Page 13 of Frosted and Sliced

“It’s like you mentioned before, context matters. You come from some dicey situations where you see a lot of bad guys. This is coastal Maine. The worst we deal with is rabid otters.”

“Really?” he said.

“No, but how cool did it sound when you pictured roaming bands of rabid otters?” she said.

“Would your brother be okay with you not locking your doors, with your lax security here?”

She bit her lip. That very topic had been brought up by Brody on numerous occasions, and she’d always batted it away, dismissed it because of course her big brother was going toworry about nonsense. “There is nothing of value here,” she said instead.

“What about all your antiques?” Burke returned.

Georgette snorted. “It’s New England, Burke; everything is antique. The floor you’re sitting on is two hundred years old, but no one is going to come in here with a crowbar and pry it away.”

He sighed.

“I’ll let you put a steel door in the attic, if you want,” she conceded.

“Really?” he asked, sounding perkier.

“Sure, build a bunker, make it radiation proof, I don’t care.” She waved him away, certain it would never go that far. Any minute he would lose interest in whatever this was and disappear again.

“The material needed to be radiation proof is far too heavy for an attic,” Burke said, then, “Oh, you were kidding. Right. Jokes about the apocalypse are hilarious. Ha.”

“They are, if you’re the one inside the bunker.”

He whistled appreciatively. “Dark.” His arms circled his knees, drawing them close to his chest. “How did one as young as you come to own an entire inn?”

She was quiet a few beats before she answered. “I lost my parentswhen I was fifteen. Car accident. Brody was really careful with the insurance money. He could have kept it all, claimed it for my care, but he didn’t. Instead he presented it to me, when I became an adult, and helped me come up with a solution. He let me go to culinary school, with the stipulation that I would return home and use my degree. I didn’t want to work for someone else, and I didn’t want to own a restaurant. An inn seemed like the most logical option.”

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“Some parts of it, yes. It’s a lot of work. I mean, alot. I’m basically married to the inn, can’t ever go away or take avacation. And sometimes I get a little tired of being surrounded by so many strangers. Sometimes I want to curl up in my pajamas and cocoon for a while, but I always have to be available, to do prep for breakfast, to answer guests’ questions or complaints. I think if I could afford to hire someone, then I would love it. If I could get a break when I needed it, some breathing space, then it would be practically perfect.” She bit her lip and shook her head. “I shouldn’t complain.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because it’s so ungrateful. How many people have a massive sum of money at their disposal that allows them to buy an entire inn?”

“How many people lost both their parents as a kid?” he returned.

She flinched.

“Plus, you’re hearing impaired.”

“Wait, what? I am? Are you sure?” She touched her fingers to her hearing aids and feigned a gasp. “What do you know, you’re right. I guess that explains why everything is so muffled all the time.”

“Apparently it’s sharpened your other senses, like sarcasm,” he said.

“I’m a deaf orphan; sarcasm is all I have,” she said, returning her attention to the sheets.

“I hung up your spouting,” he said, tapping her toe to get her attention before he spoke.

“What spouting?” she asked.

“The spouting that had fallen off the back corner of the inn, that was making water drain directly into the foundation.”

“Oh, right, yes, the one I totally knew about and intended to fix,” she said. The truth was that she was so busy trying to keep up on the inside, that she rarely checked the outside. Twice a year she hired a landscaping company to tidy the flower beds,plant some annuals, and trim the hedges, and that was the extent of her outdoor upkeep.

“Well, it’s done, but I think you’ll probably need new gutters soon, probably when you get the new roof.”

---