Page 26 of Frosted and Sliced

She’d wondered if it had been a brush off, because no one else in her life had ever called her hearing aids “cool” before, but then he kept texting, kept pursuing her, as much as he could over text. And always prodding, prodding toward a meeting.

Would Georgie be more open to a meeting, if Burke weren’t in the picture?

Maybe. It wasn’t as if she had a romantic interest in Burke, or he had one in her, but it felt odd to bring another man into the space somehow. That thought gave her pause and made her frown. Should she really be putting her life on hold for the stranger in her attic? And was she only using Burke as an excuse because she was too scared to grab life by the horns and latch on? Meeting new people was scary. Meeting a man in real life she only knew through text was nothing short of terrifying. But she couldn’t put him off forever, could she? Eventually he would tire of the rejection. When she thought about it, she was surprised he hadn’t cooled on her already. How many times had she told him no? Too many to count.

That would be nice,she offered now and bit her lip. Was that too forward? No, she was only responding to what he said first. He’d offered his protection, she’d agreed it sounded nice.

Georgie waited, staring at her phone until her eyes blurred, but then a crash sounded, jerking her head up. It must have been a loud crash, if she heard it, and it was, if the chaos in the room was any indication. One of the women had tripped over the karaoke cord, yanking it off the stand where it sat, causing feedback to resound throughout the room when the mic landed on the speaker. Women were now screaming and wandering around, drunkenly stumbling into each other and furniture, hands over their ears as they loudly complained about the sound.

Georgette righted the karaoke machine, turned it off, checked on the woman who had tripped, and then began herding the others toward their rooms, gently suggesting they might feel better if they got into their pajamas. She assumed, and rightly so, that by the time they reached their rooms and began readying for bed, they would fall asleep.

She tidied the great room and fought back a grimace, hoping against hope that none of them got sick in their beds or, worse, on any of her rugs. It would be miraculous if they didn’t, given the state of them. Statistically speaking she’d be cleaning up a whole lot of sick in the morning, but that was why she always kept mentholated rub on her cleaning cart. That stuff could cover the smell of almost anything, a trick she learned from a detective show she enjoyed.

By the time she had everything tidied and tucked away in the great room and breakfast prepped for the next morning in the kitchen, she forgot about her phone completely. It would take a while to realize that Siggy never responded to her gentle prodding and even longer to figure out if his lack of reply counted as a rejection. Was she relieved about that, if so? She couldn’t decide, and her brain was too tired to try.

Georgie flicked off the lights, pausing to check that none of the nightlights had burned out. The stairs remained lit, albeit dimly, as did the hallways, but other than a single light in the window, the inn was dark. Maintaining the correct amount of light was a skill Georgie had learned after a few months of running the inn. In the beginning she’d kept everything fully lit, like a hotel. Unlike a hotel, she had no corporate budget to pay her electric bill. And she began to notice that some of the reviews said it lacked coziness and felt difficult to sleep. So she gradually began turning off lights and dimming some others. Adding low level runner lights to the hallways had been the final piece of the puzzle. They remained on all night, but they were tiny LED bulbs that didn’t use much electricity, light enough so no one would trip and dim enough so they wouldn’t keep anyone awake or make it feel like false daytime.

Little things like lighting were the unexpected portions of inn ownership no one told her about. She’d been prepared for the big things—cleaning, cooking, bookkeeping—but all the tiny dayto day decisions and details she had to track exhausted her. No one wanted to spend hours thinking about lighting, least of all Georgie who merely wanted to cook and host people.If I had someone to see to the practicalities, I’d be free to focus on the creative side of things,she thought with a tiny pang of longing. Her brother was excellent at those sorts of practicalities. Even though she’d desperately wanted her independence when she first started, she had also secretly hoped Brody would take more of a proprietary interest in the inn. She had no right to ask him, of course. He had his own life and his own job. But she’d also been secretly disappointed when he didn’t volunteer to step up and help shoulder some of the heavy burden she carried. Was that unfair in the extreme? Absolutely, which was why she had never and would never voice those feelings. But she couldn’t help feeling them, as well as a tiny sting of disappointment that he seemed so oblivious to any of her needs. Even though she would never have encouraged it, it had been a teensy bit cathartic to hear Burke ream him for failing to notice how far below water Georgie had sunk.

She shook her head, trying to physically push away the heavy thoughts. Brody owed her nothing. He was her brother, not her keeper, and he had done more than enough for her in their lives. Her overt dependence on him said more about her inability to function than it did his unwillingness to provide. If she asked, he would say yes. She knew that, believed it completely. Wanting him to intuit her needs and volunteer to help with them was unfair and ridiculous, the last holdover of a little girl in search of a rescue. Ever since her parents died, it was as if Georgie had split into two parts, one part insecure little girl who needed to be held and one part independent woman who wanted to do it herself. Those two parts were forever at war with each other, with the insecure part of her channeling her emotions and the capable part of her holding on to her logic. Most of the time logicwon, but sometimes, like now when she was tired and it had been a long day, she really wanted someone to come along, pick up the slack, hold her close, and tell her everything was going to be okay.

A prickling sensation stopped her in her tracks. People often said that losing one sense made the others sharper, but Georgie had never found that to be true. She certainly couldn’t see or taste better because she was nearly deaf. And she’d never had much of a sixth sense about things, either, which made it all the more odd when she felt sure someone was in the inn.

Her head had been down, checking the floor for stray objects as she headed toward bed, always on the lookout for a gum wrapper or some other piece of trash hastily discarded by a guest. So she couldn’t say that movement caught her eye and made her feel like she wasn’t alone. There was no reason for the feeling, but she also couldn’t talk herself out of it, which was why she put her head up and then eased against the wall, pressing her palms to the fuzzy velveteen wallpaper flowers behind her. It was vintage and delicate and she usually didn’t touch it, but today she made an exception because she needed the tactile grounding effect of those flowers as she took stock of the situation and tried to figure out what to do.

What are the facts?she asked herself, but that wasn’t much help because the facts were slim to none.Fact: I have an unsubstantiated feeling that something is wrong.

How did she substantiate that feeling? She had never longed for working ears more than she did at that moment. Not only did she want to be able to hear if someone was in her space, she wanted to make certain she wasn’t making noise. Was she breathing loudly? She had no idea. She hoped she stood perfectly still and silent, but she couldn’t be certain she wasn’t puffing like a perturbed dragon, especially with the inexplicablepanic now fueling her. Was she losing her mind, reacting this way?

Just when she was about to give in and deem herself an overreactive lunatic, she saw it, barely a wisp of movement in the hallway to her left. Slowly, slowly, slowly she turned in that direction and had to stifle a scream of terror when a white hockey mask stared back at her.

CHAPTER 12

If Georgette suspected she was noisy before, she knew it for certain as the masked man looked at her and placed an index finger against his lips, warning her to be silent. She wanted to run or scream or call for help, but instead she froze in place, her knees locked as her heels and the back of her head touched the wall behind her. Later she would wonder why she froze. In the moment she had the crazy thought that maybe he didn’t see her, even though he stared right at her. Or maybe she thought if she stayed still enough he would realize she wasn’t a threat and might go away.

Instead he took a step forward.

Georgie’s hands flexed, as if they had some intent to push her away from the wall, which was news to her because the rest of her body remained locked in place. But then, before he could advance further, the man paused. His head cocked to the side like a dog that heard something. His glance fell to Georgie once more, and then he turned and darted away, disappearing into the inky blackness of the hallway as if maybe he’d never been there at all.

And a new man replaced him. This one was also dressed in all black but, unlike the previous one, was a welcome sight.

“Hey,” Burke said. He touched her arm, to make certain she heard him. His demeanor was casual, as if it were noon and not two in the morning, as if he wasn’t supposed to return for another day at least, as if Georgette wasn’t rooted to the spot like her life depended on it, drained of all color and energy.

Now her body decided to work again, this time springing her forward and into Burke’s unsuspecting embrace. He caught her, not because he wanted to, but because he presumably had highly honed reflexes. Georgie wrapped her arms and legs around his body and held on like she was the famished koala and he was the last remaining eucalyptus in the forest.Safe.It was more than a word in that moment, it was a full-body feeling. She knew that whoever was in her inn and for whatever purpose, Burke would take care of it, would take care ofher.

Her relief was so overwhelming that it took her a moment to realize Burke’s chest vibrated, a sign he was talking to her. She eased back, focused hard on his lips in the darkness.

“What?” she said.

“You missed me?” he asked. His expression was perplexed and maybe a little uncertain. The question caught her off guard. Had she missed him?

She shook her head. “Someone was in here.”

Because he still held her, she felt his entire body tense as his lips slowly and emphatically mouthed,What?

“Someone was here, dressed in black. They may still be here.” Furtive now, she glanced around. Was the person watching them? Would he hurt Burke because she’d been careless in her relief? The possibility brought a stab of panic and she clutched him closer, an impossibility because he set her down.

Her glance was so busy assessing for threats that she missed his words, so she had no idea what he said or why he set her down and took her hand. And she became more confused when he began leading, practically dragging, her toward the stairs.

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