Christmas At Cupid's Hideaway. Connie Lane

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      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 Maisie was dangling in front of her. “The honeymooners are happy?”

      “Nonsense!” Out of the corner of her eye, Meg saw her grandmother wave away the very thought. “Of course the Kilbanes are happy. Honeymooners are always happy. Since they’ve checked in, they’ve gone through two bottles of champagne, three boxes of scented candles and two pairs of those bubble-gumflavored edible undies we have on special in the Love Shack. They’re as happy as clams. I wasn’t talking about Brian and Jenny Kilbane, and you know it.”

      “The nudists?” Meg slid the omelets onto china plates and passed the plates to Maisie. “Or the spy wannabes?”

      Maisie nodded her approval of the omelets, but even so, she didn’t look very happy. “You know exactly what I’m talking about,” she said, frowning at Meg.

      “I do.” Meg reached for the pan of hash-brown potatoes that was sitting on the stove. She scooped a pile of perfectly browned potatoes onto each of the festive plates—decorated with fir trees and snowflakes—that Maisie used only twice each year, in December and for Christmas in July. “I know you’re talking about Gabe Morrison.” Finished with the potatoes, she set down the pan, wiped her hands on her white apron and gave her grandmother her full attention. With any luck, Maisie would catch on to the fact that she wasn’t kidding.

      Then again, if luck had anything to do with the way things were going, Meg wouldn’t have spent the entire time since she’d checked Gabe into the inn thinking all the things about him that Maisie thought she should be thinking.

      All the things Meg knew she shouldn’t have been thinking.

      Meg’s spirits plummeted. Delicious was the least of her problems. When it came to their newest guest, there was also charming to consider—in those few and far between moments when he seemed to forget himself enough to allow his natural sense of humor to come through. Then there was gorgeous, available and successful. Not to mention tempting.

      Meg drew in a long breath to steady her suddenly racing heartbeat. “I’m not interested,” she told Maisie. And herself. “So whether Gabe is delicious or not doesn’t change anything…” She looked the breakfast dishes over one final time. “I need something,” she grumbled.

      “Of course you do.” Maisie’s expression brightened. “It’s what I’ve said all along. You need something. A little companionship. Is that such a bad thing? Or how about a full-fledged, all-out, over-the-top fling?” Maisie laughed the same throaty laugh Meg had heard from her grandmother’s private rooms on the nights Doc Ross visited. “If you ask me, sweetie, an amour would do you a world of good. Help you forget that chef of yours, the one who had oatmeal where his brains were supposed to be and nothing but ice cubes inside his chest. You know, that what’s-his-name.”

      “Ben.” Still staring at the hash browns and omelets, Meg supplied the name automatically. It took her a second to realize that saying it didn’t hurt. At least, not as much as it used to, anyway. “Ben,” she said again, testing out the theory and discovering that for the first time in the fourteen months she’d been back on the island and out of the magnetic pull of Ben Lucarelli’s overblown personality and his overrated talent, the very memory of him didn’t skewer her like a shish kebab.

      “And I wasn’t talking about Ben.” She looked at the door that led into the dining room where Maisie’s guests were waiting for breakfast. “Or about anyone else, for that matter. I was talking about breakfast.” She studied the plates, and the answer hit her. “Strawberries,” she mumbled and she hurried over to the refrigerator on the other side of the room. She found seven of the plumpest, reddest strawberries she’d picked just two days before over on the mainland and, in a flash, had them washed, sliced, sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar and arranged on each plate.

      “Much better,” She said with satisfaction. “The muffins are already on the table?”

      “I did that first thing,” Maisie assured her. “And everyone’s enjoying them.” Her expression fell. “Everyone but poor Gabe.”

      Meg already had four of the plates in her hands. She stepped back to let Maisie leave the kitchen with the other three, but not before she rolled her eyes, just so her grandmother would know what she thought of her little stab at theatrics. “And I’m supposed to care, right? I’m supposed to ask why he’s not enjoying the muffins. Or am I supposed to be worried about why you’re calling him ‘poor Gabe’?”

      “Good heavens, dear.” Maisie clicked her tongue and went into the inn’s dining room. Although she didn’t have the nerve to pretend she was embarrassed, she at least had the decency to blush a shade darker than her hot-pink pantsuit. “You are so suspicious! You can’t possibly think I’m so meddlesome that…”

      Her comment trailed away, and Meg supposed it was just as well. She didn’t need her grandmother to elaborate. Not about Gabe.

      In the hours since she’d met him, Meg’s own imagination had done enough elaborating for the both of them.

      That brought her up short, and right before she bumped the swinging door with her hip and entered the dining room, Meg paused to catch her breath. The last thing she needed were her own fantasies sneaking up to destroy her self-control. Not when she was about to walk into the dining room and come face to face with the man who’d inspired those fantasies. All night long.

      Meg twitched the thought away as inconsequential, inconsistent with what she wanted out of her life and her career, and just plain old insane. She gave the door an authoritative smack and got down to business—which would’ve been considerably easier if it wasn’t for the scene that greeted her in the dining room.

      Maisie was fluttering around the table pouring coffee and chatting up a storm, just as she did every morning when they had guests. The Kilbanes were holding hands and staring into each other’s eyes. The nudists and the spies…

      Meg glanced around the table. Because she wasn’t usually involved in the day-to-day operation of the inn outside the kitchen, she wasn’t sure which guests were the nudists and which were the James Bond fans. She did, however, know exactly which guest Maisie was referring to when she’d mentioned delicious.

      Delicious was a word that didn’t adequately describe how Gabe looked early in the morning.

      He was wearing khakis and an inky shirt that brought out the highlights in his dark hair, and though he was sitting with his back to the windows with their view of the lake, she СКАЧАТЬ