Heather Macallister - Can't Buy Me Love

After decades of bemoaning their fate, Miss Arlotta and Judge Hangen, who had unfortunately been visiting Miss Arlotta at the time of the gas leak, figured out that since they’d sold fake love in life, they could redeem themselves by selling true love in death.

Or something. Whatever the reasoning, their plan seemed to be working.

Sunshine didn’t know if there was exactly a Great Picnic, or an Eternal Picnic, or whatever, but when they were alive, every Sunday Miss Arlotta’s boarders had dressed in their finest and driven the buggy through the town of Maiden Falls to the lovely shaded meadow where they’d picnicked and laughed and sometimes taken a dip in the pool beneath the falls.

Sunshine and the others had loved the Sunday picnics—even Belle, the sharpshooting, whiskey-drinking cynical gambler. It had taken quite a lot of man to handle Belle. And quite a lot of men had.

Anyway, being outside, feeling the grass tickle her bare feet, wading in the pool, even just plain lying around in the shade was what Sunshine missed the most.

She and the others couldn’t leave the inn proper. Oh, they could go out on the roof, but it wasn’t the same.

But what if they didn’t even have that? It could be worse. And now they knew that there was a way to go on to—if not the Great Picnic as they’d taken to calling it—then someplace else fine and good. Someplace Belle had gone. Someplace Sunshine was going to go, too, as soon as she helped one more couple on the path to true love. So fine, face or no, the man wasn’t worth risking a black mark.

“Ooh-la-la. That is a fine one indeed.” Mimi’s accent became more pronounced the nearer a man got to her. It was generally agreed that she more than likely came from Paris, Texas, rather than Paris, France.

“He must be the groom.” Sunshine, along with the others, drifted over to the lobby check-in desk. “There’s a wedding this weekend, you know.” She clasped her hands together. “I just love weddings.”

“Oh, that was canceled,” Lavender said.

“It’s back on,” Rosebud informed them from her place on the chaise. She was more interested in her book, which Lord knows she’d had over a hundred years to read, than she was in men. She simply didn’t know any better. Poor Rosebud had the misfortune of arriving at Miss Arlotta’s just before the gas leak, so her experience of men was extremely limited. Extremely.

“If the wedding is back on, then the bride and groom must need help,” Sunshine said.

“Same wedding, different bride and groom,” Rosebud told her.

“Me, I would like to give that man some very special help.”

Lavender sighed. “Oh, Mimi, wouldn’t we all.”

“I wouldn’t,” Flo snapped. “No man is worth giving up the chance of a loosened corset.”

“Amen to that,” drawled a voice from the door of the secret passage. “Listen up, ladies, and Glory Hallelujah will set you straight. Desdemoaner and I have been on the roof and, y’all, that man is not the groom. Looky yonder at the door.”

At that moment, a distinguished older man with silver temples and a full head of salt-and-pepper hair strode through the lobby as though he owned the place.

Sunshine had seen his type before—usually with a gavel in his hand or a badge on his chest.

“Behold, the groom.”

“Oh, it’s an older couple then. A second marriage maybe? How nice.” Sunshine ignored all the eye rolling. So she chose to look on the bright side all the time. Might as well enjoy life, er, death. Or whatever limbo they were in.

“Not quite.” Glory hooked her thumb over her shoulder as a dark-suited younger woman joined the man at the reception desk.

She had her hair cut in one of those styles that looked as though she’d hacked at it with a dull knife on a windy day. Sunshine patted her own long curls.

“His daughter?” Flo asked.

“The bride,” Glory announced.

“And I say brava!” The Countess clapped slowly.

“And, me, I say it depends on how much money he has.” Mimi rubbed her fingers together.

Flo cackled. “Honey, it wouldn’t take much for me.”

“It never did, Flo, it never did,” the Countess murmured.

“I heard that!”

“And so did I.” A voice boomed around them.

Sunshine could never figure out how Miss Arlotta, who spent most of her time in the attic, was nevertheless able to hear all and see all and speak to them wherever they were.

“Sunshine! The bride is checking into your room.” Lavender was hovering behind the guest register.

“And the groom?” Mimi asked.

“The new section.”

“Well, that can’t be good,” Glory said.

“Why not? You know the groom isn’t supposed to see the bride on their wedding day until she walks down the aisle.” Sunshine sighed. “It’s so romantic.”

“Sunshine will assist this couple,” Miss Arlotta pronounced. “Older gentlemen are her speciality.”

“Thank you, Miss Arlotta!” Sunshine drew a deep breath as the others protested—but not too much—before gradually drifting away to other parts of the inn. Older men who were lonely and liked her youthful looks and innocent chatter had been, indeed, her speciality.

She felt a tug on her gauzy wrapper. Rosebud had abandoned her book and was watching the couple check in. “You can drop the act,” she murmured. “We’re alone.”

“What act?” Sunshine batted her eyelashes.

“They have blonde jokes now, you know.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Jokes about girls with yellow hair being dumb.” She tweaked one of Sunshine’s sausage curls. “Only you’re not dumb.”

Sunshine kept her smile in place. “And don’t you forget it, sweetie.”

“I mean…take all this romantic talk. This was a place of business.”

Sunshine laughed. “Sure was—monkey business.”

“It was sex for money.” Rosebud pushed her wire-rim glasses up higher on her nose. “The men gave us money and we gave them sex. It was as simple as that.”

Sunshine looked across the lobby at the couple. Other than briefly resting his hand on the small of the woman’s back, the man never touched her. And she didn’t touch him. They smiled politely instead of the wide, tooth-baring grins of people who can’t help smiling. Of people who are in love.

“Rosebud,” she murmured, “it was never as simple as that.”

WHEN ALEXIS O’HARA ARRIVED at the Inn at Maiden Falls, Colorado, for her wedding and encountered an ex-boyfriend also checking in, she gave him a cool I’m-looking-good-and-aren’t-you-sorry-you-dumped-me smile. When he informed her he was representing her fiancé in the pre-nup negotiations, she did what any successful, independent, modern woman did when faced with the unthinkable: she called her mother.

Abandoning her luggage in the center of a lovely Aubusson rug as soon as she got to her room, Alexis stared unseeingly out the window at the gorgeous Rocky Mountain vista, cell phone pressed to her ear. “Mom?”

“You’ve changed your mind,” Patty O’Hara said flatly.

“No! Why do you keep assuming that every time I call?”

“Oh, I don’t know—maybe the week-long engagement to a man I’ve never before heard you mention in a romantic context?”

“This isn’t that sort of marriage.”

“What sort of marriage is it?”

Alexis began to speak, fully intending to extol the virtues of compatibility, admiration and shared interests, but heard herself say, “It’s an I’m-tired-of-dating marriage.”

“Oh, one of those. I thought it was an old-fashioned marry-an-old-guy-for-his-money marriage.”

Alexis gritted her teeth, then craftily pointed out, “He’s fifty-four. That’s only two years younger than you. Are you saying you’re old?”