He finished signing the meal receipt and slid his credit card back into his wallet. “They said it’d be ready by six and it’s well after.” He pushed his chair back and stood.
She quickly followed suit and they left the restaurant that had grown progressively busier as they’d dined.
While he went to the registration desk, she hung back pretending to study a painting hanging near the imposing staircase.
If she hadn’t been right beside him when they’d come into the hotel to get a room, she might not have believed that there was only one room available. But she’d heard the desk clerk herself. Otherwise, she’d have believed Adam had done it deliberately.
He hadn’t really let her out of his sight since the night before.
“Think it’s museum quality?” Adam asked as he stepped beside her, nodding up at the painting.
“It’s good enough for someone to buy and hang over their couch, I suppose.”
“I think that’s what’s called being damned with faint praise.”
She shook her head, denying. “I wouldn’t know museum quality anyway.”
“Yes, you would. You were an art curator.”
Startled, she tried to absorb that.
“You deciding if that fits or not?”
She looked at him. “Are you reading my mind?”
“Doesn’t take a lot of intuition,” he said quietly. “Anyone would feel that way.”
She frowned and turned back to the painting for another look. “What I was thinking was that this is better than mediocre but not worth an outrageous price like that.” She nodded toward the card affixed to the wall next to the rustic frame. “That has two too many zeros. And then I was thinking what a terrific snob that made me seem.”
“Maybe you’re an art snob, but you’re not one otherwise.”
It was the most personal words they’d exchanged all day. She let out a mock huff. “I think now I’m being damned with faint praise.”
He smiled slightly. “Room’s ready. You can head up now. I’ll go get the bags from the car.”
She stifled a sigh. Another stretch of endless hours with nothing on her mind except her own appalling behavior. Both last night and five months ago. And her increasing confusion over why Adam was helping her the way he was, at all. Their college romance had ended long, long ago. She’d moved on. So had he.
“What’s the room number?” she asked him.
“Up the stairs. Two-twelve. Or,” he added when she took a step toward the staircase, “we could walk around town for a while. Weather’s nice and—”
“Yes,” she said so quickly that she felt her face flush.
He gave a single nod and she had the sudden sense that he wasn’t all that sure his idea had been a good one. “Okay.” He led the way to the entrance and pulled open the oversize timber door.
On the sidewalk, he closed his hand over her elbow.
She was barely able to suppress a shiver. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to run off and find some computer for more internet creeping. I’ve learned enough.”
His hold tightened for a moment, then relaxed again. But he didn’t release her. “I wasn’t worried. Which way do you want to go first?”
Whichever direction she looked, the mountains watched over them. The peaks were verdant with summer growth, and for a moment, she imagined them covered in snow.
Imagined Adam, his hair, longer than it was now, blowing around his head despite the ski goggles.
“We skied once at Holiday Valley.” Her fingertips fluttered to the necklace hidden beneath her blouse. “It was Christmastime.” Her throat tightened.
This was not imagination. She was certain of it. “The lodge where we stayed had an enormous tree.” She could see it in her mind as clearly as if it stood in the middle of the sidewalk in front of them. The fat, shining red globes hanging from the magnificent branches. The hundreds of tiny gold lights that seemed like stars when the lights were low. “It was even larger than the one my parents always had.”
She caught the flicker of something in his dark eyes. “Yes.” He let go of her elbow and gestured. “Let’s go that way first. Maybe I can find a shirt in that souvenir shop. I’m sick of the ones I’ve been wearing.”
She pressed her lips together and fell into step with him. But her mind wasn’t on the shops they passed or the other pedestrians or bicyclists, even though they outnumbered the cars on the street.
When Laurel hadn’t gone home that year for Christmas, choosing to spend it with Adam, her mother had been livid. Screaming at her over the phone. Then refusing to talk to her at all for weeks and weeks.
Screaming just the same way that Laurel had screamed at Adam the night before.
Her Southwestern salad churned inside her stomach.
“I’m like her.”
Until Adam stopped walking, she wasn’t even aware that she had done so first. He ignored the people behind them as they parted and flowed around them. “Like who?”
“My mother.” Her head swam and she thought for a moment that she might be sick. She looked around blindly, but all she could see were people.
Adam’s hands closed over hers. “No. You’re not. Look at me.”
His touch, his voice, helped center her, and his deep brown gaze seemed to surround her, making the crowds and chaos disappear.
“You are nothing like Sylvia Hudson.” His voice was quietly adamant.
“She used to scream at me for nothing at all.” Nothing and everything. And if it wasn’t screaming, it was silence. Dreadful, weight-of-the-world silence. Designed to ensure Laurel knew exactly how much devastation she was causing her mother.
“I know.” His voice was low.
“Sylvia and Nelson,” she whispered. “The epitome of culture and refinement. Envy of their friends. Pillars of society. Mother never screamed in public.” Laurel couldn’t recall everything but she remembered that much. Her mother reserved her screaming for behind closed doors. And she’d have died of pure mortification if a police officer had ever been called to those doors.
Adam looked over her head toward the hotel. “I’ll take you back to the room.”
“No.” She tugged her
