nate said. He locked eyes with Alice for a moment and the expression she saw in his eyes looked like panic.

Come on. Am I really that much of an ogre?

“Those are wicked,” the reporter said. “Paper cuts.”

Nate swallowed and nodded. “The worst.”

Alice took her bag off her shoulder and shoved all the papers in it. She didn’t even care about wrinkling them. She’d ask Haley to print new ones if she had to.

“I think we’re ready to move on to the haunted house in the shooting gallery,” she said pleasantly to her two consultants. She smiled at the reporter and photographer. “I don’t want to hold you up any longer. I’m sure you have a lot more ground to cover and a story to put out today.”

“We have plenty of material already, but I wouldn’t mind seeing what’s going on inside the shooting gallery,” Bob said. “People in town are pretty curious about what you’re cooking up here at the Point. I think you’re going to have a big success on your hands.”

“I sure hope so. I was one of the people who talked the Hamiltons into staying open all fall, so I’ll feel responsible if it doesn’t go well. As the special events coordinator, nothing is better than a happy ending.”

She heard Nate cough but didn’t glance his way. Instead, Alice squared her shoulders and focused on the reporter. “I can’t wait to tell you about the events we have planned for Christmas. I can’t say much now, but you might have noticed there’s a very large parking lot out front that would be perfect for something such as—” she put one finger on her chin and looked to the sky “—perhaps an ice skating rink or a Christmas tree lot.”

The reporter laughed. “Next you’ll be telling me you’re bringing in live reindeer and authentic elves.”

“I can’t reveal company secrets,” she said. “But if you know anyone who wants to get married, you can tell them there may be one weekend in December that isn’t booked yet for a Christmas wedding.”

Jason turned to the reporter and elbowed him. “Hear that, Bob? Maybe you and Shelly should make it official?”

“Shelly’s mother hasn’t learned to like me yet,” Bob said. “Maybe next year. In the meantime, how about letting us inside the haunted house?”

Alice shook her head. “Sorry, we want to keep some surprises for our guests.”

“We’ll walk with you as far as the arcade,” Nate said. He flashed a smile at the reporters. “But we’ll have to behave ourselves and not crash the party. There’s plenty of time for going through the haunted house when it opens.”

The group of six started walking in a disorganized blob. She wanted to walk between the two men from the haunted house company so she could talk freely with them as she had been for the past hour or so. But she didn’t dare tell the Bayside Times to put their cameras and notebooks away and head home, no matter how much she wanted to.

At the steps of the Western Arcade, she conceded to smiling for a picture with the haunted house producers. Now would they go?

“You might just see yourself in tomorrow’s paper,” the photographer said congenially. “But it sure would be a better picture if you were inside and we got a glimpse of something scary.”

Alice laughed, but then she noticed Nate’s expression as he stood behind the reporters. His usual pleasant, polite PR man veneer had been wiped off as if someone used an eraser on a chalkboard. He swallowed hard and glared at her.

Was he possessive about the news that came out of Starlight Point, or did a picture giving her credit for the fall events burn his biscuits that badly?

CHAPTER FOUR

THE NEXT DAY’S newspaper was on Alice’s doorstep by seven in the morning. The doorstep actually belonged to her parents, whose house she still lived in. Alice had been a year-round employee at Starlight Point for two years after working her way up to the coveted position by many summers of seasonal employment. Waiting tables in the off-season hadn’t been profitable, but she’d gotten by and taken pride in paying back her own student loans.

She might even have afforded her own place, but she’d been meticulously putting aside a portion of her paycheck every month to repay her parents for the wedding she’d called off the night before it happened. They had already paid for the flowers, the church, the reception facility, the band, the dress and the cake. How had she let them and herself get so carried away and run up such a giant bill? Maybe she wouldn’t be regretting the thousands of dollars spent if she’d gone through with the wedding.

In a few more months, she could surprise her parents by repaying the entire cost of disappointing them in one fell swoop. Then, at twenty-seven, she could finally get her own place, wonderfully free of the past.

She grabbed the paper from the same patch of front porch it had been thrown on by a succession of paper carriers all her life. She had about five minutes to glance through it before her father would ask for the paper with his coffee. And she knew better than to wrinkle it or mix up the sections. Her older sister had never cared to read the paper, but her younger sister had a habit of turning the sections inside out as she read them, a quirk that had spurred at least one family squabble.

She scanned the front page and was not surprised to see a big article about the fall festival weekends, which opened in a few hours. There were three pictures. One photograph of the front gate with its clever decorations, most of which had been her idea. One picture of the giant inflatable pumpkin where the midway fountain usually spewed water all summer. The massive balloon children could run through was also her idea. The third image was of a building on the Western Trail adorned with spiderwebs and bats. No pictures of Alice or anyone else.

“Is the paper here?” her father called from the kitchen.

I’ve got to get my own subscription, she thought. She resolved to read the article online as soon as she got to her office.

An hour later, Alice was glued to her laptop screen, skimming the article and hoping—vain though it was—to see a glimpse of her name, just so she could revel in the feeling of doing something right.

“Come on,” she said. She scrolled past an obnoxious flashing ad and kept reading to the end of the piece. Her shoulders fell. There was no mention of her in the article. Despite her hard work, imagination and planning. Despite the fact she had personally helped inflate that stupid pumpkin balloon.

“You don’t look happy,” Haley said. She put a cup of coffee on Alice’s desk. “It’s from Augusta’s bakery. I got you the good stuff because it’s opening day for the fall festivals.”

“Thank you,” Alice said. She still continued to skim the article, hoping she’d just missed it.

“Is something not going well?”

Alice shook her head. “Everything’s going fine with the opening, I think. It’s something else.”

Haley stepped around Alice’s desk and looked at her computer screen. “I saw that article in the paper while I waited for the coffee to brew at Augusta’s. I tried reading it to distract myself from getting a doughnut. My strategy failed, but the article seems like great publicity.”