he hopped out of the car. “Your phone. It’s ringing.”
Gabe shook off the momentary paralysis caused by his own wayward thoughts. That was what he got for dipping his toe in the deep waters of fantasy. Blindsided. If he wasn’t careful, he’d get drawn in and towed under and—
“Your phone is still ringing.”
“Oh. Yeah.” He plucked the ringing phone out of his pocket and bobbled it from hand to hand. At least it didn’t play Beethoven’s Fifth like it used to. Gabe had changed it back to an old-fashioned, boring, non-musical ring a couple of weeks before. But although it wasn’t loud, the ringing was insistent.
“You’re not going to answer it?”
Good question. He didn’t even stop to consider it. He tossed the phone over on the bed and watched it shimmy on the water-filled mattress.
It kept right on ringing.
“That’s it?” Like a rubbernecker at the scene of an especially gruesome accident, Meg was staring at the phone. “That’s how you answer the phone?”
Gabe poked his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “That’s how I answer the phone.”
She slid him a sidelong look. “Woman?” she asked.
Maybe it was his imagination. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking. He could’ve sworn that waiting for his answer, she tensed a little.
“Worse.” He marched over to the 55 Cadillac, picked up the phone and shoved it under the pillows in their pink satin cases. It was still ringing, but at least now the noise was muffled. “Secretary.”
Imagination again. It had to be. Meg looked…relieved.
She glanced toward the bed. “Determined little devil. Must be some secretary.”
“Oh, she is. The best there is on the Left Coast. Way smarter than me. More organized than the dictionary. Has the scheduling talents of those folks at NASA who can make a camera do a fly-by of some planet a million miles away.”
“She is a paragon.” Meg nodded. “Can she leap tall buildings in a single bound?”
“Never seen her do it, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Latoya is also—” It wasn’t until the phone abruptly stopped ringing that Gabe realized his thumbs were tight around his fists. He flexed his fingers. Forced the muscles in his neck and shoulders to relax. Unclenched his teeth.
When an entire minute went by and the ringing didn’t start again, he let out a long breath. “She is also persistent.”
Meg swung her gaze from the bed to Gabe. “Which would make an ordinary person wonder about what Latoya’s being so persistent about.”
Maybe because he’d dodged another Latoya bullet, Gabe felt unaccountably pleased with himself. Or maybe it was the shimmer in Meg’s eyes, the impossible blue of her dress, the surprising way his blood buzzed when she flicked her tongue over her lips. Whatever the reason, he stepped just a little closer and lowered his voice. “In most cases it would,” he said. “But you haven’t known me long enough to find out that I’m far from ordinary.”
“Wrong, Mr. Morrison.” As if the statement didn’t make her very happy, Meg’s bottom lip puckered and her eyebrows dipped over her eyes. She shook her head and though she moved as gracefully as a dancer, Gabe couldn’t help noticing that when she spun around and headed into the hallway, it looked more like a retreat than a well-timed exit. “I realized that,” she told him, closing the door behind her, “the moment I saw you.”
For what seemed a very long time, Gabe stood staring at the closed door, feeling as if the world had tipped on its axis. Crazy reaction. But then, he suspected there was a lot about Meg that would cause the kind of peculiar humming he felt in his bloodstream.
It took a couple of minutes for his thoughts to settle and a couple more after that before his heart rate throttled back to a beat that was even close to normal.
Cupid’s Hideaway might be—as the lady at the local hotel where he’d first stopped for a room had informed him—the most romantic spot east of the Mississippi. But romance and the racing heartbeat that went along with it weren’t on his agenda.
He twitched away the idea and hauled his suitcase on to the couch. He unzipped it and flipped it open, looking for a change of clothes.
Better to leave the romance to the honeymooners and the nudists, he told himself. All he wanted was a place to lie low. For as long as he could get away with it.
Sooner or later, he’d have to fess up and admit the truth. To Latoya. To Dennis. To the Tasty Time Burger folks.
Even to himself.
Did he really think hiding out on an island in the middle of Lake Erie would buy him some time?
“Damn straight,” he grumbled.
He grabbed a handful of clothing and walked over to the dresser across the room to put it away, stopping to glare at the reflection frowning back at him from the mirror.
“Gabriel Morrison,” he mumbled, addressing the worried-looking man in the mirror. “World’s greatest jingle writer. The guy who’s got more awards piled up in his office than even Latoya knows what to do with. Aren’t you the guy who’s never at a loss for clever words? The one who can write music in his sleep? The clown who unleashed the Love Me Tenders commercial and Duke the Dog on an unsuspecting and gullible public? Good going, Morrison.”
He yanked open the top dresser drawer, tossed his clothes inside and went back for another handful.
“A meeting in New York in two weeks and just like always, you’ve promised them the world, haven’t you?” he muttered when he was in front of the mirror again. “Only this time, things are different.”
The hard reality of the situation nagged at him while he paced between the kitschy fifties soda fountain and the pink Cadillac.
Things were different, all right. Because whenever Gabe had promised the world before, he’d always delivered it on a silver platter.
And this time?
This time, Gabriel Morrison, the Mozart of the advertising industry, the man whose name was synonymous with catchy tunes and clever lyrics and ad campaigns that never failed to raise clients’ notoriety as well as their profits…
This time, Gabriel Morrison had a major case of jingle-writer’s block.
“DELICIOUS!”
Meg didn’t have to turn around from the stove. She knew when her grandmother walked into the kitchen from the dining room where she’d just poured the morning orange juice, she was definitely not talking about the ham-and-cheese omelets Meg was making. There was a little nuance in Maisie’s voice, a little skip in her step that Meg recognized as having nothing to do with food—and everything to do with romance.
“Nice to know your guests are enjoying themselves so much.” Meg was an expert at both cooking and ignoring Maisie’s less-than-subtle hints, and she put both talents to use. She flipped the omelets, added a sprinkling of dill and firmly refused to get hooked by the bait
