“Nope.” Lucas opened a bottle of sparkling cider that sat on the table. “Although I did talk to him about that briefly while he was here, and I have an idea that’s worth considering.” He poured the cider into her glass. “You were going to sell your grandmother’s house and put that money towards the down payment for the inn. What if you became a partner with Carson, and your money went toward making the renovations match the inn’s existing style?”
She blinked in astonishment. “Would Carson be willing to do that? He would make me a partner?”
“Not an equal one, but you’d get a percentage of the inn’s profits each year equal to the percentage of the money you invested into the inn. Carson would need to have his lawyer work up a contract, and since he’s on his honeymoon right now, it’s not high on his priorities. I’m only mentioning it now because it gives me good leverage for when we negotiate kissing terms.”
“Very good leverage.” Becoming even a small partner in the inn would make her feel like she wasn’t just another expendable employee working here. She would have a claim to it.
She smiled at Lucas, happy and glowing. Was it too early to blurt out that she loved him? It probably was. She should at least wait until dessert to do that. “Now I don’t care what’s in the envelope,” she said.
He picked up the envelope and tapped it against his palm. “That’s what I’m hoping.”
She cocked her head, curious, and waited for him to explain.
He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “First, I need you to tell me if I’m wrong about this. Is the only reason we’re not acouple right now because you think I cheated on you? If that hadn’t happened, would you still hope the two of us would be taking our turn in the church soon?”
She felt her cheeks flushing. He was skipping right past the flirting stage and asking if her drunken confession about wanting to marry him was true. Admitting to it felt so presumptuous. Back when they’d been dating, Lucas had never hinted that he might propose someday.
Her voice came out much quieter than usual. “You already heard me tell you so.”
He nodded, gripping the envelope. “Okay. Back then, Winter had some difficult choices to make, and she turned to me for advice because she knew I would be understanding. She made me promise never to tell anyone about her problem, so I couldn’t give you an explanation. I knew you didn’t approve of the two of us talking alone, which is why I stupidly thought I would save you some aggravation and unneeded jealousy, and I lied to you about meeting her.”
He let out a deep breath. “That was a huge mistake. I realize that. You found out I lied about one thing and figured I lied about everything. I thought you should believe me, that you should know me well enough to know I wouldn’t cheat on you. Basically, I felt like you’d sentenced me to life in prison without a chance of parole for what should’ve been a small fine.”
His gaze fixed on hers, the candlelight flickering in his eyes. “I should’ve guarded your trust with more care. I should’ve realized that from a young age, you’d learned that you couldn’t trust the people who were supposed to love you. Why would you think I was different? No promise I made to a friend was worth losing you. I should’ve broken my word rather than broken your heart. I’m trying to rectify that. From now on, you’ll always come first.”
He slid the envelope toward her. “When you know why Winter came to me, you’ll understand why I felt I needed to help her. I know I can trust you to never breathe a word of what’s in this letter to anyone.”
While he spoke, tears found their way into Riley’s eyes. One blink sent them spilling over her lashes. She wasn’t even sure why she was crying. It wasn’t for the pain she’d felt last year. Looking at his steady expression, she had to believe he was telling her the truth. The earnestness in his tone and the pleading in his eyes all told her the same thing. Lucas had made a mistake back then, but not the one she’d accused him of.
She thought of Winter’s pictures, of Jace’s words, and one plausible reason occurred to her as to why a woman would stop taking full-length pictures of herself, why Winter might have lied about where she was.
And now Lucas was willing to tell her Winter’s secret. She knew what that was costing him. She picked up the envelope and turned it over, noting his familiar handwriting spelling her name. “Your dad used to say that a person’s most valuable possession is their integrity.”
“He still says that.”
She had hoped, back when she was sure that Lucas cheated on her, that those words had seared his conscience. Now they felt like a warning. She shouldn’t ask Lucas to compromise his integrity just to satisfy her curiosity and reassure her.
She gazed at him, weighing the issue for a moment longer. “If you’re the sort of man who can keep a promise to a friend, I know you’ll be the sort of man who keeps his promises to me.” She held the corner of the envelope to the candle flame. “I was going to wait until after dessert to tell you this, but I love you.”
Burning the letter felt like a grand gesture, a turning point, a very good thing to do.
Right up until the moment that the smoke triggered the fire alarm.
CHAPTER 24
Twenty-five minutes later, Riley stood outside in the parking lot with all the inn’s guests and employees while she and Lucas spoke to the firemen. The smoke alarms had automatically sent a call to the fire department, and even though Riley called them while Lucas was attempting to shut off the alarm and she’d assured them that everything was fine, they still drove over.
This was what she got for living in a small town where nothing of importance had caught on fire for years. Sometimes the fire department just wanted to take the truck out for a spin.
The guests and employees shouldn’t have had to go outside. Riley had promised them—again as Lucas was trying to turn off the alarm—that there wasn’t any sort of fire, but the firemen had pulled up in their truck and ordered everybody out anyway.
Maybe the firemen’s insistence was because resetting the alarm had taken Lucas and Riley way too long. Its frantic wailing had gone on and on, so the firemen decided to believe its version of the story rather than Riley and Lucas’s.
The men searched the inn, perhaps expecting to see an undetected electrical fire humming along in one of the rooms. They found nothing but a small pile of ashes on Riley’s plate.
“So you were burning a letter, but not in the fireplace?” the fireman asked Riley.
Lucas did have a fireplace in his living room, which was a more sensible place to burn things—if one was going for sensible actions and not grand gestures.