“Damn.” Axel shot another glance at Rachel. “Have I mentioned I’m, uh, crazy about you?”
Marilee looked at him as if he’d grown horns. “You been smoking again?”
“Not once all year, since you asked me to stop.”
“We were talking about my cooking,” she said. “I followed your directions for that casserole to the last letter.”
Axel shook his head. “The eggs tasted like you drowned them in salt and pepper. No way did you use half a pinch of each.”
“Half a
“I wrote it out for you.”
“I thought it said half a pint. Which is a cup. I looked it up.”
“Who in their right mind would use a cup of salt or pepper in one casserole dish?” he asked.
Marilee’s face froze. “Apparently only an idiot.”
Axel scrubbed a hand down over his face. “I didn’t mean-”
“Go ahead and say it,” she said stiffly. “I am an idiot. Might as well let it all hang out, and also mention that I don’t belong in the kitchen.”
“I like you in the kitchen.”
“I noticed you didn’t say I wasn’t an idiot.”
Axel slid yet another desperate glance at Rachel, who waved him closer to Marilee.
“This is one of those no-win situations for me,” Axel said, touching Marilee’s shoulder, “so I’m going to do one last thing.”
Marilee looked wary. “What’s that?”
“This. Hold on tight, Mari.” And he hauled her up to her toes and kissed her.
She let out a squeak, her hands straight out at her sides, but Axel didn’t let go, and after a few seconds, Marilee let out another sound, not a squeak this time, but more of a…moan. Then she wrapped her arms weakly around Axel’s neck.
Rach looked at me and arched a brow.
Finally Axel stepped back and cleared his throat. “Yeah. Um…” He tripped over his own two feet. “So. It’s time to take Serena and William out.”
Marilee nodded faintly. “Right.”
He nodded, and turned away.
“Take the map I left for you on the foyer table,” Marilee said, her voice softer than it’d been since we’d met her.
“Thanks.” Axel glanced back at her. “And for what it’s worth, you are a
Marilee startled all of us by laughing. It was a nice sound, actually, I thought, as she threw her oven mitt at Axel.
“A pint,” Marilee said on a sigh when he’d left. “Can you imagine?” She tapped her own forehead. “I’m so doing the wrong job.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, then blinked when both women glared at me.
What had I done but agree with them? Weren’t you supposed to agree with them?
“So why don’t you want us to spend any time with Serena and William?” Rachel asked Marilee without preamble. She put her hands on her hips for emphasis, looking extremely serious. And gorgeous.
And sexy…
How could she ever have thought I wanted Marilee after I’d had her? I was fairly certain I’d never want another woman again.
Marilee opened her mouth, but Rachel narrowed her eyes and focused on a spot right between the other woman’s breasts.
“What are you doing?” Marilee asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Watching your heart. If you lie, your heart is going to speed up.”
“You can’t see my heart.”
“Wanna bet?” Rachel asked, her eyes glittering with what I knew to be bad temper. Whenever she looked at me like that, I tended to duck for cover, but Marilee didn’t know better, and she took a stand.
“You’re just going to have to trust me,” Marilee said. “There are some things you’re better off not knowing, and what’s going on here is one of those things.”
“I’m the owner of this place,” Rach reminded her. “I have a right to know.”
Marilee looked at her for a long moment. “Gertrude always said that out of all her relatives, you were the one most likely to just keep things status quo. We knew you’d come visit, and then we counted on you going away and not coming back.”
“Why wouldn’t I come back?”
But Marilee had busied herself with the dishes.
“Marilee?”
“Because maybe you wouldn’t have such a good time.”
“Maybe?” I interjected. “Or certainly, because you’d make damn sure I wouldn’t.”
“That,” Marilee admitted. “The second one.”
Rachel looked at me and shook her head in shocked amazement. “Okay, so your job as hostess was to make us so miserable that we’d leave. And then what? The place would just run itself?”
“Yes.”
“Well, no one’s leaving, at least not until Jack gets back,” Rach said. “Your own words, right?”
“Right.”
“So you might as well talk to us.”
To this, Marilee said nothing.
“Look, Serena told us some things,” I broke in, trying a new angle. “About the swap, for instance.”
Marilee’s lips tightened. “Sounds kinky.”
“Whoa.” Rachel pointed to Marilee’s chest. “Your heart just sped up.”
“Yeah? Well, washing dishes is hard work.”
“She knew about our ‘abilities,’ Marilee.”
“Poor Serena,” Marilee said. “She desperately needed this vacation. It’s a good thing for her mental health that William got her away.”
“Okay, you know what?” Rachel stepped to my side and took my hand. “I’ve just decided I don’t want you to tell us anything, because I wouldn’t trust it anyway. We’ll figure this out on our own. Where’s the office?”
“What?”
“The office for the inn, where all the paperwork is kept.”
Marilee lifted her shoulder. “Hey, I’m just the cook.”
“And the maid.”
“Only when strictly necessary.”
“I know Gertrude had an office,” Rach insisted. “She was as anal as they came.”
“Did you see an office when you walked through the house?”
Rachel bit her lip, thinking back. And it occurred to me, I hadn’t seen an office either. Strange for a business. There had to be files, a computer…
“Never mind. We’ll find it ourselves,” Rach said, and led me out the back door, with Marilee standing there pensive in front of the oven.
We walked away from the house to avoid being overheard and ended up on the edge of the cleared property, staring at the trees.
“I wanted to talk to you in private,” she said, looking at the woods, “but I’m finding myself a little unnerved by the thought of going in there again.”
“We did okay fishing.”
“But we had Axel, at least at first.” She tipped her head up further, eyeing the blue sky. “No clouds at least.”
“Maybe clouds would actually solve our problem.”
