“You know where to find the mousetraps?”
“They’re in the hall leading to the caretakers’ annex.”
They went along turning on lights until they came to the kitchen, Chloe doing her best to unstick her wet blouse from her skin along the way. Someone had broken a window in the back door and had evidently camped out there, abandoning dirty dishes and silverware in the sink, which was dripping a steady stream of rusty water.
“Here we are,” Ben said, throwing back the bolt to the door of the annex, where a small apartment was built down close to the dunes. “Bug spray. And traps.”
“Could you deal with the palmetto bug first? He creeps me out big-time.”
While Ben was rummaging in the hallway, Chloe gave up on her wet blouse and resigned herself to its present see-through state until she could find a dry towel. She ventured a cautious peek into the pantry, which turned up nothing more than an unopened jar of pickles and several warm cans of cola. “I have food in the car, a bag of canned goods and a cooler,” she called to Ben. “I could offer you something to eat in exchange for your trouble.”
“It’s okay,” he said on his way back through the kitchen. “I’ll be satisfied with a glass of water.” He avoided looking at her—which, considering the transparency of her wet clothes, she appreciated.
She followed him. “The water softener isn’t hooked up, so we won’t want to drink the water yet. I brought a bottle of wine in my backpack. It’s a really good Estancia pinot grigio.”
“No, thanks. And if you don’t want to witness instant death, I suggest you leave the palmetto bug to me.”
Since bug killing held no interest as a spectator sport, Chloe decided to locate a dry towel. The staircase was dusty, the white paint on the banister chipped, and upstairs the bedrooms, like the parlor below, were swathed in white muslin.
The linen closet was located on the landing, and although the towels smelled musty, they suited her purpose. As she towel-dried her hair, she wandered around, reacquainting herself with the second floor.
Her aunt had assigned each bedroom a name. The master suite was Sea Oats and decorated in golden tones. The room that had always been Chloe’s was the turret room, Moonglow, and after she’d removed the dust covers and piled them in the hall, it appeared exactly as it had every year. She opened the windows an inch or so, enough to admit fresh air but not much rain.
Nostalgia swept over her as she took in the curved walls, the pretty blue-painted bureau, ornate wicker headboard and dotted-swiss curtains. She and Naomi had enjoyed many good times here with Gwynne—reading under the covers at night after Tayloe had told them to go to sleep, racing down the wide staircase in a flurry of anticipation when Zephyr the Turtle Lady tossed seashells against their windows early in the morning and invited them down the beach to inspect the newest turtle nest. Being in this room made her feel like a little girl again. Considering that she was over thirty and more worldly wise than she would have liked, that was a good thing.
“Chloe?”
Leaving the towel draped across her shoulders, she poked her head out the door, and saw Ben standing at the bottom of the stairs.
“The palmetto bug is history,” Ben reported.
“Good. Now maybe I should squirt some of that stuff around my room.”
“I’ll be glad to spray the rest of the house. Then I’ll set out the mousetraps.”
“We don’t have anything to bait them with,” she said, coming out to the landing. “Unless mice are into dill pickles.”
“I’m prepared to donate the cheese crackers in my pocket. That should work.” He pulled out a package and opened it.
Chloe descended the staircase. “Not so fast. We might have to eat those ourselves.”
“Are you hungry?”
“A little.” Self-consciously, she ran her fingers through her hair, hoping it wasn’t standing up in spikes.
Ben handed her a cracker. “That’s to tide you over until I can run out to your car and bring in the food.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Hey,” he said. “I can’t stand to watch a woman starve. No big deal.” He brushed past her up the stairs, carrying the can of insecticide, and she heard him humming tunelessly to himself as he went from room to room, anointing each one in turn.
Since there were eight bedrooms, each with its own bath, this took quite a while, during which Chloe inspected the dining room and removed the covers from the big mahogany dining-room table and chairs. The breakfront was devoid of its usual heirloom silver trays and goblets, which made the room seem bare, and Chloe recalled Gwynne’s telling her that she’d put them in storage. The elegant bone china was still there, and so was the antique crystal, all under the surveillance of numerous saturnine Timberlake ancestors glaring down from ornate gilt frames.
When she’d finishing in the dining room, Chloe retreated to the kitchen and munched gloomily on Ben’s cracker. The inn was a disappointment. True, her memories were based on idealized moments from past vacations. She hadn’t been prepared for the general disrepair of the place, but she definitely couldn’t go back to Texas. Her grandmother, with whom she’d lived for the past five years, had sold her house and moved to an assisted-living facility.
During the years with Grandma Nell, Chloe had saved her money in order to give herself a chance to do what she did best—design jewelry. Her cousin’s offer to let her live here had been a godsend. But Chloe’s work would suffer if she was forced to spend all her time cleaning and repairing the Frangipani Inn, not to mention that she didn’t have a clue how to go about it.
When Ben returned, she wordlessly handed a can of warm cola up to him. He popped the top, sat down on a chair beside hers and drank, his throat working as he swallowed. “You don’t remember me, do you?” she asked him suddenly.
He lifted a brow. “Cute. Red hair. Gwynne’s cousin.”
“Well, thanks for the cute, anyway,” she said wryly.
“It was a long time ago. You were how old? Fourteen? Fifteen?”
“Sixteen,” she told him, remembering the pain of longing for a guy who hadn’t recognized her existence. He’d called her Carrots because of her red hair, and she’d hated that nickname.
“I was twenty-one and in my first season of diving for Sea Search, Inc.”
“You seemed much older to me.”
He snorted. “Honey, that summer I was getting older by the minute.” His curt laughter didn’t convey humor.
She got up to plug in the refrigerator. “I’ve been thinking,” she said.
“Oh?” His eyebrows shot up.
“About your request to stay here. I wasn’t anticipating sharing the place with anyone else because I have work to do, but if you’d help with repairs in exchange for rent, you could live in the annex. You’d have your own entrance
