Housekeeping would be in to help twice a day. She could call for room service whenever she wanted or come down to one of the restaurants, and it’s a hell of a lot closer to the Spa than your house is for when you have to work. She could have PT in the suite. She could use the pool at the sports center. She could access everything without having to use stairs.”
“It’s too much,” I scolded.
“What? Cost? There’s no cost, no effort, no inconvenience.”
“The offer. You don’t need to do this.”
“Need has fucking nothing to do with it,” he whispered with force, then grew beseeching. “It’s the perfect solution, Maggie. The suite is empty, it’s on one level, and it’s accessible to anything she might want to do. There’s even a separate elevator.” He added a singsong to his lure. “You could have your pets there with you.”
“Me? I can’t live at the Inn.”
“Why not? It’d beat driving back and forth a dozen times a day, and she’d be more comfortable with you there. Even just for a week? Two, maybe, until you see how she does?”
But the offer was way too generous. Edward didn’t owe us anything. We were the ones who had hurt him, not the other way around. “She doesn’t deserve it. Neither do I.”
His whisper held sound now, and the sound was angry. “So we’re all feeling the blame, but it won’t move us forward. Let it go, Maggie. I’m trying to on my end, but you have to try on yours. Guilt is pointless. What happened is over and done.”
That quickly we were in the past—but not—with the pain of it hovering—but not. It was like a screen was superimposed on it, showing sneak peeks at a future I hadn’t imagined when I took up with Devon, and the pain was the possibility that it wouldn’t come.
“Is it?” I asked. “The past, over and done? Is it ever?”
“Ever changed? No. Ever accepted? Yes. It becomes who you are. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”
I wanted to believe him. He must have sensed how badly, because, with one lithe move, he was on my stair, pulling me to his side. I closed my eyes for a minute and breathed him in. His mouth touched my forehead with the barest grazing of beard before lowering until I tipped my head back and we were forehead to forehead, breath to breath. When he finally kissed me, it was featherlight, more soothing than heated, but just as precious. It spoke of a connection that went beyond chemistry. I could have basked in it forever.
“Just think,” he teased against my lips, typically male in the end, “if you stay at the Inn with your Mom, you can meet me in my office after hours.”
I swatted his middle. “You can think about that in the middle of a family crisis?”
“I can think about it any time. One look at you”—he breathed a rising whistle—“and there it is.”
“You’re bad.”
“Not always.”
“No,” I conceded. “Not always.” Because his offer of the owner’s suite was really pretty good.
Slipping my arms around him, I fitted my head to its spot under his whiskered jaw. I was getting used to that scruff, was getting used to the longer hair and the idea that he, too, was different now. That said, I would never think of him as Ned. My need was to reconcile with Edward. And much as it terrified me to have and lose—again—I did want him there.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“It’s a go, then,” he asked against my hair, “you and your mom at the Inn?”
“Yes.” I drew back to look up at him. “She’s in a bad way. Pampering may help.”
For some reason, a little subconscious tug, my eyes shifted to the wall by his head. Disturbed, I pulled back farther and followed one wall up and down, then the other. “Where are they?” I whispered.
“What?”
“Family pictures. She took them all away. Look at the holes.” Though the grass cloth hid them, they were definitely there. But a niggling had started. Leaving Edward, I went down the stairs and circled the rooms. Oh, pictures still hung on these walls, but I had been too focused on my mother to notice specifics. I realized now that I had never seen any of them before. They were of the type sold at the mall, that looked like authentic oils but weren’t.
Turning around in dismay, I realized that family pictures weren’t all that was missing. My