Carla Neggers - Red Clover Inn

“You saw them dancing together yesterday?”

“I did.”

“It was her first wedding since she abandoned Tommy Ferguson at the altar.”

“She was happy for you, Sam. That’s what mattered to her.”

Justin downshifted, slowing to a near crawl as they approached another pretty English village. They were taking a scenic route north. Samantha didn’t know the details, didn’t have a map. She wanted to relax and enjoy the scenery. But here she was, worrying about her thirty-six-year-old cousin. Normally she’d never worry about Charlotte. No one did. She was ultraindependent, competent, good at so many things and yet not one to draw attention to herself. Not showing up for her wedding had been out of character in that sense. In character in the sense that Charlotte Bennett took decisive action once her mind was made up about something.

“Do you want to warn Charlotte?” Justin asked.

Samantha thought a moment. “No. There are too many variables. I don’t want to get her worked up about something that might not even happen if she’s about to get on a transatlantic flight.”

“This is what life’s like with our two families.” Justin brushed his fingertips on her cheek as they stopped for a traffic light. “Welcome to the Sloans and the Bennetts.”

“I love you, Mr. Sloan.”

“And I love you, Mrs. Sloan. Shall we enjoy our honeymoon?”

“Every minute.”

Six

Knights Bridge, Massachusetts

As Greg switched off the bedside lamp in his corner room at the Red Clover Inn, what felt like a million years after breakfast on the wet terrace of his Cotswolds pub, he could hear scurrying in the walls.

Mice.

He crawled under the top sheet and lightweight blanket on his lumpy double bed. Built in 1900 as an inn, the place nonetheless had the feel of a large, rambling house. It was run-down but not in disrepair, at least from what he’d seen so far. He’d arrived after dark and had turned on a few lights and headed upstairs to find a room. He didn’t have a good fix on the inn’s layout, but he didn’t need one. All he’d needed was to peel off his clothes and fall into bed. Everything else could wait. Red Clover Inn was about what he’d expected.

He’d chosen a corner bedroom on the second floor. Someone had left a set of sheets and a cotton blanket folded at the foot of the bed. He hadn’t minded making the bed himself. It wasn’t as if he could call housekeeping. He hadn’t bothered to get every tuck just right. Nobody cared. It wasn’t a real inn.

He’d opened a window and settled in, lying on his back in the pitch dark, relishing the late-spring breeze.

And then came the scurrying.

Whatever.

If the mice stayed in the walls, they weren’t his problem.

The scurrying stopped, at least for the moment. He’d considered changing his plans and checking into an airport hotel when he’d landed in Boston, but he’d had coffee while he waited for his luggage. Good to go. A flight delay, a guy snoring next to him for six hours, one fateful wrong turn coming out of the tunnel from Logan Airport—it’d been one of those travel days best forgotten.

He’d half hoped Charlotte had beaten him here but no sign of her. He was alone.

It was almost morning in Edinburgh.

Greg couldn’t keep his eyes open. He sank into the mattress—for all he knew, it had been new in 1982—and relaxed, letting his travel fatigue and twitchiness ooze out of his body. He didn’t hear any squeaks or telltale sounds of flapping wings that would indicate bats were about. A bat on the loose he’d have to deal with. Mice... He could go to sleep with mice doing their mice thing in the walls and ceilings.

How would Charlotte do with mice and bats?

No mystery. He knew.

She’d have no problem.

* * *

Hours and hours after she’d left her cozy Edinburgh apartment for her westward journey, Charlotte relished the first sips of her coffee at Smith’s, a small restaurant in a converted house just off Main Street in picturesque, totally adorable Knights Bridge, Massachusetts. She was already in love with the tiny New England town.

In love.

She smiled, relaxing, at ease now that she had arrived. She’d be fine unwinding at Red Clover Inn for a few days. No wonder Samantha had decided to make her home here. Even without hunky Justin, Knights Bridge was home-worthy.

Charlotte cautioned herself against overreaching with her expectations. She didn’t want to set herself up for a crash later when she started noticing Knights Bridge’s warts. So far, though, her inn-sitting adventure was working out even better than she’d expected.

Smith’s first customer on the early Monday morning, she ordered a three-egg omelet with green peppers, onions and ham, home fries, local cob-smoked bacon and multigrain toast.

Just what she needed to get her internal clock onto her new schedule.

As she drank her coffee, she became aware of someone sliding into her booth across from her.

She blinked. No.

But it was true. Greg Rawlings had materialized in the little restaurant as if out of thin air. Maybe actually out of thin air. How else could Charlotte explain him? She hadn’t heard the front door, felt a breeze—anything.

“Don’t say a word,” she said. “You’re not here. You’re not real.”

“I’m not?”

“I conjured you up in a caffeine-deprived, jet-lagged haze. People can hallucinate after a long trip, a wedding, too many hours without coffee. It’s not possible that Diplomatic Security Agent Rawlings is here with me in a Knights Bridge café.”

Unfazed by her dismissal of him as a figment of her imagination, he motioned for the waiter to bring coffee, then turned back to her. “It’s a stretch to call this place a café. I like it, though.”

The waiter, a local teenager, brought Greg coffee, a sign that, in fact, Charlotte hadn’t dreamed him up. Maybe she was in a somnambulant state. Maybe she wasn’t really awake, or her flight yesterday had messed with her head due to her recent decompression illness.

“We need to work on your situational awareness,” Greg said, lifting his mug.

“I see you drink your coffee black. Is that only when you’re conjured up, or do you add cream in real life?”

“Always black. Never any cream. I don’t drink latte, cappuccino, café au lait, flavored coffee. Just coffee.”

“Of course. Not surprised.” She blinked. Then blinked again. “Nope. You didn’t vanish.”

“You’re a riot, Charlotte. Okay if I order breakfast or do you want me to pretend to be invisible?”

“I doubt you’d succeed.”

“You’d be surprised. I can be invisible when it suits me.”

“Order breakfast,” she said. “I’m not imagining you?”

He shook his head. “You are not imagining me.”

“I suppose we do need to work on my situational awareness. I didn’t notice you come through the door.”

“You also didn’t notice you had company at Red Clover Inn.”

She really needed more coffee and a few more hours’ sleep. “Company?”

“Correct. The car in the driveway was your first clue. Second was the house key missing by the hose spigot. Third was finding the back door unlocked.”

She ignored the quickening of her heartbeat. “How do you know all this?”

“Because I’m the one who used the key and left the door unlocked. Apparently we’re both inn-sitting this week.”

Charlotte gaped at him. She had no words.

Greg settled back on his cushioned bench. “I bet that doesn’t happen often—you not knowing what to say. I was up early and heard your car purring outside my window. Whose Mercedes-Benz?”

“It belonged to my great-uncle Harry. Samantha is sorting through his house in Boston. He...” She stopped, breathed. “Why didn’t you let me know you were there?”