Room for Love (25 page)

But maybe a few days away from the Avalon was just what he needed. His finger hovered over the answer button, and he wondered briefly what Carrie would make of him absconding to London to see his ex-girlfriend in the middle of a work week.

Then he reminded himself that Carrie was ignoring him. She probably wouldn’t even notice.

He pressed Answer.

* * * *

“Have you seen Nate?” Carrie asked Izzie, not without reluctance. Just typical that, after dodging the guy for weeks, the one time she actually needed him, he was nowhere to be found.

“Uh, what do you need him for?” Izzie swivelled her chair sideways and started leafing through a pile of papers Carrie happened to know were actually destined for the recycling bin. Whatever the receptionist was avoiding, Carrie was pretty sure she wasn’t going to like it.

“The terrace needs another coat of paint,” Carrie said, leaning across the counter, curious as to what had Izzie fondling the rubbish. “Where is he, Izzie?”

Lying wasn’t among Izzie’s talents, Carrie had discovered early on when they’d had a discussion about not telling all callers that Carrie was available until she’d asked her if she was available, even if it looked like she was just chatting with Cyb in the drawing room. “Uh, well, I think he had to leave town.” Izzie stared up at the ceiling.

“Leave town?” Carrie had known she wasn’t going to like it. “Did he say when he’d be back?”

Izzie shook her head. “But, um, he left you a note.” She gave Carrie a sympathetic look, and Carrie could feel her jaw clench and her teeth start to grind together. When were people going to realize she and Nate were not carrying on some epic love affair under their noses? She opened the note and found her answer: when they heard about Nate’s dirty weekend in London. Not that the note said that, of course. It merely said that a good friend had asked him to spend a couple of days in London sorting out some business, and he hoped it wasn’t too inconvenient.

“I could try his mobile for you,” Izzie offered.

“No, thanks.” Carrie tried a smile. “I’m perfectly capable of painting the terrace myself.” She wouldn’t give Nate the satisfaction of knowing she cared about whom he spent time with.

Even if she did.

* * * *

Three days later, the night before the grand re-opening party, Nate finally came home.

Carrie had been hiding out in the front drawing room for most of what was left of the evening, laptop on her knees, wrestling with some of the figures Alex the accountant had sent over. It wasn’t looking any better than when she’d started.

Still, from her seat by the window, she saw the taxi pull up in the darkness and Nate’s broad shoulders and tall frame ease out under the cast iron lamppost at the front entrance. She closed her laptop and waited.

He looked tired, she thought, when he appeared in the doorway before her. She refused to imagine what had worn him out. It was none of her business now, anyway.

“Nice trip?” she asked, putting her laptop aside as Nate hovered in the doorway.

“Productive, I hope.” Nate gave up his prevaricating, came into the drawing room, and chose the seat opposite hers. Not too close, she thought, but near enough that he wouldn’t be able to avoid her gaze. Good.

She looked up at him, hands folded in her lap. “So it was a business trip, then?” She waited again, wanting to know what he’d admit to. Moira had already told her the truth, with only minimal persuasion. He’d gone to visit his producer ex-girlfriend, Mel. Moira thought she wanted him back. And Nate was obviously considering it.

Nate gave a heavy sigh. “Some business. Some tying up loose ends.” Carrie blinked. That wasn’t quite the response she’d been expecting.

“Loose ends?” she echoed, trying to make sense of the past few days from this new point of view.

“Mel... She called a few weeks ago. Trying to get me down to London.” Nate rubbed a hand across his forehead. “She’s persistent.”

“You two used to be together.”

“For three years.” Nate gave her a rueful smile. “When I left the city, I left her too and came here.”

Carrie curled her legs up under her on her chair. Nate had been privy to all her reasons for coming home to the Avalon, all her motives for leaving Manchester. But she’d never heard him speak openly about anything in his past. Especially without a whiskey bottle open between them. “Why did you leave?”

Nate shrugged. “It was time. I was sick of the show, tired of doing quick fix-it jobs on other people’s gardens, frustrated by not having any space of my own–I had a window box in my flat. Can you imagine?”

Carrie couldn’t. But there were a few other things she couldn’t quite get her head around, either. “Show?”

Looking up at her, Nate smiled. “Yeah. Didn’t you know? I was the Singing Gardener on the Green channel. Mel was the producer. That’s how we met.”

Carrie leaned back in her chair and studied his face all over again. She’d seen that show. Not often, but once or twice. Her old flatmate had loved it, but Carrie was rarely home it time to catch it. The angles of his cheeks and eyes fell into place, and she said, “I wouldn’t have recognized you. I mean, I didn’t. You look...healthier.”

“All the good Welsh air,” Nate said with a chuckle, but Carrie wasn’t really listening. She wouldn’t have recognized him. Yet she’d felt from the first moment she saw him that she knew Nate Green from somewhere.

And she felt certain it wasn’t some television show.

* * * *

So preoccupied was she with Nate’s showbiz history, it wasn’t until she was waiting patiently in reception for Ruth the next morning that Carrie realized he still hadn’t told her what Mel the ex had wanted him in London
for
. If they weren’t sleeping together, and it seemed they weren’t, then what were the loose ends? Something to do with the show?

“Is Nate around today?” she asked Izzie, wondering if she had time to find him before Ruth arrived.

“He’s down in the woods, I think.” Izzie shrugged. “He wandered through here after breakfast muttering something about snowdrops.”

Carrie checked her watch. Ruth was already twenty minutes late. There was no way she had time to get to the woods and back before her errant bride showed up, let alone have an in-depth conversation with a man planting snowdrops.

She sighed. It would have to wait. Like most things at the Avalon Inn. They’d done what they could afford now, and anything that wasn’t fixed–like the shower in her attic room–would have to wait until they had paying guests again.

Which was one of the reasons Ruth was coming. Tonight marked the grand re-opening of the Avalon Inn and the Seniors had insisted on another party. After the last one, Carrie was wary, but Moira had pointed out they could make this a swankier affair and invite local business owners and such, at which point it became promotion, rather than debauchery. Alex the accountant hadn’t objected, anyway, so Jacob had been cooking all week and Cyb was already decorating the dining room.

Ruth had said, quite adamantly, that there was not a chance in hell of her missing it. And, as their first client, everyone else had agreed she deserved to be there. “Besides, it’ll be the perfect opportunity for me to come and iron out any wedding-related details or whatever.”

Carrie had sighed and said, “Well, we do need to discuss your plans for the hen night,” and Ruth had hung up and run off to pick out a party dress.

Carrie figured she’d be lucky if she had time to change out of her suit before the guests started arriving, but she had pulled her favorite purple cocktail dress from the wardrobe to try to get rid of the creases, just in case.

Ruth’s car pulled up on the driveway, and Ruth flung open the door, shouting apologies while she grabbed her bags.

Carrie met her on the steps. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, giving her cousin a hug. “I’m just glad you’re here to help.”

“Least I could do.” Ruth grinned. “Can you believe the wedding’s less than two weeks away?”

“Still plenty of time for your mother to screw it up,” Carrie said ominously. She didn’t even have to mention Anna.

“Not today, at least.” Ruth waved at Izzie as they entered the lobby. “I got Dad to send Mum off to a spa for the weekend so she’s nice and relaxed for all the last-minute wedding stuff.”

Carrie often found herself amazed that someone as nice as Ruth could be so cunning. “Good plan. At least we can get through this evening without worrying about her showing up with another thirty guests.”

Ruth winced. “I told you how sorry I was about that, right?”

“You did. I’ve almost forgiven you.”

“So, where’s the delectable Nate today?” Ruth asked, as Carrie led her up the stairs to her designated bedroom.

“Planting snowdrops somewhere, apparently.” Carrie opened the bedroom door. “Sorry you’re not in the bridal suite tonight. Stan invited the mayor, of all people, so he sort of had first dibs.”

“This is fine,” Ruth said, tossing her bag onto the freshly made bed. Carrie looked around at the newly painted ivory walls and new curtains. It wasn’t bad, she supposed, even if she knew it wasn’t what Ruth was used to. “Isn’t it a bit late in the year to plant bulbs?”

“Then I have no idea what he’s doing.” Carrie sighed. “Except possibly avoiding me. Which, actually, is the most likely option.”

“Why on earth would he be avoiding you?” Ruth lay back against the white cotton, her shining blond hair spread out across the covers, looking every inch the model. “From what I saw last time I was here, he was making it his mission to get as close to you as possible.”

Carrie looked up at the ceiling, apparently for a moment too long, because Ruth sprang up, leaned on her hands and said, “And it seems that mission is accomplished! Tell all.”

“It’s not...exactly like that,” Carrie said. As someone who’d been in one seemingly serious, stable and ridiculously soppy relationship after another for her entire adult life, Ruth was a fiend for other people’s sex stories.

“Okay, well, let’s start with the basics. Who seduced who?” Ruth patted the bed beside her, and Carrie conceded defeat and flopped onto it. There was no way she was going to get out of telling her everything anyway.

“I invited him up to the bridal suite to bounce on the bed,” she said, shutting her eyes. What the hell had she been thinking? “I think I was drunk.”

When she opened them again, after a long moment’s silence, Ruth was leaning over her, face stern. “Tell me you didn’t have sex with the gardener in my bed.”

“You know it isn’t actually your bed, right?” Ruth didn’t answer so, with a roll of her eyes, Carrie went on. “I did not have sex with that man in that bed.”

“I’m planning on making Cyb an offer for it.” Ruth gave her a curious look. “Really? Did you have sex with someone else there?”

Carrie laughed. “I think Cyb might have her own plans for it. And, no. I had sex with Nate in my own bed.”

“In the attic?” Ruth wrinkled her nose. “You should have used my bed.”

“Except your parents were the last people to sleep on those sheets,” Carrie answered honestly, and Ruth laughed.

“Fair enough.” She laid down beside Carrie. “I hope you changed the sheets for the Mayor.”

“Of course.” Carrie gave her a soft shove to the shoulder. “What sort of inn do you think we’re running here?”

“A wonderful one,” Ruth answered, and when Carrie glanced over, she could see the truth in her friend’s eyes. “One I hope to come back to, year after year, for our anniversary.”

Carrie looked away. “Well, I couldn’t have got this far without your wedding deposit.”

“And I’d have eloped by now if you weren’t in charge of it. So we all win.” Ruth shifted onto her side. “Enough of the mushy stuff. I want to know what happened next. You got Nate just where you wanted him, in your bed, and then...”

In all the wedding discussions, it occurred to Carrie that somehow she’d not had a chance to update Ruth on the latest installment of People Who Are Trying to Make My Life a Living Hell. “Then, the next morning, Anna Yardley arrived and proceeded to tell me everything I’d done was crap and tried to worm her way out of the partnership so she could get me back in the Manchester office.”

Ruth snorted. “So, basically a rerun of every wedding you ever arranged for Wedding Wishes. What did you do?”

“I... Well, actually, I quit my job.”

“Seriously?”

Carrie nodded. “And then I drank a lot of whiskey with Nate, told him that I could only be his boss, and got back to work making your wedding fabulous so that I can pay back the money Anna invested.” Carrie was sort of hoping Ruth would miss the bit about Nate in the middle.

No such luck. “Only be his boss? Hang on, what went wrong up in the attic?”

“Nothing at all,” Carrie said with feeling.

“Then...did you just lose your mind or something? You do remember this guy, right? Gorgeous, keeps doing wonderful things for you, apparently incredible in bed and utterly besotted.”

“Before he disappeared to London to visit his ex-girlfriend,” Carrie broke in, and Ruth winced.

“After you told him you couldn’t sleep with him anymore? And let me guess. You’d been ignoring him ever since.” Ruth shook her head. “I don’t think I want to hear the rest.”