Page 14 of Juniper Bean Resorts to Murder

I wander sort of aimlessly, checking things out. The decor is minimalist but just enough—clean lines, muted colors, lots of light. No seasonal decor, I note, but there’s still time for me to change that.

“Wow,” I say when Aiden emerges from around a corner. He’s lost the blazer, but he’s still in full professor mode, even at home. “This place is nice.” Then I smile at him. “Do I get a tour?”

He raises one brow as he passes by me and moves into the kitchen. “Sure, if you do it yourself.”

I shake my head while also forcing myself not to sniff in his general direction to see what he smells like. “A tour needs a tour guide. That’s a basic rule.”

“They’re calledself-guided tours, and I hear they’re all the rage,” he says dryly, pulling a glass from one of the cabinets. I watch as he fills it with tap water and then gulps the whole thing down in four swallows, his throat bobbing.

“All right,” I say. “You win. How do I get to my room? It’s in the loft, yeah?”

He places the glass in the sink, staring out the kitchen window and taking his sweet time answering.

“Aiden?” I say when he doesn’t speak. I wait (less than) patiently as he moves the curtains aside, leaning in until I think he might actually press his face to the glass. He doesn’t, though; he just looks out that window for a second longer and then lets the curtains drop again.

He finally turns to me, leaning back against the counter. “Sorry, thought I saw something weird.”

Something weird? What’s that supposed to mean?

I guess it’s not surprising. My day was a little weird too. Aiden being my roommate—the coincidence to end all coincidences—and the slightly strange yoga instructor and my obvious paranoid hallucination outside Namaste.

Maybe Autumn Grove is just a little weird now.

Or, more likely, maybeIjust got a little weird, and it’s affecting how I see the world around me.

Aiden points to the staircase on my left. “Your room is up the big stairs, around the corner, then up the little stairs.”

“Up the big stairs, around the corner, up the little stairs,” I repeat. “I’m excited about the loft. Hopefully this will give me some space and quiet to work.” I head in that direction; I’ll look around a bit on my way there, too.

I take my time going up the steps, mostly because I stop to look at all the pictures hung along the wall as I climb. They’re a bunch of black and white travel photos, most of them of easily recognizable sites—the Eiffel Tower, the London Eye, the Colosseum. I examine each one, trying to figure out if Aiden or his sister took them, or if they were simply purchased. I could ask him, I guess, but that feels like cheating.

“What’s the verdict?” Aiden says from behind me, just as I’m squinting at the foreground of the Eiffel Tower picture to see if I can recognize any identifying factors.

I jump, spinning around and wobbling dangerously as my feet lose themselves on the wooden staircase. I throw my hand out to steady myself, clutching desperately at the first thing I find as the world goes sideways.

And look. It’s not my finest moment, okay? Normally I think of myself as a decently poised woman. My balance is good, thanks to the core strength I’ve developed from doing yoga for the last five years.

But we all have off days, and…well, today seems to be one of mine.

Because as I pitch headfirst down the stairs, my wildly grasping hands find one thing and one thing only: Aiden Milano’s ear.

Hisear.

I am a rock climber at a climbing gym, and Aiden’s ear is the finger hold that will stop me from plummeting to my death. But there’s no chalk on my hands, no safety rope, no harness—and Aiden, it seems, is not interested in taking this fall with me.

He jerks his head out of my grip with a yelp, something I feel rather than see as I tumble forward, down the steps—until I land, breathless and smarting, in a crumpled heap at the bottom.

Silence.

Pure silence.

And no matter how hard I rack my brain, no matter how creative I get, I can’t come up with a way to make this less humiliating. I am a marionette whose strings have been cut, and this is probably the worst first—second?—impression I’ve ever made in my life.

It’s tempting to simply stay here, my face squashed against the wood floor, until Aiden leaves. With a bit of adjustment I could even make myself comfortable—face down sounds pretty good right about now. But when I hear his footsteps on the stairs, they seem to be coming closer instead of further away. I think he’s coming to check on me.

Where was that concern when I was trying to use you as my human handrail, Aiden?

A sort of morbid curiosity is taking over, though, as I lie here in a heap—the desire to see what happens next. So I stay where I am, not moving, even though my body is protesting the unnatural angles going on. I remain still as Aiden’s steps draw closer and closer. I remain still when I hear him stop inches away from where I lie. I even remain still when I feel one dress-shoe-clad foot nudge me, right on top of the head.

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